Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder  El on the building intercom to Ayinde: “Buzz me in 4D. This is 1H at 125 Hawthorne St, Brooklyn, NY, let me in the building.”   Sometimes you meet someone in the strangest ways. I met Ayinde Bennett, Senior Director of Education Partnerships for CareerWise, right after I gave my  Leadership Journeys  talk. In my story, I mentioned 125 Hawthorne Street, where I lived from the time I came home from the hospital until I was 24. As it turns out,

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder It was a very busy week on the California and San Diego homefronts. On Tuesday, Andrea, Anthonette and I visited Lincoln High School to meet with Melissa Agudelo and Rachel Angeles added another exciting dimension to our California Secondary School Redesign (CSSR) work. For BPL and possibly for many other networks, this is the first time we’ve had a principal from one of our small schools move to a large comprehensive high school, and, using a

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder   This week almost all of the grantees for the California Secondary School Redesign work met over Zoom. After introductions it became clear to me that most of the organizations and districts in the room have been doing the work of school redesign with very little if any long-term systemic change. This took me back to last week’s piece on the NBA draft lottery and how no one can fix it even with everyone understanding that it needs fixing. As j