Ashoka
Blue School strives to be a launch pad for tomorrow’s thinkers, scientists, activists, writers, thought leaders, and encourages innovative thinking among its students. It also nurtures a spirit of inquiry, and helps students transform their ideas from abstract concepts to finished, tangible projects. The school has built an open environment for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members to share and learn from each other, and expand its dynamic community of learners. For example, parents are offered a variety of adult learning opportunities throughout the school year to engage with current topics in education as well as questions that come up in their day-to-day lives with their children.
Allison Gaines Pell
Allison has been thinking about education reform since she was in middle school. She is lucky to have had the opportunity to start a small public school in Brooklyn, NY, where she took the school from herself and a bag she carried around, into a place where hundreds of children attend. Allison has watched as previously quiet children get on stage and sing their hearts out, where reluctant writers become brave poets, where frustrated parents get the chance to see an almost drop out graduate. Allison has been lucky to have the feeling at some of these moments that she was a seed for that transformation, aided by the supports and work of so many talented people around her. There has never been a moment when she has stopped believing that education is the only way forward, and Allison is so honored now to work in a place where the charge is to work and learn vigorously and flexibly enough to discover important things about how to make that happen.