Elliot Washor's TGIF 09.12.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

It’s so easy to make most things disappear” – Mark Mitton –

Coming from a magician by trade with skills and knowledge in so many other fields, this sentence from Mark hit me hard last week. A magician is in the business of making things disappear and that includes more than just cards from a deck. It also gives you a perspective on how things can so easily disappear like ideas, stories, facts, people... In the art and science of magic it is not so much that things physically disappear, it is that magicians mentally make things disappear. As Randy Newman wrote in the song Louisiana 1927: “They try to wash us away,” in more ways than one. ‘Nuff said.

I had a great week of meetings in NYC thanks to Daniel Oscar. I’m glad Andrew had time to make most of them with us and Casey who made it to the one with the Robin Hood Foundation. In a nutshell, here’s the list:

We had meeting with President of the College of Staten Island Timothy Lynch, the Director of Admissions Emmanuel Esperance Jr and Dean of the Education Department Burnett Joiner. Also joining and organizing these meetings was a historian of the college and of Staten Island Ken Gold. These meetings are leading to talks about the IBPLC used as a way for students to be admitted from Staten Island Technical High School, a school interested in becoming a BPL school and the use of ImBlaze in this process to manage internships that transition from high school to college for credit and work study. Casey will pick this one up from here. Great news that Sadé lives on Staten Island. We’ll see where it all goes.

Dan Porter – Internet Entrepreneur and among other ventures the CEO of Overtime Elite in Atlanta that has a charter connected to this very unusual pathway for students who want to have a career playing professional basketball. At least for me, it was an eye-opening talk about how BPL design and specifically the IBPLC can possibly play a role in the school and in college admissions process with NCAA rules.

Wendy Kopp – founder of Teach for America, Teach for All and through Teach for All launching the Global Institute for Shaping a Better Future. It was a really great dinner 30 years in the making and that said, there is synergy around what they are doing internationally with our work. Next meetings are being scheduled.

Richard Barth runs Robertson Foundation. He was really helpful around both the Impact Campaign and thinking through college admissions and the IBPLC.

Chris Caruso runs the education division of the Robin Hood Foundation. We already know Chris but this conversation with him and some of his team was about the IBPLC and crossed over a bit into B-Unbound because of their work in the 17–24-year-old space. Both Casey and Andrew were at this one with us.

Evan Trout from Siegel Endowment. Evan was supportive of BPL overall and in this conversation, we talked about Daniel Oscar’s role with us as a partner with Realign Education supporting us in getting the IBPLC recognized by college admissions offices not just as a one-off acceptance to college but also systemically.

A few NYC moments

As Daniel and I drove from our meetings from the College of Staten Island to our meeting in Brooklyn with Dan Porter, we had enough time to drive through the neighborhood I grew up in and coincidentally where he lived not too long ago a few blocks away on Maple Ave. On the drive I was reminded that during the last Leadership Journeys when I mentioned where I lived at 125 Hawthorne, a conference participant came up to me and said, “I live at 125 Hawthorne now.” I said, “What apartment?” He said, “1H.” I was shocked that it was the same apartment I grew up in and lived into my early 20’s. Crazy stuff. On this trip when we went over to where Daniel lived on Maple just two houses away was where one of my best friends from childhood lived. If you are curious who he is and what he is famous for there’s a preview from a NY Times magazine article, The Talented Mr. Lerner. Jimmy wrote the book, You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From A Prison Fish. It just reminded me, as if I could ever forget, where I grew up. The street giveth and the street also taketh away. – Cat Mother

The next day, I went to see the BPL staff assembled at 25 Broadway for their meetings in Lower Manhattan. This was a building that I started going to from the time I was 8 years-old when my Aunt would take me to the offices of Chadbourne, Parke, Whiteside and Wolf. She was secretary at this prestigious law firm. There I watched the large ocean liners come into New York Harbor. Years later, I had my first job away from my dad’s store at 15 as a messenger at this office on the 14^th floor. To my surprise when I got to our meeting, it was on the exact floor where the law office was. How all of these connections happen from long ago in a city this size pretty much all at once, I’ll never understand.

 Today, I was at The Met where it was one of those wonderful ends of summer days. The place looked amazing and my talks with Joe Battaglia and the work he’s doing with PD for beginning advisor/teachers prompted me to put him in touch with Wendy Kopp to discuss what he’s doing. Joe was in the first official cohort of Teach for America. Also, I met with Andrew Coburn about BPLiving. Both Joe and Andrew told me this year, BPliving has taken off. It is now part of the Learning Plan of every student and both students and staff are really embracing it.

Next week, I will travel to Winnipeg with Taylor for our first of three trips this year working with 10 schools on school culture, advisory, internships and the IBPLC.

Be well and Plenty, plenty, bye, bye