The Job of a Lifetime by Crystal Cubbage
Almost a year ago, when the Advisory Board of The Philadelphia Learning Collaborative (PLC - formerly, the Student-Centered Deeper Learning Collaborative) selected me to be the organization’s Founding Director, it was the culmination of a career where I had been in search of meaning and purpose. The Collaborative is a diverse alliance of public, private, and charter schools; the city’s top universities, The School District of Philadelphia, and innovative educational nonprofits. This group was perceptive enough to join forces to position itself to take a giant leap forward in Philadelphia’s progressive education movement.
Why was it such a rich moment?
Because the work is about improving the lives of children, families, and communities in my hometown.
Because the work has the potential to improve the quality of life in other underserved, urban centers around the nation.
And because The Collaborative is made up of Philadelphia’s leading educators who have not only thought about, but dared to implement some of the boldest, countercultural, and most complex, research-based pedagogies and school models in the world. All of this, in an environment that is fraught with bureaucracy, regulations, and constraints.
The current climate operates against novel solutions actively and unconsciously. The schools in our organization provide relevant instruction in caring, technology-rich environments; to talented students. By the time students reach PLC schools, many struggle to thrive because they have not been taught well or provided with the tools they need to succeed. The Collaborative’s work creates the conditions for our schools to flourish and multiply, and to share lessons learned with others who are doing similar work.
In less than a year, we have taken a look at ourselves and the field – to determine our capacity and our priorities. What have we learned? We have learned that organizing to leverage the strength found in numbers was the right thing to do. There is power in our diversity and shared values that we are learning how to use. Figuring out how to collaborate is as big a part of the work as pursuing our goals. Above all, there is a critical need for more educators with the mindset and training to teach in progressive schools.
We serve five University Schools of Education, 12 K-12 schools and school leaders, hundreds of teachers, and thousands of students. As we iterate to strike our balance between research, policy, and practice; the essential questions that drive us are:
What do our schools need to survive and thrive?
How do each of our activities add value to our schools and their ecosystem?
For more than a decade, the educators in The Philadelphia Learning Collaborative have been toiling away to make school a more relevant and engaging place to be. I believe in them because of their demonstrated ability to innovate, earned expertise, selflessness, and courage. Our reality matches that of many worthy pursuits. We are modeling a skill that our schools are designed to cultivate in our students – active citizenship and community. To that end, we have tasked ourselves with undertaking the enormous work of transforming a century-old system. No matter. In this arena, we are ‘the little engine that could.’
And my mid-career self, just said to my 20-something year-old self, “We have landed. THIS IS your job of a lifetime.” This is something special and I am glad to be a part of it.
Stay tuned and grow with us.