Key Quotes:

“Democracy is a complicated concept, and IDEA is not about a kind of simple notion of democracy equaling only that everyone will sit around and vote about how to spend their time.” (5:38)

“The world is a complicated place that adults have to help young people make sense of. Education is about negotiating what is real freedom; what are structures that create freedom and serve us well?” (7:28)

“The lack of engagement of young people is a clear warning sign. We shouldn’t talk about the dropout rate, we should talk about the 'failure to engage-rate.' (12:53)

“Engagement is the beginning place because it’s about relationship, it’s about context, it’s about paying attention to one another and everything else kind of stems from that place.” (13:29)

“Learning and democratic education has to in itself be a human endeavor. There is a place for healthy adult authority and different cultural learnings.” (15:38)

On Teachers:

“Teachers are these deep, wise, amazing people. But we don’t allow them into that space very often. They would like nothing more than to be released -- to able to bring that wisdom into classrooms and into communities to engage more deeply.” (18:22)

“We are asking so much of teachers. We desperately need teachers to stand up -- inside of teacher’s unions and outside of it -- to say what powerful learning can look like, to find it within themselves to become learners again, to change the methods of how we are teaching, and to demand that school leadership and school policies change in directions that support them.” (30:42)

“I know of no powerful teacher who in and of themselves is not also a powerful learner." (29:40)

On Education and the Community:

“Just for the first hour of every day, have an advisory period where students get to talk about what is happening in their neighborhood, what’s their life like, what are their dreams, what are the resources of the city and how they might use them.” (21:21)

“If we’re going to engage broadly in community we have to not get 'kind of quick checklists', we have to have the tools in our belt, but we have to constantly be looking at the actual context and the actual people in the room, otherwise the technique begins to operate on the community.” (24:20)

“You can learn to read and write while making a tangible difference in your world and community.” (26:42)

On the Work of IDEA:

“Spurring changes that are already emerging by building courage, capacity, and connection. That is the work of IDEA.” (46:39)

“We’re trying to shine a spotlight on the places where powerful things are happening already.” (47:00)

“There is not a gathering place in which people are very potently organized to think about how to change state or local policy.” (49:07)

“We have a lot more we could accomplish and that we’re ready to do as an organization than we can do, but we’re careful about not over-promising on things we can’t deliver on.” (59:43)

More on Communities:

“Communities are tired. We had a young African American woman tell us at a conference this summer, 'You don’t have to convince communities to care; you have to convince them to care again.' Communities are exhausted. There are so many nonprofits, so many programs, so many people coming to their door (I imagine that’s true for lots of teachers and other folks) people want to know who are you going to be, are you real, or are you just another nonprofit that sounds good that’s got good words but is actually gonna leave us hangin’ when the money changes.” (1:06:42)