Leadership

Fayette County parent Penny Christian describes her work serving on the Kentucky Coalition for Advancing Education.

Peace. A word with many levels of meaning and overwhelmingly lacking from the current worldview. Yet, peace is so desperately needed.

By now, you’ve hopefully heard about the Commissioner’s Virtual Listening Tour. For more than a month, I led a series of virtual town halls in conjunction with the education cooperatives and the University of Kentucky’s College of Education to hear directly from parents, students, educators and community members about what is and isn’t working in Kentucky’s education system.

This has not been a typical year, and I find myself in my students shoes more frequently. Maybe because the pair we’ve been given fit all of us: a pandemic that changed the way we live and learn.

Remember sitting in your undergraduate education classes, being bombarded with hypothetical situations to play out in your mind? That was scary. There were lots of things that made us think, “Is that really going to happen?” We had no idea what we were in for.

This year, Teacher Appreciation Week will be May 3-7. This year’s theme is #ThankATeacher. I am thankful every day for the teachers who have helped and inspired me along the way.

In 2018, I had the good fortune of hearing a young man named Jemar Lee speak at the annual symposium of what is now called the Aurora Institute. At the time, Jemar was a student at Iowa Big, a leading learner-centered high school. Today, Jemar is a fellow with Education Reimagined, a national leader in learner-centered education and someone I’m proud to call friend.

All of us at the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) are committed to the core values of equity, achievement, collaboration and integrity. These are the values that drive our work day after day.

I like to say that people who are drawn to becoming teachers generally have a calling. That got me thinking; why do we often call teaching a calling?

When Education Commissioner Jason E. Glass called me last year to ask if I would become Kentucky’s first chief equity officer, it was one of the greatest honors of my career.