Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – The Great Reveal.
I attended a working session for the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy yesterday, an organization that is focused on developing and preserving the Guadalupe River Park that sits at the heart of downtown San Jose. As part of the session, Board member and former Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Carl Guardino shared a vision for a section of the park that sits at the confluence of the Los Gatos River and the Guadalupe River and that is on deck for a significant redevelopment in the next 6-12 months. As he showed a set of slides to the group he noted that what they are trying to do is “reveal what is there.” He showed an image of him and Sal Pizarro, Mercury News columnist, kayaking down the Guadalupe River and made the point that there is an extraordinary resource sitting right here, if we can only find the will and a way to reveal it.
I was reminded of Michelangelo’s description of sculpture: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” It’s the process of revealing what is there, removing the superfluous and bringing forth a masterpiece.
That feels like such a powerful metaphor for what we are doing at Hillbrook. The two historical buildings that will serve as the heart of our campus are both structures that we are redesigning and adaptively reusing. In essence, we are stripping away pieces of the current structure to reveal the possibilities of the space inside. In terms of our program, we are trying to peel away the superfluous parts of so many schools – students in rows, teacher-centered instruction, AP tests, learning constrained within the four walls of a classroom – to reveal the possibilities that can emerge when you bring together exceptional teachers focused on engaging with high school students within a city that serves as your classroom. It is, in the end, addition by subtraction, a return to the essence of learning and a commitment to creating a rigorous, engaging educational experience that challenges each student to reach beyond and make a difference in the world.
Talking with people yesterday at the working session, I was again struck by how open and even excited adults are to bring students into real world opportunities and conversations. The leaders of San Jose who I have met with in the past 6 months have told me again and again what I have always believed – high school students don’t need to wait until they graduate to do meaningful things. There is so much possibility for our students to be part of a transformation of not only what school can be but of what a city can become. I can’t wait to be part of this great reveal in the years ahead.