Narrator:
As WestEd commemorates 60 years of supporting thriving learners and empowered communities, we asked our staff and board members to reflect on our history and look ahead to our future.
Jannelle Kubenic:
60 years, that’s a big number. And I think about 60 and I think there’s a bit of that that’s connected to time. We have 60 minutes in an hour. We have 60 months and you’re ready for kindergarten. And so when I think about WestEd at 60, there’s so much that’s been done as we think about our origin of thinking of research and how it moves to practice. And that’s been a consistent force for WestEd. That’s been a way that we’ve helped change the way kids learn to read, the way we think about mathematical practice, the way that children develop language and expression has all been part of, I’ll say, WestEd’s history, but it continues to be part of our impact as we move forward.
And I just think the importance of education in the way that it empowers and enables lives and work and futures for people, including myself. I look back in my life and see in the course of the time WestEd’s existed, the way that my family has engaged in education has been really different. I have a grandfather that was born in 1912, and he dropped out of school in eighth grade. And why was that? Because schools weren’t really inviting. He grew up in San Francisco, Chinatown where classrooms were closets, and you know, he made it to eighth grade and went on to a career as a grocer.
My dad made it in San Francisco to high school and finished and went on to be a machinist. And I went on to college and graduate school because education changed in the course of those three generations where we took evidence and research and said, how do you teach kids, how do you include kids, and how do you support their economic mobility? And so I look at the research of WestEd and think about it really personally as to the types of changes that occurred in the lifetime of my family across three generations to make education something not only that we valued, but could create opportunities and access for kids like me.