Letter From The President
Dear All,
Spring is in the air! There’s something refreshing and invigorating about the sounds of spring – tinkling creeks and trilling birds. I’ve been woken the last few mornings by a pair of geese honking in our garden pond. It’s a wonderful time of year.
Not that we’ve been resting on our laurels through the depths of winter. I was thrilled to join Dr. Diana Woolis in Amman, Jordan for the No Lost Generation Education Technology summit. We then went on to Atlanta for CIES 2017, one of the largest global conferences focusing on education, at which we were promoting the Center for Learning in Practice and the concept of sustainable learning. We intend to improve professional learning and knowledge sharing across multiple sectors but with a particular focus on teachers. The world will need 70 million new teachers by 2030, but research shows that up to 80% of professional learning fails. Students, and therefore their learning needs, are increasingly diverse and specialized. However, teachers are under-prepared to address their specific needs. At the Center for Learning in Practice we will support teachers with a competency-based structure that builds a professional community and generates data informed “best practices”. With 1 in 200 children globally a refugee and 1 in 5 students in the U.S. a newcomer, we will initially focus on teachers of refugees. We will also address the specific needs for teachers focusing on early childhood and apply the same model for teachers of children with learning difficulties. It’s a pressing challenge both locally and globally but a challenge which we think the Carey Institute is uniquely placed to address.
Speaking of local and global challenges, we were delighted to welcome Jonathan Logan back to the Carey Institute in April. Jon’s foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, is the major sponsor of our Logan Nonfiction Program, and Jon himself is passionate in his support of nonfiction and investigative reporting. Jon spent his time meeting our nonfiction fellows whose work focusing on the most pressing global issues of our time, is necessary to the functioning of democratic society. Our current crop of fellows work spans from the U.S. to New Zealand, via Catalonia, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan and India. You can find full details of all our fellows and their work here. Our team will be joining Jon in Berkeley for the 11th Annual Reva and David Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting, where we will be hosting an event exploring Truth, Cost and Consequences of Nonprofit Investigative Reporting.
Our Sustainable Communities program recently launched SourceNY, an innovative on-line supply chain mapping solution. Initially focusing on New York state’s craft beverage market, we intend to replicate this pilot across other sectors and geographies, in order to support sustainable, environmentally friendly economies around the world.
So, from improving professional learning to supporting democratic governance through deeply-reported nonfiction and creating sustainable supply chains, we continue our commitment to a strong, educated and just society.
Now, time to get my snow tires removed!
Gareth