At this week's Round Table, guest podcaster Vanessa, Inica, Kenisha, and Madeline spoke with renaissance womanCharli Kemp, founder ofChange The Tuneand doctoral candidate in education leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Charlie has tapped into EVERY kind of schooling over the course of her own education and professional career, which enables her to state with confidence that our systems are perfectly designed for the outcomes they create—and they’re designed to fail. Students spend 80% of their lives OUTSIDE of school. By the time they reach 6th grade, this results in affluent kids having 6000 extra hours—or four extra years--of learning. It’s not about creating better schools--even utopian schools can’t touch that opportunity gap and, resultantly, the wealth gap. Change the Tune aims to, well, change that tune by leveraging universal connectors--things like music, food, and sports--through programming like “Just Us” Time, Holistically Dope, and Possibility Panels--to reimagine the extended learning experience for youth in a way that creates mastery and memories, which is where true learning happens. For her, education isn’t about equality or equity--it’s about liberation. Charli believes music is “the universal language of the soul,” a way to say “I see you,” and a panacea for societal problems--and she did a pretty great job convincing us of this throughout the episode. Thank you for listening!
