Change Agents Never Work Alone

I was honored earlier this week to receive the “Change Agent of the Year” award by the New Schools Venture Fund.  It’s a wonderful, yet humbling, acknowledgement of the work of the amazing team here at the Rodel Foundation, which I’ve had the pleasure to lead for the past 6 years.  Successful change never results from the work of a single individual.  A catalyst working in isolation just creates smoke.

Delaware is positioned to become The First State…in education because of its courage to embrace bold reforms and the commitment of many partners to aggressively engage on what makes sense for kids.  It takes risk taking by our Governor and Education Secretary in concert with our business community, public officials, educators, administrators, and community leaders.  This has been a slow, five-year smolder, but we are starting to heat up.

Along the way, we have benefitted from our friends at ConnCAN in Connecticut, New Schools for New Orleans in Louisiana and many, many others.  We not only share a fierce sense of urgency about what’s needed to provide every public school student in Delaware with a great education, but a fundamental belief that our work here can, and must, benefit this country.  It’s this deep passion and our unwavering commitment to engage on the hard work that continues to set us apart and it is what is needed to keep us together when the road ahead gets rough