300 to 4,500 – Reflections on the Growth of KIPP Memphis

Posted on May 10, 2012 by KIPP Staff

By Jamal McCall, Executive Director, KIPP Memphis

As our academic year in Memphis comes to a close, I am compelled to reflect on a rewarding and humbling fact: I have had the pleasure of working in the KIPP network for nine years. When I first came to Memphis, we were 300 students and staff crowded in two hallways within an existing Memphis City School facility. Now here we are, having opened our first high school and looking ahead to our first elementary school and second middle school this summer. By 2016, we seek to operate ten schools across Memphis with the capacity to serve 4,500 students in grades K-12. We have also established a partnership to bring pre-kindergarten programming into our elementary school facility, giving us the potential to serve students and their families for up to 14 years and making sure our students never know the achievement gap.

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Questions We’re Working to Answer in New Orleans

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Richard Barth

By Richard Barth, Chief Executive Officer, KIPP Foundation

A week ago today I shared with the KIPP Team and Family the incredible resolve I witnessed during my time in New Orleans. Today, I want to share with this broader group an update that I have worked on with Rhonda Aluise, our KIPP New Orleans Executive Director. In it, we seek to address the key questions this kind of tragic event raises for our team in the city, as well as some questions all of us who work in education may be asking in the wake of these events.

To learn more about the recent events in New Orleans, click here to read the note Rhonda Aluise shared last week on our blog.

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A Note from KIPP New Orleans

Posted on May 3, 2012 by KIPP Staff

Below is a note from Rhonda Aluise, Executive Director of KIPP New Orleans, to her team and family, addressing the recent tragedies that have impacted the New Orleans community.

Dear New Orleans Team and Family,

We are all heartsick over the senseless deaths this week of Brandon Adams and Christine Marcelin of KIPP Believe. It comes at a time when we are still recovering as a community from the loss last month of KIPP Central City’s Ricky Summers and wondering how to address the rise in gun violence among the city’s children.

We took an important first step at healing with the peace vigil Tuesday night at KIPP Believe, where more than 500 members of our community came together to grieve and start the healing process.

The events of the past few months have put many of us under a great deal of stress. As Executive Director of KIPP New Orleans Schools, I wanted to share what we are doing to both support the members of our community and start thinking about solutions in the face of this violence.

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3.1 Million Students: KIPP’s Reach Extends

Posted on May 3, 2012 by KIPP Staff

An Overview of KIPP Leadership Design Fellowship Summit I

By Qiana Woodard, KIPP School Leadership Programs, KIPP Foundation

Last month the inaugural cohort for the KIPP Leadership Design Fellowship (KLDF) met in Houston, Texas to kickoff Summit I of KLDF 2012. Since this was the first summit of the new program, I’m submitting this post as the first of a series from the KIPP School Leadership Programs team. These posts will share more details of the program and help shed light on the collaboration taking place.


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Piecing Together the Character Puzzle

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Dave Levin

By Dave Levin, KIPP Co-Founder

On Saturday, Max, our three-year old son, received a new animal puzzle. Max loves puzzles and usually stays focused on any given puzzle as long as it takes to solve. This particular puzzle combined two of his favorite topics – the alphabet and animals. Yet, after just a couple of minutes, his frustration bubbled over and he moved on to playing with his toy animals.

As he abandoned his puzzle, mine began – Why wasn’t he more interested in exploring this new puzzle? What would help him finish what he started? What would encourage him to try harder even after experiencing failure? For those of you familiar with the KIPP Character Growth Card, these questions relate to some of the behaviors that are associated with grit and curiosity. Over the past twenty years as a teacher, and the past three as a parent as well, I have come to love these questions for the fascinating puzzles they are.

Our character work at KIPP is all about thinking through these questions and the impact that our character and our choices about our behavior have on our lives. Below is a quick video intro to our character work at KIPP.

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