GWC Summer Speaker Series ft. former U.S. Education Secretary John King Jr.
“We should be more impatient.”
Our Summer Speaker Series brings leaders and activists together with our CEO and Founder Reshma Saujani to have conversations about bravery, activism, and tech, broadcasted exclusively to our girls.
We’re so grateful to former Secretary John King Jr. for joining this Summer Speaker Series. Check out more of what we learned from his conversation with Reshma.
WE SHOULD BE MORE IMPATIENT
Reshma kicked it off with this question for the Secretary: what can we learn from our students? The Secretary put it pretty simply—he said that we should learn impatience. He’s right. There is a powerful impatience that young people bring when it comes to issues of social justice. For adults who are in the workforce or who have been “in the fight” for a long time, it’s easy to get worn down and to feel like giving up, like change isn’t going to come. But young people (like you!), he said, have a different perspective and a different energy about change. They will not settle or accept institutional barriers to change. And we should all embrace that perspective.
ON BEING “THE FIRST”
It’s hard to be the first or the second or even the third. And the Secretary is quite familiar with the feeling — he was our country’s second Black secretary of education. And he’s had many trailblazing family members — his relatives include New York City’s first Black schools superintendent, one of the first professional Black basketball players, a member of the Tuskegee airmen.
He and Reshma agreed: being the first is hard, and it can be lonely. The Secretary said you must find ways to be able to excel in a professional environment AND be whole as a person. That means building a community of support (hello Girls Who Code!). You may be the only LGBTQ person or black person in a meeting, but you have peers in other places who are having the same experience. Connecting with those people is what will help get you through, what will help you thrive.
ON CHANGING OUR CURRICULUM AND DEMANDING BETTER
We loved this question from Natalie in New York City and Aya in Chicago. They asked, what is your advice for questioning and reflecting on our curriculum and what our teachers are teaching us? The Secretary said that he hoped GWC students and others consider organizing and demanding change, because there is so much about our curriculum that can be improved upon. He gave the amazing example that, in fact, protesters and leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement have been educating themselves for years on issues and activists and policies that they should have been taught in schools.
He told our girls that they cannot and should not settle for being rendered invisible by a school curriculum. You should see yourself reflected in the books you’re reading, the things you are studying, the people you are learning about.
Thank you to Molly from New Jersey for asking such a wonderful final question of Secretary King. She asked, what does education mean to you? His answer? Hope and possibility. At the hardest moments when he was a kid, said the Secretary, it was school that gave him a sense that life could be better.
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Huge thanks to Secretary King, and of course, to Reshma for having this conversation!
The Girls Who Code Summer Speaker Series is a set of conversations between Girls Who Code Founder and CEO Reshma Saujani and leaders and activists broadcasted exclusively to girls enrolled in our Virtual Summer Immersion Program. Girls have the opportunity to listen in to a fireside chat and then to ask their own questions about bravery, leadership, and tech. To find out more, read our press release here.
