Arjun Prasad - Story of Self
Throughout High School, my education related experiences began when I started working at a non-profit school in a suburb of New Delhi, India, (Noida) called Vidya and Child. Situated in the slums of the city, the school takes kids who would otherwise not be enrolled in schools (because education is not universally accessible to students) and educates them until they can ultimately be mainstreamed into the public school system.
Because some of these students are off the traditional age cycle, the organization has a certificate from the Indian Government to award high school degrees to eligible students. I worked there during various summers in high school, splitting time between acting as a substitute teacher and then also working on creating “success story case studies” for their annual fundraising report, interviewing students who had successfully made it through their programs along with their teachers and families, to show potential funders where their money would be going.
My educational experiences continued into various other summers, where I began working at the Heckscher Foundation for Children, a small family foundation in New York City based around educational equity. With the motto “leveling the playing field”, my work at Heckscher was that similar to a Program Officer intern, looking into which programs around New York were doing a great job at their mission of advising, mentoring, educating, etc. children in underserved communities. I worked at Heckscher during both the summer after my sophomore and junior years in high school and have since still stayed connected to my bosses there.
Given all of these experiences, I knew coming into college that I wanted to study education in some capacity, which is why I was ecstatic to hear the Ed Secondary was formally instituted my freshman year. Having had various real-world education experiences, I jumped at the opportunity to study the more historical and theoretical sides of education. Taking courses such as Professor Kay Merseth’s GenEd on K-12 Educational Equity and Professor Julie Reuben’s GenEd called The Social Responsibilities of Universities, I was able to learn a lot about the history of education in this country. On the other side of it, taking courses like Democracy and Education and Educational Justice, I learned about other theoretical sides of education and how it weaves itself into every part of our life. Finally, taking this course, I was able to analyze how leadership, in the most practical sense, integrates into educational institutions, learning about both the theoretical and realistic forms of leadership.
