Prep@Pingree Program Perspective

In addition to the usual optimism and sense of possibility that each new school year brings, September also brought my wife and me to viewings of two extraordinary plays: The Agitators, a drama about the close but, at times, turbulent friendship and political alliance between women’s rights champion Susan B. Anthony and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, two giants in the history of reform, social justice, and equality, and The Niceties, a dialog between a black student and a white professor—both brilliant—who meet to discuss a paper about slavery's role in the American Revolution.

Both plays reminded me of how far we've come and how far we still have to go in pursuit of establishing diversity, equity, and justice for all. Each play captured the complex dynamics at work in any human relationship, especially those that orbit matters of race, gender, money, and power. They are riddled with smart dialog that inspires, injures, insults, and ignites—dramatic confrontations that force us to empathize with vibrant and complicated characters. They air the secret things we are sometimes afraid to say but desperately need to discuss. In short, the plays captured much of my experience during my nearly two decades as Prep@Pingree's founding and executive director.

These productions helped me think through conversations about equity and how they are playing out locally, regionally, and nationally: taking a knee, caravans, admission policies, tax and spending policies, judicial confirmations, killings in consulates and synagogues, and even hurricanes. Both plays reminded me of the fragility of our social ecosystem. Ultimately everything rests on a foundation built on trust, respect, courage, candor, intelligence, education, fairness, and kindness.

The voices that follow are only two examples of the many people connected to Prep@Pingree who embody the characteristics necessary not only to meet the challenges of today, but to thrive in spite of them.

I recently listened to an old This American Life podcast episode that told the story of an exchange program between two different schools. One was a private, affluent, majority White school, and the other was a public, poor, majority Black and Latino school; the schools were only three miles apart in the Bronx. One of the podcast's producers interviewed a Latina student who had a particularly strong reaction when she and her peers visited the private school about a decade ago. She panicked and cried when she first got to campus, but managed to get through a class discussion at the unfamiliar school. It was clear to the other private school students and teachers that she was brilliant. But then she left the campus. Ran away. Later in the podcast, she explained what had happened that day. She felt so deeply out-of-place at that private school, because of her physical features, her clothes, and her socioeconomic status, that she just had to leave. Other young adults from the Bronx who were interviewed expressed similar feelings when reflecting on their educational and professional careers, doubting they belonged at a college they had been accepted to or that they deserved an offer they had received at a high-paying job, because they were poor, or Black, or different.

I think most people, like these students, feel out-of-place or encounter some form of imposter syndrome at some point in their lives. However, I'm not sure those feelings adversely affect everyone's abilities to take advantage of educational opportunities, as they did some of the students interviewed. That these students and others like them today may feel unqualified for or undeserving of educational progress because of their race or class is an unfair reality. I've faced this issue, and looking back, I think Prep@Pingree helped me face it by introducing me to discomfort.

Prep@Pingree gave me the opportunity to feel a little uncomfortable and a little out of place, to doubt that I belonged at a summer program in a private school in a rural area away from home, and then to overcome my doubts as I discovered that my abilities, hard work, and interest qualified me to be there. The encouraging teachers and welcoming student staff helped me do this, and I think the program still does this for groups of students year after year. Hopefully the experience, along with other experiences over time, leads them to believe that education is as much for them as it is for anyone else. I don't think students necessarily have to attend an unfamiliar summer program or an elite private high school that makes them feel uncomfortable in order to progress, but I do think it's important they know that discomfort is okay, and that they can beat it if it gets in the way of their education. I began to learn this lesson the summer I attended Prep@Pingree, and appreciate the chance to share what I've learned as a staff member now.