Community Design Team Journeys to Memphis
While some people spend their January making new resolutions for 2024, Runway Green’s Community Design Team was hard at work continuing a 2023 resolution: to discuss, research, and analyze the best models of education to inspire the seven-acre experiential learning campus coming to Floyd Bennett Field.
To drive this goal forward, more than a dozen students, staff, alumni, and parents from this team got to spend their January in Memphis to visit Crosstown High and gather inspiration for the Runway Green campus. Recognized with a $2.5 million grant by the XQ Super School challenge for its reimagining of education, Crosstown High engages students in project-based work that prepares them to be self-directed learners – a model for the programming we’re building at Runway Green.
The first of the Community Design Team’s series of “inspiration visits” to explore different schools and campuses, the trip was an opportunity for new resolutions, new goals, and new insights. Our Community Design Team members got to speak with students and staff about competency-based education and see community school models in action, where students feel supported to be active drivers of their own learning journeys.
The Community Design Team also visited the National Civil Rights Museum, a moving experience that reinforced Runway Green’s dedication to social justice and equity. This visit served as a powerful reminder of the importance of ensuring that Runway Green not only provides an innovative and world-class learning environment, but serves as a catalyst for social justice, empowering all students to be active contributors to a more just and equitable world.
"Traveling to Memphis was such an inspiring opportunitytogain perspectives about various education systems across thecountry and figure out how these models can inform how we design Runway Green,” said Sadiqah Whittington, Community Design Team member. “This trip helped me realize the importance of approaching education from a national perspective and expanding beyond the local level to learn about what works and what doesn’t fromeducators and students with different experiences. I’m thrilled to be at the forefront of the design process for Runway Green and sharewhat I learned from my visit to Crosstown High throughout this planning process.”