BB Ntsakey and Kelly Niccolls on Assessment Journeys

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, host Victoria Andrews sits down with educational leaders BB Ntsakey and Kelly Niccolls to explore the transformative power of liberatory assessment. Discover how these innovative approaches move beyond traditional metrics to create personalized, student-centered learning experiences that emphasize growth and empowerment. By reimagining assessment as a tool for learning and liberation, educators can foster environments where students’ unique strengths and potential are recognized and nurtured. Tune in to learn how you can implement these practices in your own educational context and the positive impact they can have on student engagement and achievement.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction to the Podcast
• (03:08) Liberatory Assessment Framework
• (07:45) Innovative Assessment Practices
• (15:20) Student-Centered Learning and Continuous Improvement
• (19:29) Practical Steps for Teachers
• (27:20)  Actionable Advice for Educators
• (29:42) Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Introduction to the Podcast

Victoria Andrews: Welcome to the Getting Smart Podcast, where we explore the future of learning leadership and the power of community. I’m your host, Victoria Andrews. In today’s episode, we’re diving into an assessment journey, and not just one, but two phenomenal leaders are joining me in this conversation. Today, we’re going to be discussing what an assessment journey looks like, how they evolve, why they matter, and how they can impact students. Whether you’re leading a district, running a microschool, shaping policy, or are a parent, this conversation will give you insight, inspiration, and practical tools for building assessment systems that are meaningful, mission-aligned, and bring out the best in young people. Joining me in the conversation today is BB Ntsakey, the managing director at the Blueprint Education Partners and Kelly Niccolls, who is the director of teaching and learning for the Cheney School District in Spokane, Washington.

How are you guys doing today?

BB Ntsakey: Great. It is so, so good to be here. I’m excited to have a conversation about children and children doing well.

Victoria Andrews: Since all of us have been through some form of educational systems, can you both share your personal experience with assessment, both as a student and as an educator?

Kelly Niccolls: I think as a student, I was really able to engage in some quality assessments. I was in a gifted and talented education program and had an opportunity to be pushed in my thinking and have opportunities to demonstrate my thinking and my learning. However, I learned also very quickly that a lot of my learning experiences were different from other people’s learning experiences in the schools that I went to. And we would talk about what did you do in class or, you know, testing season? I still had standardized assessments, but that was the only time I ever liked standardized questions.

Victoria Andrews: Hmm.

Kelly Niccolls: And so then it, and then when I got to high school and it was like all crazy and AP stuff and all the pressure and just that nastiness of test anxiety and real limited understanding of what I know and how I can tell you what I know.

Victoria Andrews: Mm.

Kelly Niccolls: That’s when I really stopped liking school and became kind of disillusioned by what assessment was. And so then as an educator, it was similar, like how do I make sure to not spirit-kill my young people in my classes around assessment and really focus on the journey of learning in ways that they can demonstrate their growth and what matters to them and what they’re proud of as participants in our co-design and learning experiences. So that’s, you know, my teacher experience, and I was grateful that I had the opportunities to do that in the roles that I had and in the classrooms that I was teaching. And then, you know, now as an administrator and as an educational leader, you know, I started a new framework around assessment for liberation. And I think, you know, here as a district administrator, like, how are we expanding our thoughts around assessment in general and really pushing practice about what it means to demonstrate learning.

Victoria Andrews: Normally we don’t hear about liberation and assessment.

Liberatory Assessment Framework

Victoria Andrews: So, I want us not to go too far off, but can you share just a little bit, Kelly, about what that means to our listeners?

Kelly Niccolls: Yes. So, liberatory assessment is a framework that my colleague, Abby Benedetto, and I developed. And it’s really about how we transcribe the awe and inquiry and wonder of learning and really focus on students’ individual development and capacity, but in specific criteria. So like in reciprocity, and also in opportunities for collaboration and in meaning-making where they’re essentially developing their own sense of what it means to learn and what they want to learn and how they want to share their learning with their classroom community and with their community at large. So it’s really about eliminating those oppressive practices in standard and traditional assessments for us to find the joy of walking alongside and finding that continued wonder and growth as a human, particularly as part of an Earth ecosystem, as well as part of a community ecosystem.

Victoria Andrews: And that can be liberation. We think of it as this freedom and that level of autonomy and agency. And while it sounds really great, sometimes it can also be overwhelming because if you’ve been in systems where you did not have that agency, you did not have that freedom. BB, can you share your journey?

BB Ntsakey: Yeah. You see me nodding here because I can echo a lot of the sentiments that you’re sharing. My assessment experience and journey is typical, right? And I say typical to say that I went to traditional public schools my whole life. So New York City Public Schools is where sort of like I earned my bones. My relationship to assessments was actually experiencing assessments as testing, right? And that’s the other word that I experienced it as. And so if you ask me from K through 12 and as a public school student, what I know assessments to be, they’re the thing you do to go to the next place, right? So assessments have always served as a key, right? As a gate that you can go through to get to the next thing. So that is the foundation that really inspired me to ask the question of, so what happens? Right? How is this one moment, the moment that encapsulates and captures the quality of a human life? And so that just doesn’t quite get it. And what I noticed from K through 12 is that those who do well with assessments get to take more assessments to reinforce that they do well. So it’s like this self-reinforcing piece. And those that don’t…

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

BB Ntsakey: …with assessments, we sort of like create a different path for, right. And so when I started to become an educator and got into this work, my fundamental question was like, we have to change our relationship to assessments as a testing for if kids are and what kids should be to what can we learn about children, which is my current sort of framing, right? Assessment for learning, which isn’t mine. I’m going to give credit where it’s due. It’s from Edmund Gordon, right? Founder of Head Start who really talks about assessments as a way to improve instruction, not as a way to determine what the kids are made of, right? But that as a way to see what else kids need to know. And so that’s my background, right? Public schools. And ultimately today, when I think about the work we’re doing right, we’re using assessments as a way to better understand our children, which is a very different world from how they’re used now and how they’ve been used historically.

Victoria Andrews: So much of what you and Kelly shared just was like, oh yeah, I remember that station in my life. Or I wasn’t in GT classes, but considered they were like, oh, you’re more ahead or more advanced or whatever, so you can take this assessment. And there were times where it’s like I didn’t have to study or prepare, and it was just like, honestly, I just was a good test-taker because I’m a good guesser, and most of the tests were multiple choice. So I was like, okay, if I can narrow down 50% of these questions, then I now have like a 50-50 shot. And then just by reading a couple of words, and because I was a reader, it’s like, oh, process of elimination. So I got labeled as a strong test-taker, but I really wasn’t. I just was like, I couldn’t figure it out. I feel like I was more able to recognize patterns and that didn’t really demonstrate my knowledge as much as just like I can see patterns and I can still see patterns in like people and systems and things of that nature. But to hear both of you guys share what you experienced as a young person and then your role as an educator, can y’all share what you’re doing now in your roles to shape assessment for the young people that you guys are in service to? BB, go ahead. I see you. I know you’re chomping at the bit.

Innovative Assessment Practices

BB Ntsakey: Yeah, listen, assessments make a world of a difference for the lived experiences of children, right? And so I’m going to talk about two things we’re doing today to just really change what assessments are used for and how we assess ’em, right? And so the first change is using assessments as purely formative, right? To say like, what’s going on here? What can we learn? And so the first difference here is like, you know, usually you take the test at the end of the year, right? And we see what we accomplish this year. We’re taking that and saying, how do we expand the definition? And so it literally sounds like saying to children, what do you get at, right? I’m assessing what you say you’re good at, what other things you want to learn, right? And then the third most critical is like, how do you learn. And I think those are the three things that you would expect to see if you went to a doctor and you wanted like, some sort of treatment that is personalized to you. And so to sort of put a really clear bow on the first piece is making sure that assessments are personalized to the children that are experiencing it, not what I experienced. Right. And once you get there, then the next step, which is sort of like the most exciting and innovative part of this work: how do we use assessments to improve learning? And what that means isn’t going back and reteaching it. That’s not what that means. But what it means is what did this assessment tell us about what students can do and what they would want to do, and how this actually helps them get to their end. So I’m going to talk about what this looks like on Monday at school, right? What this means is that every single sort of week, we begin the week by saying, what have students learned already, right? So going to the first principle, right? Assessments as learning about children, right? So it’s really creating that, what I call like the intake form. Like, all right, what’s going on BB this week? What can BB do? ‘Cause that’s always changing. Like kids, literally as we’re talking right now, I’m a different person from the start of this conversation. And so we’re sensitive to that to make sure that we’re being responsive to that. And then the second, my favorite part is to say, well, given the information we have, what are we doing differently? Not punitively. Not correctively, not in terms of students like doing another thing, but say, all right, given what we know, how do we guide that learning? Right. And so at Mysa, that means personalized, individualized learning pathways. So you can sit next to another student, they could be working on science, and you could actually be doing a math problem. And down in that other seat could be a student who’s actually working on art. And that’s the nature of how learning happens. It happens as this sort of like complex matrix of things that are always going on and we feel, and we see that assessment strives to simplify to the one skill. And so we’re really driving these two things. Number one, assessments to gather information, and then number two, the Edmund Gordon sort of principle of assessments for learning with the goal to be learning. Right. The goal isn’t promotion, the goal isn’t improvement, it’s learning. And I think those are two anchors that deeply guide my work.

Kelly Niccolls: Oh, thank you. Well, I just want to piggyback on the assessment for learning and in service of learning. And I think for us, what we’ve really shifted is becoming a learning organization and focusing on continual improvement, and not so much around arrival or mastery or proving your content knowledge for some subjective or obscure reason. So students set goals for their learning. They set areas that they want to grow and improve in. They set contexts of how they want to demonstrate proficiency. So there’s a variety of ways in which students experience assessment opportunities and share their story of learning and really just changing the language. Helps like demystify this idea of assessment as accountability or assessment as a tool to punish or weaponize against young people or school systems in general. And the focus is how am I experiencing learning in ways that matter to me? How am I growing as a learner? How am I someone who feels valued as part of a learning community and has people alongside me that support my growth and development? And that I know as a learner in this school or in this district, that I’m always going to grow and develop. And that there’s a variety of ways that I can demonstrate my talents and my interests and my capacity beyond even just content areas. So like portrait work, for example. So that’s pivotal. And I think that how are our teachers demonstrating that they’re learning from students and that what they’re learning from student work is valuable to improve their practice. And so there’s that reciprocity and that’s huge to really be like an organization of learning and, and really, I said like, break down that power dynamic where I know something and you don’t, and you need to prove to me that what I told you, like was that you know it well enough.

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

Kelly Niccolls: Get, let’s get rid of that context of what schooling is and really like, you know, students, you’re really teaching me a lot about my practice. I’m really grateful for our partnership and ability to learn from each other. Here’s how I’m going to improve my instruction, or here’s how you’re influencing our next steps for this class. Because your time and effort in this work is valuable to all of us and not just to prove something to somebody for some obscure reason.

Victoria Andrews: So many points that you hit on Kelly first, that and we’ve had this con similar conversations before where the process that you just described confirms and affirms the brilliance that’s already in young people. So many times we think that young people are coming to us as a blank slate, but they indeed are not. They have their lived experiences. Some of them catch three and four modes of transportation just to arrive at school when some adults can’t even navigate a gate change at an airport. Okay, so like, let’s don’t act like these young people are just like, you know, they have no, there’s no knowledge that’s already there. So to affirm what’s already present in young people and then provide space so that they can show and demonstrate that brilliance is. I know that there are several people, several young people that would just thrive in an environment like that. So I just appreciate that. But then also that shift in teachers, and they’re not just teachers but educators of that. I’m not, it’s not a one-way facilitation. I’m learning from you and not just, you know, what not to do for the next class period, but I’m learning about my practice. And when we think about cell phones and AI and just the accessibility of knowledge, it’s, you can’t be just the keeper of all information. That hierarchy of who has the knowledge and who does not has to shift because it’s just antiquated at this point.

Like I said, I love that you guys are doing that out in Cheney and providing an environment that looks like that, and that doesn’t happen overnight. So can you share, Kelly, what are some of the different obstacles that you guys had to grow through to get there?

Kelly Niccolls: Yeah. Well, I’m lucky when I started here in this school district, they were working on the PLC model of the four questions. What do we want students to learn? You know, what do we do when they learn? What do we do when we don’t? And so that reflection of how their practice is responsible for student outcomes and not that students are responsible for student outcomes. And you know, that’s a big mind shift, right? Like we always come up with all the reasons why kids didn’t do or can’t do what we wanted them to do. But I really entered into a culture that was reflective of my practice, I’m responsible. There’s ways that I need to shift. There’s a community of practitioners alongside me that can support key shifts to ensure that students get what they need. And that’s first and foremost.

Student-Centered Learning and Continuous Improvement

Kelly Niccolls: I think one of the biggest barriers to liberatory assessment practices is that sense of rightness. And that the responsibility is on students when it’s all of our responsibility. That’s huge. Other things that we’ve done is really centering student-driven and growth-oriented conversations around teaching and learning and assessment. So when students set their own goals and that we trust and support those goals, great things can happen. And so, that emphasis on student-driven students at the center of everything that we do and how do we systematize to support teachers that space and opportunity to really center on each student and to give students that. There’s a lot of unlearning that they have to do, right? Because now they’re doing all the work. And so it’s like, no, you all need to set your goals. What do you, how do you want to grow? What do you want to be able to accomplish? How would you like to demonstrate your learning? And that’s a different type of rigor and responsibility that many of our students weren’t really invited into for some time and actually maybe even persuaded against.

And so it’s how do we reorient our relationship with that sense of trust and belief? And then that commitment to each other to see through those outcomes. And that impacts like timelines. How do we let go of these finite markers and timetables? How do we really think expansively around multi-age classrooms and grade levels? How do we take time and multiple points of opportunities for assessments and revisions, right? How do we refine and really think about our best examples of our brilliance versus, you know, grading periods or like this has to be in and or else, right? And I think, again, that big shift that systemically right now is our portrait work and our profile of the learner work and really thinking beyond just academic content areas and that whole child skillsets and capacities that also really make more explicit their impact as part of a learning community, but also the community at large and the future that’s ahead for our young people. And how are we earnest in our development of an entire human being with this beautiful soul and brilliant mind, and how they’re going to be good people and have a sense of purpose and value in a pretty complex and ever-changing environment. And how do they have that agency and confidence to speak their truth? And know that what they do know and know how to find out when they don’t know and really building that trust in each other. And so those are like our big goals moving forward. ‘Cause it’s beyond, you know, in the sense of like showing learning. It’s really about how am I really holding strong in everything that I do. And everything is a lot.

Victoria Andrews: And for some adults, that can all be scary. Because if I’ve never been given the opportunity to be recognized as a whole individual and not just for what I can do and what I can bring to a space, then to even try to start to create that culture for a young person can feel, oh, like you can feel inadequate. Like…

Kelly Niccolls: Yes.

Victoria Andrews: …you’re just prepared for it. You know? Like I get somebody else to do it, like not me.

Kelly Niccolls: And that’s not necessarily what we’ve known or experienced or valued in education work, right?

Victoria Andrews: Yes.

Kelly Niccolls: I showed up here, because there are timelines. There’s a start time, an end time, a lunchtime. I know when my summer break is going to be, I know what, right? Like I, the reason why I’m here is to actually have none of that flexibility or complexity. And so yeah, there’s some change work and change leadership that’s a part of that. But at the end of the day, no teacher argues against wanting what’s best for each and every one of their students. And as long as we can systematize and really organize as best as we can to support their growth and development and really model that type of quality learning experience, that rigor of continuous development for all involved, staff, students, leadership, everybody.

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

Kelly Niccolls: Then you can really build that momentum and culture of high-quality learning experiences that are really centered in the hearts, spirits, and souls of everybody.

Victoria Andrews: This is the first step.

Shorts Content

Practical Steps for Teachers

Victoria Andrews: If you are trying to move forward in a more liberatory way to support, like you said, not just the young people, but all members of the educational organization. BB, what has the journey looked like for the Mysa School when we’re thinking about all of the different ways and iterations that you guys are just improving assessment and that lived experience for young people?

BB Ntsakey: Yeah, as you all are saying, I’m like, yep, that’s what we’re doing. Right? So there’s some core principles that meet some fundamental beliefs, right? So I’m going to name some of it and give you examples, sort of illustrate what we’re talking about. So the first is that assessments, right, should be epistemic. Right? We should find out something. Right? And the thing we’re finding has to be things we don’t already know, right? Sometimes we’re like, “Hey, I know you’re a bad reader.” Do you need to test me to do that? And so the first foundation is this idea. Yeah, like you need to find out information.

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

BB Ntsakey: Underneath that, we fundamentally believe that expertise is spread across everyone, right? And so the first is we’re trying to find out something. The thing we’re trying to find out is the student’s brilliance, right? So what is the student already great at? So. If you’re asking what are the steps, that’s the second step. And then the third is the responsibility of that learning community to do no harm around the expertise and build the things kids want to learn, right? So imagine a place where you’re getting, and we’re like, kids already know things. Kids can do things. And your role here is to build on what they’re already doing. And so what that shows up as sort of year one is just really getting your assessment systems in place, right? And so we assess more informally than formally, right? Because think about when’s the last time someone said to you, “you’re going to take a formal test,” right? You bring, your heart starts to beat, right? All the things happen.

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

BB Ntsakey: To take away some of that experience that we all know. And then the second thing we do with assessments and the experience is to make sure that assessments are not happening in silos, right? So there are no surprises, right? Children know this is predictable, is to be expected. And the most critical part, and I mean listen, if you forget everything I’m saying here, the magic of the assessment experience is that it should ultimately empower the learner within that community to actually own what comes next. Right? And so it’s, we say that and people hear like this, oh, this, that sounds like a pie in the sky, right? But assessments have impact, right? Whether we are consciously driving towards that or not. And Mysa is fundamentally committed to an awareness about how this affects children and what we use their information for, which is why, right? If a school came in and said, “Hey, how are your kids doing the reading?” We can tell you. I can tell you where every single student is and they can be actually more connected to who the child is than other places where students are on track or off track. Right here we can actually tell you this student, and I’m not going to say their name, but LC, right? LC today is working on blends. That’s it. Right? That’s a very specific skill and anyone can come to LC and go, “I knew you’re doing this thing. What can we do together?” That’s when assessments are working versus the other world where we see LC and we’re like, you are the one that’s still working on this thing. How is that going? Really again, if anyone wants to really do this approach, right, begin with centering that student being epistemological, which is go find something you don’t already know and then plan…

Victoria Andrews: Hmm.

BB Ntsakey: Results, not on the recommendation. And so before we put anything in front, the kids, every single Monday, it’s because of what we learned last week. And I think that’s the thing that I want anyone to take away. Like, “Hey, is this thing kids are doing connected to the thing they did last?” I don’t mean last as in last year, I mean last week. It could be tomorrow.

Victoria Andrews: Yeah.

BB Ntsakey: It has to be relevant in the moment.

Victoria Andrews: And that whole asset-based mindset, first of all, is different for a lot of people too, because it’s not, again, we’re, they’re not coming to you as a blank slate. And how many of us have sat in meetings where it’s like we’re analyzing data from a year ago, that person’s already in the next grade or next class or whatever the case may, but it’s like it’s live that you guys are reviewing the information and making actionable decisions on that. Not waiting for two weeks, not waiting for another cycle, and it’s super personalized. I remember one time maybe we were talking and you were like, if I picked up your cell phone, I wouldn’t be able to navigate it because it’s built for you. And you know where Instagram is on your phone? I don’t know where Instagram is on your phone because you. I didn’t put it there. And so even in that small, like little example, it helped me to understand how you, the learning environment that you work in, provides assessments for students so that they can show what they know as opposed to what they don’t know.

BB Ntsakey: A general assessment will give you general information. A personalized assessment will give you personal information. So like, what information do you want to work with? Do you want to work with what’s up here or what I’m actually experiencing? And that’s why we are so intentional about making it that personal. We don’t want the general, right? Like we believe the difference is in the specific, it’s in the personal, it’s in the thing that’s connected to the reason why you two are wearing glasses. And I don’t have mine, but I got my contacts in. Right. Like, but that’s the thing. Like, and yet I wear glasses too, you know?

Victoria Andrews: What’s one nugget that both of you guys can give to our listeners that are wanting to even start their journey? Whether it’s personally or even based upon the context in which they work in to redesign their system to make it more receptive to who it’s in service to.

Kelly Niccolls: Yeah, I think don’t be afraid to start small. I think, you know, personalized attention, like if you even have, if you’re a teacher in a comprehensive high school with 200 students, start with first period. And how do you, you know, really reset the way that you engage with each one of those students. And learn from them and center their brilliance. You can start there. You know, you don’t have to like, revise everything in your entire practice and you definitely don’t need permission from your administrators. Yes, all administrators, I said that don’t seek permission. Celebrate your wins. And say sorry that you didn’t ask first, but here’s all this great evidence of the work you’ve done. I think what’s really important is to kind of humble yourself and open your heart to unlearning and letting go of what you’ve might have been conformed to understand is right. The good news is there’s like 150 years of evidence that the assessment practices that the majority of our schools subscribe to are unsuccessful at achieving any of the goals that set they set out to do. And so doing something different is automatically better than what we’ve been doing before. And I think, you know, really thinking about what’s possible with the students in front of you, that precious time that you have with them you like that question. I always like, how are they better off from their time spent with you? And not that you are determining that they’re better off, but that they can communicate to you how they feel that their lives are improved by the time spent in your learning environment. And if you don’t feel confident about the answers of what your students are sharing with you, then that’s your impetus for change.

Victoria Andrews: So. Just to recap, take a page out of Kendrick Lamar’s book. Be Humble, learn something. Sit, sit, sit all the way down. Be humble, learn and unlearn. And then just try a tiny experiment with a small group of, and when I say experiment, nothing crazy, but just try, just try something different that’s a little bit more personalized, and then take that learning and apply it in another context.

Actionable Advice for Educators

Victoria Andrews: Alright, BB, give us some gems for those that are just beginning. Don’t move a mountain. BB, I trench them shoulders. Thank you. Because I felt like you were about to give us something heavy.

BB Ntsakey: I’m going to go with the entry point. I think, so there are two things, right? To begin this process, my first most critical point will be to design a user experience. That is to say, take the children in front of you and answer the question, what is their experience coming to school and where do they want to go after school? It sounds generic and general enough, but start with understanding your student’s user experience. That is the first version of the assessment. Which is to say you’re going to learn very quickly. Some kids come to school on the bus, some walk to school, and some come after eating breakfast. That already is information that should adjust how you start your days.

So I’m using that as a cursory example for like really begin with a user experience of who’s in your school. You don’t need to do one for every single student, but you can come up with profiles, right? Like four or five that sort of represent the groups in your school. Second more difficult part is you gotta get proximate, right? So, which is to say you gotta get very, very close to working to ensure, right, that assessments have the end goal of learning. That part is, is the most difficult part, right? So let’s say for example, right, you did the first assessment, I talked about you, you come up with your user journeys and then your next step you’re like, alright, and now we’re adopting this curriculum. No. We’re taking that and saying to children, given what I know about you, what do you need to be successful? For reading, just like a mind shift around the principle. So the first principle is you, user journeys are really important. User experiences matter. The second is to ensure that the goal of all the assessments is to learn about students and then come back to those children. If we do that, and when we do that right, we lower the threshold that I experience around what assessment is and what it can be, and kids can begin to say, yeah, let’s see what I’ve learned. Right? That’s what we want kids to say, like, let’s see what we can do. That’s where, for me, I think people should keep as they go through this process and thank you for not letting me give you the, the 50-page one, but yeah, start with those two.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Victoria Andrews: I think that is more than manageable. Like you said, just keeping that student-centered and truly looking at it, the user experience. And that way you can truly make it more personal and then allowing what has informed you to determine what you’re going to do next. So, I love that. I appreciate both of you guys for sharing those very actionable steps.

If you know Kelly or BB, you know that they could go and give you a whole dissertation on how to redesign your assessment journey. And if you are looking forward to redesigning your assessment journey, please connect. Reach out to both of them. They are eager to share their brilliance, and I appreciate them both for sharing about the assessment journey of where they’re both located in the different learning environments. They are truly on both ends of the coast, but there’s so much that overlaps and how they just approach young people and learning and the support not just of young people, but of adults in those spaces as well. So, thank you both for what you’ve shared. Thank you for your time. Thank you listeners, and we hope and we look forward to talking to you soon.

Thanks.

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Guest Bio

Kelly Niccolls

Kelly is an educator, facilitator and perpetual learner. She currently serves as Assistant Superintendent, Secondary & Curriculum for Coeur’ d Alene School District. Kelly started her career teaching in Southern California. After enjoying facilitating in a PBL setting, Kelly transitioned to New Tech Network, coaching schools and systems across the nation reimagine teaching and learning and then shifted to school administration in Washington State. She is a Deeper Learning Equity Fellow, driven by the relentless belief in the possible social justice in education systems. Kelly focuses her education leadership to re-imagine structures for teaching and learning as tools for liberation. She advocates and facilitates for collective voice and context for amplifying learning that seeks what can be for all participating in a learning system.

BB Ntsakey

Bennison “BB” Ntsakey is the Program Designer for Equity By Design. Previously, he served as Director of Academics and School Director at Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools, and the Principal of Community Charter School of Paterson. He served as an instructional leader at Uncommon Schools for several years and was the School Director and Manager of Teacher Leadership for Teach for America for the three years prior. He began his career in education as a Teacher, and then Lead Teacher, for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. He holds a Masters in Education (Public School Building Leadership and Organization) from Columbia University Teachers College; a Masters in Education (Education and Social Change) from the University of Miami Graduate School of Education; and a BA in English, Philosophy, and African American Studies from Syracuse University.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• Kelly Niccolls LinkedIn
• Bb Ntsakey LinkedIn