Urban Scholar Brendan Dotson

Brendan Dotson learned about Urban Scholars Program while teach eighth-grade language arts and reading in SeaTac, Wash. "I was interested in the opportunity to spend time with educators who had been doing amazing work in urban schools all over the country," he says. When Dotson was selected as an Urban Scholar, he admits to being surprised. "It adds a different kind of responsibility for my education here. Giving us more freedom to focus entirely on our studies, without the substantial stress and burden of navigating the financial pressures of paying for graduate school," he says, adding that his conversations with fellow scholars have been some of the most engaging, educational, and exciting that he has ever had.

Why did you choose a career in education?
Teaching is a perfect job for me. It combines working in service to others, dialogue and discussion of interesting ideas, and spending time with a bunch of kids who love to laugh. I love the daily life of the job, working the madness of middle school personalities from all over the place. The work for me is centered on the hope that perhaps the work I do with them might play some part in their own life's work at self-fulfillment, and their service to others. It's also a very silly job, a lot of the time, and I learn a lot from my students who laugh in spite of and often at their burdens. It's a bit cliché, but the job is a constant lesson in strength, courage, and the recognition of blessings amidst life's trials. I can't imagine doing anything else.

Why did you choose HGSE?
At a conference, I met a former professor from HGSE who was making spectacular changes at a middle school in East Boston. He talked about how his opportunity to study at HGSE had enhanced his skills with strong theory and research. That, combined with his own spirit of service and advocacy, enabled him to have a visibly positive impact on an entire community that inspired determination on my part to perhaps be of such service to the community I work with back in Seatac. My hope is that the collaboration and dialogue here, with so many powerful, reform-minded education advocates, will allow me to be more effective as a leader for change in the communities I will teach in.

What would you change about education today?
[I'd make it] a more proactive, heavy, sufficiently financed movement toward school and community partnerships. This would be to proactively integrate students' learning with an impact on their experience in and outside of their school. Schools should be dynamic catalysts for community development and learning. Especially in times of economic crisis, I think school can become a place where kids and their families can learn from the teachers, but also from each other... a real community center of learning. Some of the most amazing community development begins through community education, and public schools are a perfect place to catalyze that.