Dalai Lama Fellows
Ian Schiffer
Leadership Vision
My leadership vision is a lifelong commitment to inner and systemic change through self-compassion, self-education, showing up, and radical hope. Leaders create spaces that are rooted in love and address equity and empathy gaps. Emergent leadership prioritizes listening to persons made invisible by systemic oppression to name and transform broken unethical systems.
Project Description
FREE Teaching will create a cohort of formerly incarcerated folks to participate in the first systems-impacted teacher education program leading to gainful employment. The cohort will be trained in critical pedagogy, instructional practices, and emergent leadership at a local community college receiving an alternative certification. Barred entry into student teaching and the teaching profession for folks with a criminal background leads to a gap of educators who can speak to the experience of being criminalized. The project makes use of popular education and the Free University concept as the space for the cohorts' teacher residency. At this space, classes and workshops led by these educators will cover their passions, their experiences, and legal expertise rather than tokenizing their stories. Education-based non-profits and community members will be invited into this radical space to take part in classes and educators will be set up with job interviews after representatives see educators putting their lived expertise into education-action.