Dr. Remy Washington, EdD in Education | President at Uplift Education

In this episode, we discuss how Remy discovered her love of teaching and what inspired her to pursue a doctorate in education, the different ways the approaches she learned and the network she formed during her doctoral training show up in her work today as the President at Uplift Education, and her take on the importance of being adaptive and willing to try new solutions when facing challenges.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

To connect with Remy and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi. I'm co-host Lois Dankwa and this is the 100 Alumni Voices Podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Remy Washington, EdD in education and current president of uplift education. Hi Remy.

Remy Washington

Hi, Lois.

Lois Dankwa

How are you today?

Remy Washington

I'm doing fantastic. It's a wonderful day.

Lois Dankwa

Well, I'm I'm glad you're here. I'm excited to dive in and I want to start by hearing a little bit about what made you want to pursue an EdD in education and just more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Remy Washington

For sure. So, I have always been a person who loves to learn. And I fell in love with education pretty early once I was like literally in high school. I love tutoring students and I always wonder like, why can't people? Why can't I get kids other kids to understand chemistry as well as I do? And so, I began became a math and science tutor pretty early. And in my early 20s, I asked myself like, what's the one thing that I love doing? And I was like teaching other people. So, I became a teacher, and so I became a math teacher. High school math teacher. And so, as I like, progressed and learn more and more about, like, the the science and the art of teaching, I just became more intrigued about, like what kind of research is out there in order to like help me one, be a better practitioner, but two, how do we build better schools for people? So, as I transitioned into administration, I often saw people with doctoral degrees. I'm like, oh, well, that seems really cool. They must know a lot of stuff. And I want to know a lot of stuff so that I can be an effective leader. And so, I, you know, talked to a lot of people who had pursued their doctorate degrees. And I was like, now that sounds like something that I'd be interested in in terms of just pushing my practice forward and I found myself here in Dallas, TX. I'm originally from Chicago and I taught in Chicago, but here in Dallas I got a chance to lead in a charter school network. And coming from a traditional ISD that's different. So, it's kind of a different setting and we had a huge teacher retention problem at the time. That was new for me because I had gone to a school where I literally my my teachers were soon became my actual colleagues, and I it looks like taught for 30, sometimes 40 years. And so, with these teachers, when I got here and my new contacts in Dallas leave after one or two years, that was new and so I just became really curious about, you know, what's happening and why that's the case. And once I've decided like, OK, well, maybe I want to further study and look into this. Why don't I formally do that? I feel like Johns Hopkins provided the opportunity in their EdD program at the time for you to pursue a problem of practice in your current context. So, it was kind of like a a perfect storm of some sort in terms of what I was struggling with professionally and then having the opportunity through the EdD program to get a better understanding and study it and actually, you know, launch an intervention in my own practice. And so that's that's how my that's how my normal education loving education wanna learn more self came into like a really neat opportunity to learn more about how we are able to retain great teachers.

Lois Dankwa

That's really cool. So, I I I'm always someone that has multiple questions. So, I do have one question, but I have a precursor to that question. I do not know what an ISD is. So, you mentioned charter school and then you said ISD before that.

Remy Washington

Yeah, no problem. I didn't know what a ISD was before I came to Texas. Traditional, like Independent School district. And so, a traditional public school is what an ISD is.

Lois Dankwa

I maybe I'll start using that acronym and then I can share that learning with everyone else. Then, so I'm curious. Well, it's it's interesting to hear kind of what brought you to pursuing a doctorate because you mentioned how it was being in the working space that you were in you just noticed that you had a natural curiosity for it, and I guess it was talking to it seems like the role of the people around you helped influence that it made sense for you to not just ask questions in that space and grow and learn there, but rather also study it. And I'm curious what, like kind of skills and things did you learn while pursuing your doctorate have influenced how you kind of exist professionally now?

Remy Washington

You know, honestly, I am surprised like many days of the week of how much I feel like I've taken away, I took away from the experience. I don't think it was immediate. Like I recognize like how this is like showing up how what I'm learning is showing up in practice like outside of just learning best practices, things that have been like research time over time to implement those things. So, like I think the habit of what does the research say to help guide and shape actions. I think that is like something that I picked up just from pretty easily from my first like few courses at Hopkins. But it's actually just the way I go about strategically thinking about the work. You know, just the idea of doing, like the needs assessment. Like in the very beginning parts, early parts of the dissertation process like you get to actually go and investigate and learn from so many people that like what you're actually studying. I've taken that with me in my practice into like, making sure we have like shared ownership of decision making here in our organization. So, I don't think probably since my Hopkins time, I've pursued a new initiative, a new idea without getting more stakeholder input and or really making sure like we've truly defined what our problem is like just looking at root causes. I think the next part like when you think about strategic planning so in my role, I oversee all of our schools, our roads to college and career team. So, I support our students going off to college and career and our alumni, and also, our internal curriculum instruction assessment. There's just a lot of moving pieces that I have to manage and also make sure that there's synergy between those parts of the organization and in supporting those teams, I just found that one of the most important things was the team to do their own research around what's what's the challenge you have in front of you? What does research say in terms of how you should approach the challenge? And like what what have we seen in, in, in best practice or what have we seen in actual practice? So, getting us out of the habit of like being in our own like silo around like, oh, we tried that. Let's try this again. It also forces us to actually just call some of our other Charter peers or public-school peers to see like, what are you doing? You're having more success with this. I think that was I I think I could learn to rely on that type of problem solving to engage with my peers in the Hopkins program, you know in different coursework to think about like what you know how to make sense of, you know, challenges that we were tackling either together or you know through the coursework just to have like, you know, one a good discussion post, you know at the time, but two just the opportunity to further you know develop our own studies, you know for our dissertation. Also, just like I made like some really good partnerships and networking opportunities with current Hopkins professors and with some of my peers that were in the program. And so, I think there's just this, like I've learned to be much more dependent on a network of experts in a way that I think that had I not gone to Hopkins I probably would exist in more of my smaller bubble, and now you know the program was like people were from literally around the world in the program. And so, it's pretty neat that there are challenges that you know that come up that I'm like, oh, I actually know a person who studied that or a person who works in that field, and they're like my first they’re at least my first phone call if they're not the solution to my challenge or problem. And so, I think like those like you know how to strategically like, go about doing the work, how to make sure you're investing and talking with stakeholders and just like how to leverage your network, I would say are things that regularly in my in my life, in my professional life, I've taken away from my JHU experience.

Lois Dankwa

I love that. I love that you mentioned the role of kind of just learning from those around you and just collaboration and teamwork because it can be so easy to become—self-reliance is good, but it can be easy to become overly self-reliant in a way where you're not asking for help when in fact you might need it.

Remy Washington

Yeah, absolutely.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I love that you mentioned kind of that you one of the skills that you kind of gained from being in the doctorate program was strategic thinking and how that's carried into kind of stakeholder relationships and having it be kind of working together with the community and your the space that you're in to develop initiatives and stuff. And I, so I do healthcare, health systems type work. So, I understand what the stakeholders are in that space, but not so much in the education space. So, I'm curious kind of when you talk about kind of stakeholders and shared decisions and stuff, who are you talking about?

Remy Washington

Yeah, so one like our leaders of schools are like, truthfully, like, you know, without them, like none of this work happens. And so, a lot of things I can want to happen at the school campus level, but without our leaders, nothing would happen. And so, I think they're like one of our our leaders and our teachers are probably like our 1st and 2nd internal stakeholders that you know, I'm consistently having conversations with, meeting with having focus groups with. Our parents and our students, right? And so like, you know what, someone would call our customer. They are, I would say like our our students are like internal but like they are like our they're a group where we are doing a much better job in the last two years for two to three years for sure of assessing the needs and engaging them in like what what feels right or what you know what they would want from us as a network. We have got the community in which our school sit in. We have 45 schools, so we got a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of communities that are, you know that we serve and so it's really working with community partners to ensure that, you know, they might have programming that works for our students. We might have programming that we need to take outside of our school buildings and share with the Community, and I would say like lastly like just external partners. There are a lot of third-party partners that help schools, that definitely help our network. Different foundations and funders, our board who you know, support us in getting all the work done that we have to get done. So, I would say like those are probably like the chief stakeholders that are probably engaged with on a very regular basis.

Lois Dankwa

OK. That's helpful to hear and it's helpful to. It's helpful to kind of have an outlined version of who's kind of involved in the different conversations that you're having. It also makes me curious then, and I mean, I guess this is true for a lot of different sectors and fields, but with so many different people involved, how do you manage then kind of figuring out what your role is and being impactful in that space?

Remy Washington

So yeah, sometimes it's it's interesting, right? Like, I think in the years following the pandemic where there weren't a lot of solutions and there were a lot of challenges, you know, for many of us in all sectors, it was actually a time where we, you know, had to go more into looking at what are our stakeholders needs and expectations. And we need to get clarity on that because you know traditionally and traditional education is like all about the outcomes and numbers is what we've come into in the last like 20-30 thirty years in education, but I think in the last several years it's like, well, there's way more to school than a student’s, you know ability, learning how to read, their literacy score. And so, for us, it was really learning like how are you? What do you need in order for your students to fully engage? You know, students came back post pandemic, you know, with a lot of, you know challenges with regards to trauma and dysregulation. So, there was like a lot of assessing of what needs were very early on as we've come back. I think that as we've like you know, gotten used to it made some shifts in terms of like how we can be better support to our school community be it our teachers, our leaders, our kids, our families. I think we've just learned that it's a competitive school choice marketplace here in North Texas. And so, we actually have to know like you know, teacher vacancy problem challenge is real. And so, how do you attract more talent? How do you retain more of your students? And so that becomes you thinking about your value proposition for your communities and and making sure you are meeting the needs of all of the stakeholders. And so, I think there's just been a we used to be what I feel like in education before, it's like, hey, here's like the beautiful story I am going to pitch to families and kids that we're going to be able to give you. Come along this journey with me. You know, I think that was, like, very inspirational. Though, which is great, I think you've got to be both inspirational and making sure you're addressing needs and wants of your school community now more than ever. And so, I think that that is, you know, when I talk about how and what I engage them on is typically around one, are we meeting your needs and expectations. Are there more, you know, things that we need to design programming around to help you go on this journey? You know, as opposed to I've got this all figured out. Now it's I have I can figure things out, but I need way more input for you to make sure that I am providing you with, you know, the education that you want for your students. So, I think it's, you know it's it's may sound a little nuanced, but I think that it is a much different approach to you know leading schools at this time.

Lois Dankwa

Right. That certainly makes sense and it it's it requires a bit of humility to both be responsive, but also creative in the types of solutions you're envisioning and crafting. I'm curious then, since you're in a role where you're responding to both individual and community nuanced needs kind of what are things that you've learned about when you kind of are on a path addressing a need, and then you're forced to pivot because it's revealed to you that the need is not quite what you thought, it's something different?

Remy Washington

Yeah, so interesting. I could give you a clear-cut example. When we started this school year, you know, there were just many things that last year just got in the way. I feel like things got in the way of us being successful, and so I told the staff, hey in my inspirational speech, we got to think about it's kind of like launching a rocket, right? You can build a better rocket or you can remove friction, right? And I was like, we're going to remove frictions. Let's think about all those things that like, were nagging us in our work last year. And let's think about how we build contingencies around those. It's like, yes, like that is the way we're going. But Fast forward to after the first semester, I'm like oh, those that's not friction. That's our reality. Like those are new factors that are going to be with us like such as, again, teacher vacancies, right, that, that, that is that is now an ongoing challenge and will probably be for several years now. And or student attendance. Like yes, we have not had multiple waves of delta and gamma of of COVID, but students are still attending school as if we do and so like that's those are things we now have to be much more. We need to adapt, right? And so, I think what I shared with the staff is like now this is about how do we become more adaptive and how do we build more connections? Like those are that's kind of where I want to spend the energy. And the one thing that I would say is that what I didn't realize is that part of adaptation is being willing to fail and that is the failure, is a really weird word in education. That is something that many educators are not very comfortable with. But I think that in order for us to really think about how we actually change our education system, we have to be willing to try new things and learn from the the things that didn’t work out so well or continue to iterate until we get a better version of what fits, you know what works best for for our schools and our kids. So, I would say that that is like where we are in our current journey is more about and making those pivots. It's our willing to our willingness to like say hey, we're actually just going to try this right? We all the arrows are pointing to us doing this, we've got infrastructure, we put energy behind it, let's do it, let's see how it goes. Let's take the win from it you know, and what needs to be adjusted and continuing to figure out how to make progress. I think it’s this continuous improvement cycle is where I think we've gotten to get more comfortable with and I think that is what I've personally been messaging to our leaders and our teachers is around is this is just an opportunity to adapt and when you adapt, sometimes it's going to like go really well, and sometimes it's not, and we just have to be open to that and that's just, I think that's just a shift in mindset that I think you know our team is having to currently go through.

Lois Dankwa

I love that that's something that you guys are focusing on so specifically, because something like adaptability has a lot of applicability in a lot of different spaces, whether it's the doctorate experience where you're literally just doing trial and error of figuring out what your project will be or what your idea might be or even applying for jobs or thinking about what your next step is. It's it requires a lot of just trying and seeing what will happen, but then also just learning from those moments.

Remy Washington

Yeah, I think that like, it's so interesting. So that I remember the first time I submitted my draft, my first chapter, my first two chapters to my advisor of my dissertation, and we we met in person during our residency. So, we were in person, so it wasn't like a virtual call or a phone call and and he printed it out and on every single page—I still have it—on every single page there was something handwritten in an edit or change, even on pages that didn't even have a back he had written things on there, and I remember being like either I am the worst writer that's ever walked the face of the earth, or this is going to be a really, really long journey, but I would not take back like I keep it for a reason. I keep that paper for a reason because that feedback that this continuous like not quite nailing it, making having to make adjustments. It was like the best learning experience I've ever had in my life. And I think that we often shy away from it. Of course, our brains, our brains doesn't does not like critique. That's not natural for our brains to take that. But it is something that feedback is what helps make us better in our practice. And this this continuous like improvement is like actually how we make progress and so like that is like a personal thing with me that like I personally take. But, I think right now you going back to one of your first questions like it's obviously something in my pride that's carried over in my practice that I'm not afraid to keep trying at it until we we get to a solution that works for for our kids.

Lois Dankwa

That's I'm so glad that you mentioned that while critique is uncomfortable, it's something that is both important and can be constructive. And I'm curious what type of advice you might have for someone who is either in their doctorate program or post doc and they struggle with criticism, but they recognize it's necessary. Like, do you have any advice for those people?

Remy Washington

Yeah, I think that like and I think you you learn this in your journey. There are sometimes where if someone nails it like they say, the thing that you're like, yes, that is you are right. I was not thinking that. I'm so glad you added to that or they give you a critique of your practice and it is like it feels personal and it's like, I'm not sure if I even agree with that. But I'm going to accept it. And I think it's the one my advice is just take the feedback. It's your choice to do something with it. And sometimes you can do something with it pretty quickly. You know you're able to turn around because it was resonant and it it hit the right spot or the thing you needed to adjust. And sometimes you just need to sit with it for a while. And sit with it could be one day. Sit with it could be two years, but at some point, right you either are going to take an active on the feedback or you're you're not. But that's like your choice to be able to do that, but more likely than that, like I feel like most feedback you get is going to be good feedback and like there's probably a small percentage where you just say thank you. And and and move on from it. I just think that at this at this point I think it's you don't quite know, right? Like I think you don't quite know where that feedback is going to lead you, and I think it's just staying open to, to to either embrace it immediately or you know, thinking about it a little bit longer until you're ready to embrace the feedback.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's uh, that's such good advice. It it also reminds me that there's agency in receiving criticism. Like it's information that was given to us, but then we can decide what direction we go with it. And that's it can feel so easy to be like the victim of any type of criticism you get where, then you ruminate and overthink, and and now you're sad because you're horrible at something, but really, you're in charge of that situation, and that's such a good reminder. So, I have one more question for you today, Remy, and I am curious what inspires you right now?

Remy Washington

What inspires me right now, honestly, are teachers who have taught through the pandemic. And I think teaching is one of the like. Teaching was one of the best jobs I've ever had and also the hardest job I've ever had. And so, I can only empathize with kind of the challenges that teachers had to face so quickly having to go to remote and learn how to do that, and then quickly coming back to learning in person with and without wearing masks and just navigating, you know, students who just need more intentional support to accelerate their learning. And so, like, what inspires me is when I go, I get the privilege of going into classrooms and going. I can go into classroom every day if I really wanted to, but when I go in, you know, I go in a couple times a week. I just get so inspired by teachers like giving it their all like you know, you know that they put their heart and soul into the lesson and seeing the kids like get super excited or like nail it. Like I could probably work for two weeks straight, like on that energy from just seeing like how much time, how much time and love and care that they put into teaching their students. And so, I would say like, that has been truly inspirational because I think it just says like to all the rest of us like who don't get to do that, like they're willing to do it at all cost. And they put in tons of time and sacrifice and doing it with such such grace and you know, it's it's about the kids. Like they truly are. They truly are doing the work because of kids. And so, I think that's that's what's like giving me, like, the energy to want to keep going but too, like tons of inspiration for me to keep working really hard on behalf of our kids and families here at Uplift.

Lois Dankwa

I love that. It's right, just witnessing people sacrifice their their own comfort sometimes just for the betterment of others. That's I agree with you. That's amazing. Well, Remy, it's been so wonderful to just hear a little bit about your perspective. Some of your experiences and yeah, just learn from you today.

Remy Washington

Awesome, Lois. This was awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time.