The Time has Come

We focus on teacher training’s and school assemblies with the goal of creating a growth mindset in both teachers and students. With this mindset teachers can be more successful with students and students can be more successful in learning the things that can change their lives. A growth mindset allows teachers to understand and see their students as individuals who are capable of growing into their own success. It also helps students imagine and visualize their own success with an understanding that they are capable of attaining it.

The end result would be more positive outcomes in education with students having the tenacity to continue to grow their academic capacity throughout their lives.

We believe that a society whose members, across ethnic and cultural lines, posses the interest and capacity to learn and the understanding that everyone is capable of learning, regardless of their background or station, will cultivate the many voices needed to move our nation and the world to greater equity.

Transforming educational outcomes through mindset shifts, we empower teachers and students to unlock their potential and promote success and equity in our communities.

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"A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny."

Thomas Jefferson

The Thoughts Behind Our Efforts

Get Off the Bus; and Back On Another

By Raymond Dodd · April 3, 2025
A metaphor for growth, equity, and education reform

Introduction

This essay explains why I believe public education must do more than teach content—it must prepare students to grow, adapt, and thrive across social and cultural boundaries. Real equity and real success means giving students the skills to switch buses—and not just survive, but belong.

The Buses We’re Born On

Imagine a parking lot stretching out in all directions. Driving around on this parking lot are buses. Some of these are little more than hay wagons pulled by huffing tractors; others are shuttle vans; some are motoring by accumulating miles; others are airport shuttles—some new, some worn. Still others are like the ubiquitous school bus. Some are tired tour buses, and some are shiny new ones; some are luxury buses, and some are like luxury liners used as large limousines.

As these buses become unusable, they are replaced. Some would say they need to be substituted by the same type of bus they are replacing—but they would be wrong. It’s true that all buses are built from resources. However, contrary to the past—when we depended on hard resources like metal, wood, or water—in today’s world we also depend on soft resources like creativity, innovation, and the virtual world. This expands our resource base and makes a better lifestyle more accessible. As lifestyle improves, the quality of replacement buses also improves. So buses are replaced not by the same type of buses, but rather by the types of buses that are needed by the improving lifestyles.

Changing Buses Is Risky—But Necessary

Each one of us is born on one of these buses, and we learn the rules of successfully living on that bus. If we want to change buses (become socially mobile), we have to jump off one bus and jump onto another. In so doing, we run the risk of falling down and receiving a few scrapes and bruises. We can then choose to jump back onto the safety of the bus we came from, where we know how to get help—or we can risk grabbing another bus and trying to get help where we may not understand how to do so. If we make too many missteps, we may be thrown off that bus anyway.

What happens at this point—whether we chose safety or decided to risk it—is that we can take the information and treat it as lessons learned for the next attempt, or as warnings to stay in our own lane because failure can be painful.

Familiar Doesn’t Mean the Same

Sometimes we jump off the bus and all goes well. We find another bus and jump on and look around. Everything seems recognizable. People eat with a knife and fork, they speak the same language, they wear similar clothes.

However, they don’t perceive the world the same way, and they don’t behave in the world the same way we are accustomed to. It’s deceiving. The words are the same, but it’s not the same language. The sentences sound the same, but the meanings are different.

No matter how much you may believe you know what to do, you will find you are wrong. People may cut you some slack, or they may throw you off the bus. Either way, you’re not immediately taken into confidence. You haven’t yet learned the new rules.

The Skills We Don’t Teach

Moving from one bus to another is how we improve our lot in life. We all have the desire to improve our lives. What we often don’t understand is that this requires learning new rules, learning new behaviors, and, sometimes, changing our community. To make this type of move, one needs a specific set of skills—a set of skills that builds self-confidence. A set of skills that breeds growth mindset. A set of skills that allows us to own our ignorance and do something about it.

Why Education Must Change

Public schools do not teach these skills. Rather than being taught to accept the challenge of leaping from the bus, we are encouraged to do the best we can in the bus we know. Moving from one bus to another is not as simple as just making more money. Even with more money, if you don’t know the rules, you are tossed from the new bus.

The job of the public school system is to teach the rules to the game on other buses—or at least the rules to learning new rules. Public school teachers often don’t know these rules themselves. Sometimes they are not fully aware of the rules on their own bus, and many don’t even know the rules of the buses their students live on. However, we can teach our students the skills of resilience and ownership of their futures so they can persevere long enough to learn the new rules on new busses. This would be teaching a growth mindset.

Conclusion: Teach Growth, Not Complacency

We should not teach complacency but rather hunger for growth. We should not teach a fixed mindset but rather a growth mindset.
Get off the bus … grab another. You are capable.