Ashoka
The Berkeley School
The first six words of The Berkeley School's mission focus on what they do – ignite curious minds and awakengenerous hearts – and the last four remind them why: to engage a changing world. These ten words drive everything that happens at The Berkeley School. They crackle with energy (“ignite!” “awaken!”), demand inclusiveness (all minds are curious, all hearts are generous), and require them to sustain classroom, school, and community cultures that can respond to constant change with positive, effective engagement. All such cultures rest on their core belief that, when people feel seen and supported simultaneously, transformative learning occurs – academically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally. To that end, TBS strives to create learning environments and experiences for students, families, faculty, and staff where the generative discomfort that can come from feeling seen while growing and developing balances with the safety and strength that flow from feeling supported. In this way, they aim to transform education, lives, and the world.
Kate Klaire
Kate has had many transformative moments in her experience as an educator. Recognizing the moment learning has just occurred is one of the most palpable expressions of joy she knows. This makes education just the right field of work for her. Her own love of learning allows her to express this same joy and she is constantly developing her capacity to create more opportunities for kids to turn their passions into actions. As an adoptee, she thinks she developed empathy on a deep level from an early age. Loss provides access into a kind of sad beauty. She learned how to feel with others and this is what has led her to do the work that she does. As The Student Life Coordinator, a job that she created, she is fortunate to experience and foster empathy, leadership, and perspective of the larger picture in an effort to create changemakers. The attached video expresses a transformative moment for her as an educator. As someone who recognized an opportunity to transform their model of community service into a more meaningful model of service learning, she has led the way for her students to become real changemakers in this regard. Service learning gets right to the core of empathy, teamwork, leadership and problem-solving. These students embody and demonstrate a core example of what makes our school stand out as a changemaking school.