Reshaping PIE: Different shape; same elements

Last spring PIE began a search for a director. After a long, intentional journey, we are excited to introduce our new director and the reshaping of our team.

a note from PIE’s outgoing director

Hey Loves,

Last spring, we launched our call for a director and I announced I was beginning my transition out of the role of PIE Director. Our aim was to find a new leader who had the passion, drive and skills to take on this role and move PIE’s work to the next level. I am excited to tell you we’ve found that person-- introducing the Director of People In Education, Siobhan O’Laoire!

Over the last few months, Siobhan and I have been working closely together to make this transition happen. In this time we’ve had to navigate challenges big and small. I’ve gotten to experience her facilitative leadership, her love for detail, her contemplation of the complexities of our work and world and I am honored she chose to join our team. I deeply believe in Siobhan’s leadership and I’m so excited to be a part of the team as she steps into the role of Director.

Here’s to the folks who put the people in PIE!

n8

Different shape. same elements.

Our leadership change is part of a larger reshaping of PIE that expands and distributes leadership across the organization. We are excited for our new form that will ensure PIE continues to shine bright long into the future. Despite our new shape, our core elements remain the same. This shift enriches our commitment to the resonant work and impact of PIE: humanizing schooling by facilitating space for connection, curiosity and reflection.

Today, the key people that make up our sparkling new shape include:

• Cyrah Dyras, Teaching Artist for the Artist-in-Residence program

• Erin Allen, Communications and Fundraising Assistant, supporting PIE storytelling and sustainability

• Nate Mullen, Special Advisor, spearheading PIE’s programming

• Siobhan O’Laoire, Director, leading PIE’s organizational strategy and impact

• Tulani Pryor, Media Intern, supporting design and media production

Between Two Directors

During the past two months, Siobhan and Nate worked together as co-directors, transferring  knowledge, reflecting and dreaming. Check out some fun and interesting highlights from an interview between the two directors that capture their reflections, intentions and directions for PIE:

My job is enabling the space for people to practice and explore what humanizing schooling means… The beautiful thing about the mission is that this question is never going to completely be answered because we’re going to keep uncovering truths and solutions related to it. Every time we get better there’s going to be something else that we need to learn and shift… This space needs to continue to be here to enable that.

- Siobhan O’Laoire

Something that’s special about PIE is that it is the home for humanizing schooling. For me that’s the spiritual home for this work. I’ve done work with other organizations, but that being the driving force of our work makes PIE really distinct. The principal of humanizing is applicable everywhere... Part of humanizing is about tapping into what is essential about being human, which is inherently connective, empathetic and caring.

- Nate Mullen

Cheers to N8:

In the last five years as PIE’s Director, Nate took on the transformative and sometimes challenging work of becoming the leader that the organization needed. PIE stayed committed to changing our minds and practices around learning, teaching and schooling and it evolved into what would become its current team carrying out its current mission: humanizing schooling. Nate’s commitment brought PIE through this transition and into the dynamic and vital work we do today. We are grateful and fortunate for his direction thus far and so excited that we get to work with him moving forward, as he continues to shape and carve out a space for himself in the work of PIE.  

Questions about the reshaping of PIE? Email us at pie@alliedmedia.org.

Where We Learn: Collaborate with PIE’s teaching artist to create media that examines the environment at school

People in Education is seeking youth learning spaces, educators, classrooms and organizations to partner with our artist-in-residence program starting November, 2019.

Artist-in-Residence

PIE’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program partners artists, educators and young people to make media that uncovers stories at the heart of the schooling experience. The basics:

• Over four months, we explore a complex education issue centered on a yearly theme, resulting in a collaborative, digital media project.

• The program seeks to embrace the complexity and intersectionality inherent in educational policy and reform.

• It allows young people to discuss and showcase this complexity through our programmatic pillars of curiosity, connection and reflection, all while encouraging creativity through media making. 

Last year, our making process evolved such that each media project shared a common theme. This year, we continue that model with outstanding Teaching Artist, Cyrah Dardas. She will work with each partner to develop media projects focused on the theme of school environment.

why school environment?

Media from summer 2019 with PIE and 482 Youth

This year’s theme was influenced by research from our recent summer partnership with 482 Youth, who explored the question, “What about school is inhumane?” They discovered four main themes from their research: food, teachers, class content and environment. The environment topic evoked conversation about the physical space in and around schools, to psychological and physical safety to questions of climate change and disability justice.

While funding for school facilities is debated and the effects of school closures continue to plague neighborhoods and communities, Detroit students attend school in environments that are woefully unsupportive of learning. And it doesn’t go by unnoticed by Detroit students. 

This year we will make media that critically examines how school environment affects learning by:

• Exploring: How does the school environment serve us and not serve us?

  We will start by looking at how our schools are designed by auditing students’ schools to explore the design choices. Young people will examine the architecture itself, along with the lighting, color and more. We’ll also research the interaction between design and accessibility.

• Researching: Determine a research question and dive in. 

  Once we have audited the space context, we will choose one aspect that we want to focus on and address. This phase includes research activities such as speaking to subject matter experts and looking at how other people innovate in our interest area.

• Making: Collaborative, student-centered media making

  Once we’ve learned about the environment and design, we’ll start dreaming and designing solutions to address issues we found in the learning phase. Young people will design the way they want their school environment to look and feel.

What we’re looking for in a partner* 

Educators, youth learning spaces and organizations who:

• Work with young people on art, technology, health, environment, school culture and/or issues in social justice.

• Can work with a consistent group of students over the course of the four-month program (January-April).

• Are open to a collaborative creating process between themselves, their students and PIE artists-in-residence.

* We are only seeking partners who are educators and/or representatives in youth learning spaces and organizations. We are not hiring teaching artists; Cyrah Dardas will be the sole artist-in-residence this year.

apply to become an AIR partner

If you’re interested in becoming an AIR partner, complete this form by Monday, November 4, 2019 to tell us more about yourself and your work. The form will take about ten minutes to fill, and we’ll follow up later in November with more details.

Moving at the Speed of Trust: Reflections on the Rida 2019 Intensive

Photos by J. Lindsey Photography

This summer we gathered with 13 educators from Southeast Michigan, New York and Nebraska to create a transformative space in which to cultivate more humane classrooms and practices.

Now in our sixth year, our intention to model the design of humanizing learning spaces remains paramount, and we’ve seen how this modelling has transformed the Rida space itself. Interwoven into this year’s summer intensive were two of our most valuable lessons so far. For one, we recognized that Rida has become more than professional development. And secondly, we prioritized the access needs of every human present. 

Access Needs

“An access need is something a person needs to communicate, learn and take part in an activity. Many people have access needs.”

New this year was the daily practice of checking in on what folks need to be present in the space. Examples were, “I often don’t hear well, so I may ask people to speak up,'' or “I have a sick kid and might need to step out to take a call.” And those who felt like their needs are met could say so. 

This concept came to us from the work of disability justice organizers during the Allied Media Conference Facilitation Network Gathering, and it was refined by the Generative Somatics Leadership training. 

- Pacific Alliance on Disability Self-Advocacy project

The practice of asking if people had what they needed invited a complex layer of humanity that was felt each day. What could be more humanizing than acknowledging that we have needs, bodies and lives that exist regardless of the present moment, while simultaneously interacting with the present moment?

This invitation brought malleability to our daily activities, so we could better align them with the group’s needs. On day three of this practice, Nate Mullen, Rida’s lead facilitator, also requested “support in holding space.” He reflected on this moment: 

“A combination of all the energy of facilitating and my daughter not sleeping the prior night had left me a bit tender and I was moving slowly. In all my years of teaching and facilitating, I have never been able to be so upfront and clear about where I am and what support I need to facilitate. Instead, here I was able to … dispel the myth that a good teacher is a superhuman teacher who is always at 100%. I could model that my vulnerability is actually one of the most powerful places to lead from and can make room for the leadership of the whole group.”

As we’d hoped, introducing access needs into the intensive also shifted how some participants thought about how they show up as teachers. One participant, Avery Shelton, talked about centering the needs of both her students and herself:

In early childhood education, we are constantly thinking about how to meet the needs our our students… It is so easy to forget that adults have needs too. When the access needs of educators are given attention, we can feel recognized and seen as humans.

We are deeply excited to bring such a resonant practice to Rida, where educators can return over and over again for new approaches to humanizing their learning spaces. 

A PLACE TO GATHER

“This isn’t professional development. It’s a journey.”

— Nate Mullen, Lead Faciliator

This realization from the 2019 intensive is perhaps one of the most profound: The Rida Institute has grown into a homecoming, a recurring gathering place for like minded people in education. We’ve known for years that this is more than professional development, but what we didn’t know is that its becoming more than a training. It's like a pilgrimage for our collective work of humanizing schooling.

We’ve returned to the Rida every summer for the last five years and that pattern has created an energy, an atmosphere and a community. This year we tapped into that energy by hosting a reunion dinner during the intensive to gather Rida participants past and present. We also invited alumni to a panel on day three to share their lessons from integrating Rida principals into their teaching practice and wider world. 

Photos by Mari Visualz

The dinner and panel showed us that this work is integrated into the lives of educators and the students who have touched it. And when they need a refresher, educators know they can always return to their purpose in the Rida space. During the panel, Rida alumna Bushra Rahman spoke about her difficulty counteracting the dehumanizing culture at school and how that informed her experience joining the Rida for a second year.

My first year of teaching [was] everything between nice and ugly… After this Rida experience I will be able to hold myself accountable to ensure that I myself will actively attempt not to dehumanize myself, my students, and our environments.

And her fellow panelist, Kiarra Ambrose, shared how lessons from Rida in years past inform her teaching practices today:

I adjust my teaching to see who the students are and how they are when they enter the classroom.

What a perfect parallel to what the Rida 2019 intensive became: an accessible space for Ridas old and new to show up as they are, creative, reflective and transformed. 

Photos by J. Lindsey Photography

For more from the 2019 Rida Intensive, check out our photo album with moments captured by Julianne Lindsey and Marisol Sanchez. And see some fun and delicious #Rida2019 moments in action on our Instagram story.