This is us.
Amy M. Crowell | December 1 | 7 minute read
Thank you for joining CenterEd, we are thrilled that you are here. This article is meant to help you understand and connect with us, to give you a picture of who we are. To know us, starts with my journey.
—Amy M. Crowell, CEO & Founder
In my undergraduate experience, I competed as a Division 1 athlete, learning to confront whatever odds were in front of me. After graduating, I had little doubt that I could overcome the many adversities that teaching in the US presented. While I knew there were hardships to come, I also knew that my life experiences had prepared me for the obstacles for which the field of education was known. Throughout my teaching career at Title 1 schools, I experienced personal struggles with the system through physical disability and through maternity leave with no pay. I grew frustrated with the rigid policies, large class sizes, and training and drills to prepare us for violence within the school. It was becoming obvious that my resilience and hard work were no match to the structural issues that remained out of my control. It wasn’t until tragedy struck that I was able to provide a flexible learning environment that centered on what I knew my students needed. The year Kyler entered my classroom of 5th graders was the year my perspective on education was forever changed. Kyler’s mom spoke to me privately during Open House night to assure me that he was a wonderful student, but his attention lagged, and he had proven to be a difficult student in previous grades, leaving him with a individualized plan to keep him on track. Being a seasoned educator, I was confident in my ability to manage any difficulty that Kyler might bring to the classroom that year.
However, nothing could have prepared me to face the type of challenge that Kyler brought six weeks into the school year for me and the rest of the students in the class. With his little body shaking in fear, Kyler looked up at me one morning before he entered the classroom. I looked down at him to see that one of his eyes had fallen inward. Within a matter of days, our school year became the battlegrounds for Kyler’s fight against DIPG brain cancer. The class rallied, the district provided support, and the last days of his life received wide media coverage. Unfortunately, Kyler’s life ended six months after he looked up at me that morning. During this school year, class discussions centered on each child’s experience as they watched their lifelong classmate dying in front of them. We cried together, laughed together, and collapsed into each other on the days where we did not know what to do. The families of each child were present, engaged, and supported learning occurring at the rate of our emotional ability. The growth and development of the children that year did not center on math or literacy outcomes, but rather, on each child’s ability to process and reflect on the experiences in front of them, to construct a narrative for what was happening to them. Tending to their identity development naturally saturated all other content in order to allow them space for transformation and understanding.
Although I have little data to demonstrate it, I know that the children of that class entered their sixth-grade year with higher levels of resiliency and comprehension of content than other children. Their new identities, though forged through deep heartbreak, laid the foundation for their future learning. The school year when we lost Kyler made me wonder what it would look like for this group of students to continue learning academics together while processing life together. But ultimately, I waved goodbye to these students and sent them on to the rest of their lives, wishing we could all stay together just a little bit longer.
Through this tremendous loss and heartbreaking experience, I was gifted an alternate perspective on meeting student needs which led me to eventually leave teaching.
At the time, I was not concerned with the rising reform movement to implement social-emotional learning in public school systems. Though I was immersed in implementing it already, I would have rolled my eyes and disregarded the next new acronym meant to save the kids from us “ineffectual” teachers. Researchers who investigate the teaching methods like the ones I used that year have coined the term Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). SEL is a layer in whole-child development used nation-wide as a framework for students to understand themselves and others, leading to stronger relationships and improved PreK-12 learning environments.
Reflecting on Kyler’s story as an example, we can see that educators implement SEL with fidelity when they can center lessons around each student’s understanding of themselves and their ability to connect themselves with others. This was possible for my class because it was in a crisis, which provided flexibility and support that American educators often do not have. In this case, Kyler died the week before our state’s standardized testing. As I watched my students arrive on the morning that followed Kyler’s death, their eyes were filled with confusion, and they looked to me to explain what to do. Counselors were available, but the kids did not know them and were most comfortable with their teacher and classmates. Instead of preparing for the following week’s testing, I instructed them to start pushing their desks to the back of the classroom. After every desk was stacked up against the back wall, we set up cozy spots throughout the room and we watched movies together for the rest of the school day. At one point my principal came in and saw what was happening. He turned to look at me with a stunned expression on his face. I shrugged my shoulders and carried on, knowing that this was what my students needed even if testing was the next week. In that moment, there was no administrator who was going to stop me from giving these kids the support and rest that they needed with the people with whom they felt safe. This day gave them the space they needed to comprehend that Kyler would never again walk through our classroom door, and that we would no longer be making him cards, sending him gifts, or planning celebrations for his milestones. This day gave them room to ask questions about what Kyler’s death meant for their own life and wonder what they may do with the life they had but he didn’t. This day gave them room for understanding, transformation, and to construct a narrative for what was happening to them. However, it did not fit within the standard structure of the school day, the school year, the district calendar, or the state’s standardized testing. In the absence of a tragedy like Kyler’s death, how might educators support children in understanding themselves within the rigid school structures and high stakes testing?
After seven years in the public schools, I packed up my things and traveled the world. With my husband and my son, I explored the question, “but, what if we could?” What if we could have a system where kids got to be kids? What if my own children got to discover who they are instead of becoming who they are supposed to be? What if I got to be who I really am while being an educator, not a robotic mess of policies and politics?
As I looked at systems around the world and particularly studied the Australian school system, my eyes widened and ideas flooded my mind. I explored these ideas in graduate school where I solidified the historical, societal, and developmental importance of centering learning environments around social-emotional learning. After publishing research on SEL and finding ways to gift these skills to my own kids, I began helping others to do the same. After all of this, ladies & gentlemen, I present to you CenterEd Learning Environments. I am excited to continue to explore educational environments with you.
