Elliot Washor's TGIF 09.11.2026
Are you with me now? AJ Ryder
Sankofa Days
Sankofa Days are a time for BPL community to reach back to the wisdom, history, and lessons of the past to guide our progress in the present and future. For me, this was done both on Zoom and by being at The Met during those two days. Both had their charm and benefits but for me always being in the place where it all started has deep personal meaning. There was so much to take in.
It is always great to come back to The Met during the first few weeks of school. I’ve made it a habit of doing this every year since I left the Met. Almost thirty years later, the trees we selected now have canopies that shade the walkways of the school and the mood and tone reflect the outside when you go inside as well.
As soon as I got there I was greeted by Alex Rivera, one of our former students who keeps the place safe. If you had only known Alex when he was 15 and angry, you’d find it hard to believe he would grow into one of the most jovial adults you’ll ever meet. Then, a minute or so later Nancy Diaz and Brian Mills—both starting with us in their early twenties and now our Superintendent and Director of Operations, respectively—ran over with a former student Max McGuigan who just dropped by and recently moved from Colorado.
I remembered Max, his brother and his mom and dad. Back then, Max was a graffiti artist and a skateboarder getting in and out of trouble. Today, he owns a company called Golfiti where he combined two- of his passions golf and grafiti. Golfiti is a golf gear and clothing brand that blends elements of both golf and graffiti. It turns out there is a market out there for original gear and clothing for more and more counter-culture people entering the world of golf who want equipment and swag that resembles who they are. I’m meeting with Max on Monday to learn more about the company.
Later in the day at another chance encounter, I met Max’s advisor Nate Bono. Nate was just at Max’s wedding in Kingston, Jamaica. Max’s wife is from Kingston and is a veterinarian who wants to bring more veterinary care to Jamaica. I already spoke with Simone about making all these Jamaican connections during our time at Sankofa Days online.
The Met was in great shape. Nancy and Company are ready for new ways of working. With union contracts recently worked out and the aftermath of COVID subsiding, they are thinking about how to use ImBlaze, get to writing for a Magnet School grant and I’m working with them on further developing their connections to Electric Boat. That’s looking back and looking ahead for me and The Met.
A few Musings
Jerome Groopman’s review of a new book by Alexandra Sifferlin – The Elusive Body Patients, Doctors and the Diagnosis Crisis made me think about our work how we work with students on the development of their interests.
In the case of doctors there are diseases and ailments that go undiagnosed and misdiagnosed. This book is about raising these issues and getting better at diagnosing. In this review, Dr. Groopman explains some of the reasons why doctors fail to figure out or misdiagnose someone because of their own reasoning. I think we should examine these for our work on supporting the development of student interest as well. Here are a few:
Anchoring – seizing on a first finding and ignoring other information
Availability – reasoning that is guided by what is most available in their mind. Think a flu epidemic and diagnosing everyone with flu who have flu-like smyptoms.
Attribution bias – the tedency to blame people rather than circumstances.
A part of the antidote to these is metacognition – thiniking about your thinking.
All of this takes the time to slow down. Hmm?
Another article that I came across that has loads of implications for our work is
Mathematician, Joan Birman thought her major discoveries on braiding and knots were behind her. “Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.” This story is amazing and has loads of nuggets about mentoring, the delicate balance of deep relationships developed over time, working on problems that no one knows the answer to, planned happenstance and so much more.
Here are a few pieces of the story:
“At 99, doing math “is what keeps her going,” Dr. Margalit thinks. It’s no different from when she was 92 and replied to Vasudha. “Most of mathematics is in our minds, not in textbooks,” he said. “It’s an art, and it gets passed down. It’s altruistic in a sense, but it’s also selfish in a sense, because we have these ideas and this tradition that we really want to pass down.”
“Dr. Breuillard had been leading an effort to solve the question with the help of an A.I. chatbot. That humans appear to have sorted it out first — and these three particular humans — “almost feels like a blessing,” he said.
Wow!
The strands of the braid come together
Dennis and I approached a set of problems about the skilled trades and college differently but we always knew that somewhere down the line our journeys would meet. The title of a recent grant we wrote is: Constructing Futures that Matter: Designing Pathways from Apprenticeships to College Degrees puts our perspectives on college and the skilled trades together. It took 20 years but we are there. I guess this is kind of a Sankofa moment.
Next week, I’ll be at the Met and then back to San Diego where our team is developing the work in California and San Diego with a two day meeting with Linked Learning.
Be Well!
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