CEO and Springboard Collaborative founder Alejandro Gibes de Gac sat down with outgoing President (and long-time friend and colleague) Aubrey White to talk through the past 10 years of working together at Springboard and how the education world has changed during that time. 

To show appreciation for Aubrey and her legacy, we decided to document their conversation below. Feel free to skip along to certain sections by clicking on the table of contents below, or feel free to read through the entire conversation.

Meeting Aubrey for the first time
Working for Springboard
How the education space has changed
How Springboard has changed
Aubrey’s 10-year evolution
Aubrey’s greatest contribution and favorite Springboard memory
What Aubrey will miss most
Aubrey’s Legacy
Words of wisdom for the team

 

Meeting Aubrey for the first time

Aubrey White (AW): You’re up, tell us about the first time we met, including what year it was.

Alejandro Gibes de Gac (AG): Oh gosh, this is like a quiz, I’m terrible with years… 

AW: It was 2012! 

AG: Great, May 2012. And this is –  you’ve heard that story before, everyone’s heard this story before, but I like telling it. …This is back when we were first partnering with Wissahickon. This is the summer after the pilot summer, which was with Pan-American. Wissahickon was among the four schools that, then Summer Learning Initiative, now Springboard, was growing to. And I was hiring for the position of Site Leader. She [Aubrey] applied for that, got the role, and I think, to date, you remain the only person, uncontested, within Springboard lore to have submitted letters of recommendation written by family members in your classroom community, talking about not only how incredible of a teacher you are but also kind of how they valued their partnership with you. 

And it bowled me over because not only like you’ve obviously got all your credentials, but seeing the way that you talked about families in your cover letter and seeing the way that families talked about you in your letters of recommendation, it was immediately apparent that this person gets it, this person sees the education world as I see it. And I don’t know that I’d ever met someone before outside of my immediate family that saw it the same way. I remember talking with my then board members … and I told them “I do not want to meet this candidate because it’s got to be good to be true. I want her to live as this perfect ideal, a vision realized of a teacher who partners with families to support student learning. I almost don’t even want to meet her. How can she be as incredible in real life as she appears to be on paper?” Then I met you, and sure enough, you lived up to the hype. It was obvious to me that I needed to hire you, but not for the role of Site Leader, for something bigger. Kind of made it up, instructional leader was the first title, right?

AW: That’s correct, yeah.

AG: Instructional leader. So that was kind of the job I built for you, but kind of knowing that would be the beginning of a partnership that would unfold over time. Of course, I couldn’t have imagined just where it would take us. That was the beginning of a beautiful, decade-long partnership that has always centered on what it started with: a shared vision for what our education system could look like when teachers and parents are teammates.

Working for Springboard

AW: I first learned of Springboard, of course, in the spring of 2012, as you just shared. And in the spring, as a teacher, I would feel like we had these flowers in full bloom, the children were really blossoming. And I was always a little bit worried that they would lose some petals, that we would have summer learning loss. And so that’s something that always is a mixture of so many emotions in the spring. Great joy and triumph to see the children reaching their potential and reaching the goal for the grade, I was teaching kindergarten at that time, and also then just some sadness that our time together ending, but always a little bit of worry and anxiety that this beautiful thing in front of me – the children’s learning – we might lose some of that. 

And when I learned about Springboard – I still remember, Alejandro, your video and your words like these are my kids and it took them until November. You were talking about how long it took for your students to catch back up to where they had been at the end of the year, and that was quite visceral for me because I was working with these children day by day and you could just see them growing and making these leaps and bounds, and I didn’t want them to have to wait until November to be where they were at that moment in April and May, of the spring. And so I honestly did it for those children. I still picture them in my mind. Because of the way that you were structuring it, I don’t know if you recall, but in 2012, you were looking for leadership because the sites were sponsored. They were fully sponsored, and you wanted to make sure that there were strong leaders who were participating. 

And I really wanted our school to get it, to get the Springboard sponsorship so that my students could participate, and that was really important to me. I wanted to do whatever I could to ensure that those students could be a part of it and that Springboard could be at my school. And so that was really what drew me to Springboard, and I think that’s a little bit of what you were saying you were sensing as well: one thing mattered and it was those kids and their reading growth and their families who had been working right alongside them the whole year. So that’s what drew me to Springboard right at the outset and then once I was in, I was blown away by how effective it was and how it really did center around community. 

The classrooms were small, we made good use of every minute of instructional time by making sure that children were in their learning zone, so we minimize frustration during the summer, and families were present, not just for the workshops but all the time. They were just around the site and really present and really a part of the work. And the children not only didn’t regress that summer but they moved forward. And once I saw that with children and families that I knew, assessment data that I reviewed personally, I knew it wasn’t inflated in any way, we audited all of that really carefully, I just was hooked, and I wanted to be a part of it for a longer time period.

How the education space has changed

AG: This next question, big picture. You’ve been at Springboard for a while; what’s your read on how education, broadly, has changed in the time that you’ve been here? What have you seen happening in schools and communities that has surprised you?

AW: Yeah, such a great question. I want to start with two things I think really haven’t changed. One thing is that I still think that schools struggled to create genuine community with families. I do think that’s true, and I think that Springboard does help meet a really important need with that. And another thing that I think really hasn’t changed much is that children are still not reaching grade-level standards for kindergarten through third grade, which is our sweet spot, and sadly that’s still true just nationally. The national data shows that. 

In terms of things that are changes, I have three huge ones, none of which are related to COVID. So obviously what I’m not going to speak about are the hybrid learning, the introduction of Chromebooks, the digitization, and the virtual nature of learning that’s happened in the past couple of years. But the things I do want to speak to are the science of reading. This is just a huge shift. All of the work that’s been done in the last decade, fMRI and all of the research – and not just the research, but the sharing of that learning, getting it out into teacher training, getting it out into the universities – has really created a huge shift. I see science-based reading instruction everywhere that I go now and I do have a much better understanding myself of when we were asking children, just to guess when they didn’t need to be guessing, when we could have taught them the code. And I was responsible for some of those too, some of our early curriculum. I was using some of those approaches which were very much in vogue a decade ago. And understandably so. And I think we’ve learned a lot and Springboard’s curriculum has grown and developed along with much of the reading instruction nationally. So that’s been really gratifying to see that shift and to ride the wave along with it.

A second thing that’s really changed is social-emotional learning. I think that schools are really paying much better attention to this. It’s not just an extra or something tacked on on the side, and Springboard as well. So we’ve started to really think about how even in our summer programs or our afterschool programs, what does it look like to incorporate all of the learning about social-emotional learning. 

Now the third change that I’ve seen in education, and this one is sad, it’s a little bit of a downer compared to those other two, which is just the teachers really are – they’re burnt out. And I’m seeing that more now than ever. I think COVID had a part to do with that, but also the profession has lagged in many ways. Teachers’ compensation has not moved forward in the same manner that many other professions have, and teachers are weary and they are tired and they definitely have a sense of feeling underappreciated in a way that I didn’t sense when we first were starting Springboard. There are a lot of teachers exiting the profession, a lot of teachers who, to take the extra step and do a Springboard program, it’s tipping the scale too much for them. They’re really being asked to do a lot in this moment of time. 

So those are my three big trends, the science of reading, social-emotional learning, and then the toll and the tax that this is all taking on educators.

AG: I think that’s all exactly right. And the first two – the science of reading and SEL – those are examples and movements, for lack of a better term, that we can learn a lot from so that in 10 years’ time, hopefully, we can say that the education sector has fundamentally shifted around how families and teachers work together to help kids reach reading goals. You name that is something that hasn’t changed, I think you’re right, but there’s something that we can learn from SEL and the science of reading to help it change over the next decade. 

AW: Yeah, yeah.

How Springboard has changed in the past 10 years

AG: I’m curious, you mentioned a bit of this in the way you talked about how Springboard has incorporated more of the science of reading in our curriculum: What else have you seen in terms of Springboard’s evolution over the last decade?

AW: Yeah, that’s such a terrific question. You know, when we were first doing this work in 2012, we were really walking families through a sitting with their child. So like before reading, during reading, after reading, very sequential. And I think that one thing that has shifted a little in our approach is that we are trying to bring families in a little more now to what Springboard calls the domains of reading and helping families see how all of those domains are present in the reading process. The children do need to figure out the words – I think it goes back to the science of reading, we’ve got those different domains – rather than breaking it apart in the way that we had initially. I think that’s one subtle shift. Although of course, we do walk families through a reading session with their child, that’s what we do in our family workshops.

…

Another big thing that we’ve done is that we’ve worked to make sure that all of this is modernized and accessible to both educators and families through technology. And so we’ve tried to update our platform that teachers are using, we’ve put all of our phonics lessons in a digital format. In the beginning of Springboard, teachers were doing word work by writing on the wall and now we have something they can project, or if they’re using Zoom, they can have that in their classroom. And then similarly we’ve really built out a much more robust family companion for families to use at home… But we’ve really tried to invest in making sure that families have those resources available to them in the palm of their hand, on their phone, and to do that in a way that incorporates family feedback.

Aubrey’s 10-year evolution

AG: How have you evolved over the last decade?

AW: Such a good question. I used to joke that I had a different job almost every year at Springboard. So I know that I’ve worked with you, Alejandro, for a decade and have been doing this work for a long time, but I’ve been doing so much different work. And I think that I’ve always been in my zone of learning as well. And so I think there are some things that I learned, like I mentioned earlier, I’ve learned a lot about the science of reading – I did that as part of my work here at Springboard. I’ve learned a lot from The Management Center, for instance, about what it means to have a success sheet or how one can effectively delegate or follow up on work, so I’ve learned a lot about being a manager. That was completely new to me; I was a classroom teacher, and I worked in partnership with other teachers, but I didn’t support any adult who reported to me, so that was a new learning for me. 

And then most recently I’ve been learning a lot about how strategy and big picture strategy flows into the day-to-day tactics, you know. Right at the beginning, we were on the ground level so much, just really in it day-to-day, that that was a learning that I think came a little later. More recently for me just thinking about like oh, what does it look like for an organization to plan long-term? And of course, there are all kinds of technical things that have gone along with that for me. 

And with all that, I think the thing that is most salient for me is I think what I’ve learned is that I still really delight in story, I delight in children, I delight in community. And that’s something to learn. I’ve tried on a lot of different kinds of work during this year, and I think it’s been good to know that after a decade, I still really care about that scholar you might encounter at a workshop, or that family. That still is what motivates me more than anything else.

AG: Super super interesting. What I would highlight from the things you mentioned is, in particular, you’ve gained all kinds of functional expertise because you’ve had so many different roles within the organization but also because you’ve delved deep into every corner of every department and you absorb that functional expertise like a sponge, like no one else to that I know. But beyond just the functional expertise is learning to manage and lead teams of people.  That’s something that you had an instinct for coming into Springboard, but I think you just turned that instinct into a mastery that’s been really gratifying to watch and to see. Some part of it – it’s not my skill set, but it is yours, and it’s been a powerful experience for me to behold.

AW: Yeah and I guess I’ll say along with that, as I’ve been thinking about departing, I just get stopped in my tracks, because I only do things in community, I only do things with teams. And so now I do have a little period here, a little sabbatical that I’m hoping to take for myself, where I’m going to be journeying in a little more solitude. I’m so unaccustomed to that, because just the brilliance is in the team and in the group of people. 

And I guess, you know we’re talking about things I’ve learned, I think another thing I have learned: I think I’ve gotten better at receiving feedback and soliciting it and, at the very least, I can now, with honesty, sense when I’m being defensive. So it’s like I’m not saying that every time I receive it really well, but I do think that’s something that I’ve learned. And it’s the gift of the job to be able to say, what’s the feedback, what’s the feedback inside that comment or in that remark, or all of that, like what can we learn from this. And that’s something that also is just very different, very, very different, than my classroom life was.

Aubrey’s greatest contribution and favorite Springboard memory

AG: Super super interesting, Okay… I’m going to give you a choice between the next two things because it’s a lot to be put on the spot about. So your choice of: what do you feel has been your greatest contribution to the organization or what’s your favorite memory?

AW: Oh, my goodness um. Well, you’re giving me a choice. I can answer the greatest contribution one easier. That one feels easy, I know exactly what I think about that! 

I think that, like working through this with you, we did this in partnership, this is a partnership thing, but the FELA method. I think that really mattered. And I’m really proud of the work that we spent sitting with that and really trying to understand what it was about this very robust and yet complicated program that was the essence of it. And I know the six steps of the FELA are still, people are like it’s still robust and complicated, and I think it is. It is robust, but I think it’s effective. But I genuinely believe in the effectiveness of the FELA methodology as an accelerator for student learning, and I think about it often in other settings of my life. You know, you and I used to talk about that all the time, but I do feel like that would work, it was worth just sitting in it. Even down to, Alejandro, the day when we had to name it. And we talked about it, and I was like come up with the name by the end of the day. I feel like that was a small contribution I made to draw a line in the sand and be like it must be named. And I know that you named it. And really, it’s something that I hope to see you take into the future and do a lot of wonderful things with. But that was really, I think, an important and pivotal year of strategy work that we did with the whole team and the whole organization to discern the FELA within the larger program.

AG: I couldn’t agree with you more, Aubrey… I think you’re exactly right, the FELA method, I think like a lasting legacy… In Austin at SXSW I met up with a professor at the Stanford d.school to pick her brain, and she talked a lot about how in the social sector there’s this incentive to just think really incremental because all of the planning efforts and all of the funding efforts are organized by really short timeframes, right. So you’ve got like a three-year plan or four-year plan or five-year plan and there’s value in that, I believe that there’s value in that, but what that doesn’t enable organizations to envision is something she calls “ancestral thinking,” like what am I going to be, how can I make decisions today to be a good ancestor for like at least three generations into the future, right. What do I need to do to be a good ancestor? And when I think about that, like what is our contribution, not to the next generation, not to the one after that, but starting maybe with the one after that – I think it’s the FELA method. 

And we’ve talked about this over and over again, about how do you both create focus within the organization and also live into that realm of possibility? But I do think, like I am determined – my life’s mission, my charge is, to ensure that, just as social-emotional learning or science of reading has kind of moved from the periphery to center stage, like the FELA method also will go from conversations that we had from your brain to like the standard practice. And the world would be a better place for it. Long-winded way of saying that I really agree with you.

AW: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s true. And I mean of course, there are so many other little things, you know what I mean. You asked about a favorite memory. You asked me to choose, but I’m going to answer both. 

AW: When I think about favorite memories, the first thing that comes to mind for me are people, city-based leaders, leading. People who are based in cities, leading. Like I can picture Desiree at the very first professional development I ever saw her lead, and she just took my breath away. I can picture Sharifa as a Program Manager here in Philadelphia and Sean in DC. And I’m thinking about the laughter – Sean and Donald had a lot of laughter in their city-based leadership training. And I’m picturing Mary when she was a PM in New York and how she had chart paper up on the wall and people were milling around. And so I think those are memories that I really treasure because I wasn’t on, I wasn’t the spotlight. I was able to savor it and participate in it. I really love that. 

And then I think the other thing is just I got a couple little snippets in my mind of when I was in a classroom and waiting for a workshop to start and a child’s family member wasn’t there at the outset. And so you know I would often sit with the children if there was a child that didn’t have a family member there. And then I have one in particular… I’ll just never forget this, I was sitting next to this little boy, and, you know his mom wasn’t able to come, she needed to work – and that’s why we want to be a larger community. I was there with him and he looked up and his grandfather was in the doorway and his eyes got so big. And he was so proud, and he turned to me, and he was like “That’s my pop pop!” And that moment of realization that he was loved. Like he knew he was loved and he was part of this larger community that wasn’t just his mom. And that his pop pop cared about his reading. And I just, I stepped aside… and I got to be present and be part of that workshop. It’s another example of a memory where I wasn’t in the center, I got to observe, and, oh my gosh, that’s a memory that will last a lifetime. That kind of a memory of just seeing a child know that they’re loved and read a book with someone who loves them… And he was just so happy. That’s probably my favorite memory: that day. 

AG: That’s beautiful. And the way that you talk about city-based leaders, the way you felt watching city-based leaders kind of do their thing is exactly how I felt watching you do your thing when we would do PD at [the School District of Philadelphia]. The early days. Seeing you light up the room. And I would feel this like intense pride, not in a patronizing way, but just like, yeah it’s a ton of pride. And being bowled over and blown away by your colleagues is a real pleasure. And a gift that we’ve been able to experience that. 

AW: Yeah, and it goes back to community again. Because what’s happening there is connection and communication. We were able to communicate during those PD sessions of like okay, here’s what we’re doing, we’re in this together, here’s how we’re going to do it. And, yes, it’s definitely something to savor. I agree.

…

AG: I got at what I see could be the power in your legacy, but I’m curious to hear how you see your, or what you hope, becomes of your legacy from Springboard.

What Aubrey will miss most

AG: What are you going to miss most about your time at Springboard?

AW: I wasn’t ready to answer that one yet because of eight. I was ready for eight, I wasn’t sure what to do with nine. I want to answer eight, what are you most going to miss. I’m gonna miss doing hard things with friends. When Paul Farmer passed recently, one of the quotes that I read that he had said just leaped off the page and I was like oh, that is my time at Springboard! And the question had been asked of him in an interview “What most motivates you?” and he said “Doing hard things with friends.” And that for me is like what am I going to miss most about Springboard? Doing hard things with friends. You know, we have the race in front of us to run, the race is going to be a little bit painful. We’re doing hard work, it’s really important work. And it has been an honor, a privilege and, in many ways a deep joy, to do that alongside friends. And whether that means packing boxes and carrying them or… trying to get every assignment we could, getting beginning assessments done. Or you know, Alejandro, of us early on, we were over at Mckinley, we’re walking around in the neighborhood and knocking on doors and inviting family to participate in the program. 

And I just, all of those memories, those are really hard things! They were tiring, they were uncomfortable, sometimes long hours. And you know I can picture friends there for every one of those memories. So I’m really going to miss that. 

I don’t know what’s next for me but it has really been wonderful to get to the top of the hill at the end of the program and have gotten to the top of the hill with friends. And I hope that for our team…

Alejandro: A couple of thoughts – I’ll buy you time to think about legacy. One: super powerful and beautiful the way you phrased that and gave a shout-out to Paul Farmer. 

AW: I stole it. [laughing]

AG: A finely selected, deftly selected quote. The quick thought I was going to share is that I know that in whatever you choose next, knowing you, hard work and friendship will be involved. I don’t expect that to be a hole in your life. And also, I expect that the friendships that you developed at Springboard will endure. I know that I intend to continue to invest in my friendship with you and lots of other folks within the organization feel the same way.

AW: Thanks Alejandro, that is a comfort. … You’re right, there can still be hard work and friends, that is a good comfort, thank you. 

Aubrey’s legacy

AW: Legacy. How do people think about legacy? I mean, you know what comes to mind for me –  we never got there. It’s not a legacy because we didn’t get there. But I really was proud of the rigor and honesty with which we approached our work. I found that to be true from 2012 on. It was like, oh, these children really could read better at the end of the summer than they could at the beginning of summer and I was sure of it. It’s not much of a legacy… 

AG: I did not struggle with this question for you, so allow me to share some options and then you can let me know if any of them resonate… 

AW: I guess part of my stumbling over legacy is that, I hope, maybe it’s just — I do want to hear your options – but maybe it’s just something about persistence and learning and embracing change. I do think a lot of things changed in the time we were here, and I think that embracing them led us to good pastures. And I think we were persistent in the face of failure. I remember so many times, Alejandro, early on where a contract could make or break you. And we’d get bad news. And we’d just get up the next day and try again. And the same when we had a professional development session that did not go well, people might be very upset, they didn’t realize what they’d been asked to do by their school leader until I told them. And we’d get up the next day, and do it again. And I hope that there’s a little spirit of that in the organization. What were you thinking?

AG: I agree. What I would say, part of your legacy is tens of thousands of kids are better readers. Part of our legacy… Thousands of teachers that grew in their own craft, many of which, most of which, hopefully strengthened their mindset and skillset about how to partner with families. And tens of thousands of families that got to participate in an experience that is too different from what families typically experience in the education sector. And hundreds, thousands of seasonal staff and 100+ full-time staff that you helped them live into their potential. I think about examples of people who joined the organization and were able to just kind of grow as people, as professionals, as managers. That’s all part of your legacy, it’s a hell of a legacy. There’s too much to say, not too little.

AW: Thanks, Alejandro. 

AG: Yeah and like – me, I’m among the professionals at Springboard that grew as a person and as a leader enormously. And that growth is inextricably bound up in our partnership. I am a proud part of that legacy.

AW: Yeah… I absolutely appreciate our time together.

AG: Likewise. What’s next on our list…

Words of wisdom for the team

AG: What about for the team, wisdom for the team?

AW: This is maybe too trite, it’s March Madness, after all, but don’t give up until the buzzer sounds. Stay in the game. Don’t take yourself out of the game. Stay in the game, we’re still playing the game. Yep, that was a bad play, we lost the ball, the ball turned over, keep playing! Keep playing! We’re still in the game. I think we’re still in the game a lot and we sometimes count ourselves out. And maybe we have the luxury to do that now because we’re so well resourced, Alejandro, thanks to the work that you do, and thanks to our sustaining partnerships and long-term partnerships that we have with schools, that it’s easier to take yourself out. So yeah, stay in the game.

AG: This one seems really… feel free to ask, maybe my phone will save you from it: A word to sum up your experience.

AW: Journey. Journey is the word; this has been a journey. And it’s involved many small journeys within Philadelphia and beyond. And I think there were different times when it was like is this journey over? No, definitely not, let’s keep journeying. And I think, to sum up the full experience it’s like oh, I think my journey, my sojourn alongside you, Alejandro, is coming to an end. So it feels like that’s the word for me.

AG: I appreciate the reflection, Aubrey, and I appreciate you immensely.