Ashoka
Social and emotional learning, student leadership, and social change are at the heart of Prospect Sierra School. The steps of listening and observing empathetically, defining a problem, coming up with ideas for solutions, building those solutions, and testing those solutions are engrained through the curriculum. For example, students learn how to listen to and understand the perspectives of other students through storytelling projects like “This P.S. Life” or a World War II interview project. They also define and understand problems through each grade’s service-learning projects and design solutions that are funded by the student council. Students have continued some of these projects beyond their graduation from Prospect Sierra or have taken what they learned at Prospect Sierra to create social ventures later in their lives.
Mark Basnage
As an educator and school leader, Mark had many entrepreneurial experiences, including leading internal change efforts in STEM curricula and technology, design thinking and open education, spearheading the effort to bring a new public school to an underserved neighborhood in West Philadelphia, and building partnerships between schools and nonprofits. Mark applies valuable lessons on empathy as a skill to promote the adoption of new teaching methods and tools.