The Courage to Measure Love
Open Letter, October 18, 2023
The vision of measuring love began with a school visit in the fall of 2022. Director Rictor Craig has an open-door policy for aligned visitors to witness the teaching and learning experience they’ve designed in the building.
When I visited, I was struck by how the adults and children nurtured each other. This wasn’t my first school visit, of course. I was raised by two teachers so I was always that kid. For as long as I can remember, I had an interest in critiquing learning, especially as a student. Informed with this upbringing and my time visiting schools across the country through fellowships, I have the usual education reform themes to pull from.
These themes are usually excellence, structure, joy, routine, expertise, rhythm, and play. Students on group projects, immersive learning, laughter, art-centered, music-infused, independent study, and clear and supportive redirection were all there. All those things were also, mostly true in other schools I’ve seen.
Statesmen is different. At Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys, the one word that came to me was love.
This feeling engaged my imagination [to measure] this feeling and the series of practices that flow through the building. I felt the interconnected ethos of both adults and children as I walked through the halls. It became clear, this is both a healing and an excellence school [at the same time]. While all the feelings of youth are safely displayed as they rise and flourish, including tears and conflict resolution too.
All this while this school was born in a country reckoning with the racial awakening of George Floyd’s murder, a COVID pandemic that lingers, and an education reform movement originally designed to address the same achievement gap issues that have persisted for an additional 50 years. Many unanswered questions persist. How can we continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on our education system with such little progress for humanity?
At Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys, we’re grounded in asking what does it mean to love our Black boys? In the words of co-founder of Statesmen, Shawn Hardnett, where has this love gone? And humbly, why isn’t school and love talked about in the same sentence every day?
The courage we offer with this study is to do just that. Talk about it, learn about it, provoke it, and capture this story of love. Our goal for you is to engage with this report and address some of these questions while we measure love. With your active engagement and echoing this story, we can go much further in building a bridge of love across schools so that this work becomes the norm. Lastly, this study can go deeper and even more impactful with your support.
Christopher C. King
CEO, WAM Academy
Ready to explore how Social-Emotional Learning, Culturally Responsive Teaching , and Restorative Justice are reshaping education? Dive into our enlightening Measuring Love Case Study. 🎓 It explores the tremendous impact of these approaches on Black boys as executed at Statesman Preparatory Academy and their journey as they carve a new route in education.
Curious to learn more about Statesman? 📖 Fill out the form to access this case study: http://bit.ly/3N4tJq4 📝✨ #Education #MeasuringLoveCaseStudy #NewPathInEducation #Statesmen #WAMAcademy Christopher C. King