SEED "Has the Power to Transform Communities"

Jessie Lortie, a high school teacher and SEED leader from Boston, says that leading a SEED seminar for her colleagues has been transforming for the school faculty, students, and community as a whole:

This type of work has the power to transform communities - both through the ideas we battle with, and through the bonding that occurs through honestly and bravely confronting some of the truths in our lives. I love those moments immediately post-seminar when I see my coworkers talking to each other in different ways than before. It might be WHAT they talk about, or HOW they talk about it, or WHO is talking to whom...but I never fail to see some shift in the dynamic that I know makes us stronger as a faculty. We take that strength into our individual classrooms and pass that on to our students.

Educators and parents who have attended SEED New Leaders’ Week will be starting monthly SEED seminars this fall in schools and communities around the country. In these seminars, SEED leaders do not lecture. Instead, they lead colleagues and neighbors in experiential, interactive exercises and conversations often stimulated by films and readings. SEED assists educators and parents in valuing their own voices so they can, in turn, better value the voices of their students and children. The monthly seminars deepen participants’ understanding of themselves, expand their knowledge of the world, and point the way to making schools and communities more inclusive. To find out if your school is offering a SEED seminar, contact info@nationalseedproject.org or call 781-283-2399.