Advot in Action

September 2024

Way back in January of 2018, the first site at which I worked with Advot was New Village Girls Academy, a small charter high school that serves students with educational gaps. Some of them are young mothers; others are living in group homes; some are brand new to the country. I shadowed Naomi while she taught our 15-week core curriculum to a class of 16. In the nearly 7 years since then, our partnership has grown such that, today, we are serving every student in the school every week.

This year’s program model is a new one for us, and we are so excited about what is sure to come of it. Inspired by a girls’ group I taught every summer at a previous job, I thought it would be special to bring a faction of our own beautiful team (four brilliant women, including me) to lead programming in four key elements close to each of our hearts (leadership, puppetry, poetry, and knitting). We’ll spend five weeks with each advisory and then rotate so that every student will come out of Advot programming with a personal statement, a short film, a series of original poems and journal, and a small hat they have knitted by hand.

Through these art forms, they’ll push outside their comfort zones, explore something new, work together, be brave, and use their voices with confidence and pride.

We visited the school for a kick-off event, sharing 10-minute demos of our work and introducing ourselves to all the students. I braced myself when I met the students I knew I’d be working with first. I was surprised and discouraged by how quiet they were, seemingly wary of the new face in the room who was (how dare I?) making them stand up and look at each other for an observation exercise.

Part of my leadership program includes the students identifying people whom they admire as leaders. We will explore: what they exemplify, what their messaging is, and how they communicate, in order to practice communicating like leaders.

The leaders they admired varied from Tekashi 6ix9ine to Rosa Parks to their older siblings. 

The group they landed on, those they voted to explore further, were Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Roe v Wade Supreme Court case.

These students surprised me again.

Of course they did.

By: Annie Kee, Managing Director