Ready to unearth the inspiring story of a powerful, historically Black institution that continues to thrive? In our latest episode, we're thrilled to bring you into the world of The Piney Woods School, a unique private boarding school steeped in history and dedication to empowering the next generation. Our esteemed guest, Will Crossley, president of Piney Woods, joins us along with our guest host Dr. Daniel Thomas, assistant professor of multicultural and urban education at Texas A&M University, to guide us through his intriguing journey and the school's resilient mission.
In our in-depth conversation, we journey into the history of Piney Woods, established in 1909 against a backdrop of an 85% illiteracy rate and the harsh racist conditions of the Deep South, and discuss how it has developed a successful entrepreneurial education approach. Fascinating real-life examples, such as students' collaboration with Brown University on an environmental research project, bring the narrative to life.
This episode doesn't just stop at education; it's about the people who make education possible. We highlight philanthropy's instrumental role in shaping the school's ethos of breaking away from the conventional factory model of education. And to wrap up our enlightening discussion, we spotlight Piney Woods' contributions to nurturing young entrepreneurs and preparing students to be the leaders of tomorrow. Don't miss this exploration of education, resilience, and empowerment through Piney Woods School's inspiring story. Prepare to be challenged, engaged, and inspired.
Ready to unearth the inspiring story of a powerful, historically Black institution that continues to thrive? In our latest episode, we're thrilled to bring you into the world of The Piney Woods School, a unique private boarding school steeped in history and dedication to empowering the next generation. Our esteemed guest, Will Crossley, president of Piney Woods, joins us along with our guest host Dr. Daniel Thomas, assistant professor of multicultural and urban education at Texas A&M University, to guide us through his intriguing journey and the school's resilient mission.
In our in-depth conversation, we journey into the history of Piney Woods, established in 1909 against a backdrop of an 85% illiteracy rate and the harsh racist conditions of the Deep South, and discuss how it has developed a successful entrepreneurial education approach. Fascinating real-life examples, such as students' collaboration with Brown University on an environmental research project, bring the narrative to life.
This episode doesn't just stop at education; it's about the people who make education possible. We highlight philanthropy's instrumental role in shaping the school's ethos of breaking away from the conventional factory model of education. And to wrap up our enlightening discussion, we spotlight Piney Woods' contributions to nurturing young entrepreneurs and preparing students to be the leaders of tomorrow. Don't miss this exploration of education, resilience, and empowerment through Piney Woods School's inspiring story. Prepare to be challenged, engaged, and inspired.
What's good everyone. I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Appetite special series about black folks and educational entrepreneurship. In this multi-part series, our goal is to highlight the enduring legacy of independent black schools and visions of new educational frontiers from black founders. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite we feature a conversation with Will Crossley, president of the Piney Woods School, one of the last remaining private, historically black boarding schools. We're joined by guest host Dr Daniel Thomas, an assistant professor of multicultural and urban education at Texas A&M University. Mr Crossley, it's nice to meet you. Good morning, good morning.
Speaker 1:Good to be with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we appreciate you coming Will. I've been trying to meet you for years. You may not know this, but so your boy, gerard Robinson, i met him. Yes, five was it five years ago at South by Southwest EDU. He's an interesting guy, right?
Speaker 1:Interesting guy He is Yeah.
Speaker 2:He was doing this talk about black charter schools and whatnot and all that, and so I chopped it up with him after his panel discussion or whatever, and he said man, my friend Will Crossley at Piney Woods got this black private school and he can't get black people to donate. It was the main part of the conversation, but it was part of the conversation, right Right. And I had heard about Piney Woods at some point in my history, growing up, or something like that. So that was you know what. I need to learn more about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, no, i appreciate that, yeah, and I appreciate you reaching out and suggesting that I share our work with more and more people. It's exactly what I look to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and is to share our work. And, yeah, i mean, i think one of the challenges that we have faced perennially, periodically, is getting the word out Right. How do we let people Most people don't know we exist or, like you said, they may have heard about us somewhere along the way.
Speaker 1:Went to a conference of Gerard and I actually met at Harvard And went to a conference with Harvard Black Alumni Society And I was talking about the work that I've done at Piney Woods And I ran into so many people who said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, i heard about this place, but it had not come to their mind for years and years and years, and so it just sort of fallen off the radar. And so we've been thinking about, you know, what are the ways that we can share the work that we're continuing to do and let people know that the legacy really continues. It's proud legacy, and so, yeah, so, no, so I'm thankful and grateful to you all for allowing us to be a part of this discussion.
Speaker 2:Those of you who come to the show, listen to the show on a regular basis. You all know that part of what I try to do is I try to pair a black author with a black entrepreneur. And this time is a little different, right, because we have someone who I know is a black author. He hasn't written a book yet. My brother, my friend, dr Daniel Thomas, is going to be doing some research and some writing on black schools and black education, and so this conversation today fits with his research and what he wants to do, and so taking a slightly different approach and helping the author on the front end get some ideas and some grounding for the research that they want to do for their book, but also want to highlight the great work of the Pineywood School and real crossly, the president there, who was our special guest. And when I think about black businesses and black entrepreneurship, i just don't think about that as the person who's starting to start up nowadays. It's also those longstanding institutions and those people who are doing the good work to make sure that our institutions black institutions more broadly remain viable from the roots that they had in the past and ongoing into the future, and so I thank you all for joining us for today's conversation.
Speaker 2:And just a quick introduction again. My good friend and I'm going to call him he's my little academic brother, all right. So Dr Daniel Thomas, and of course we have Will Crossley, president of the Pineywood School. This brother's had some interesting career experiences political appointments, he's a former school teacher, he's a lawyer, harvard educated, uva educated, and, i think, the University of Chicago too. Right To have all of those types of experiences. But then to find himself working at this black private school that many of us don't really know about, i think, is something that we all could benefit from listening to and learning about. And so, will, if you could just give us a little bit about your biography, tell us who you are and how you got to be the president of the Pineywood School.
Speaker 1:Yes, so thank you so much for having me on. I am delighted to be able to share with you and to be able to share about our work at Pineywood. I'm Will Crossley. I serve as president of Pineywood.
Speaker 1:I was born in Chicago and, as you mentioned, i've had this interesting sort of turns in my career and in my work, and education has always been important to me. My first full-time job out of graduate school was teaching and then doing work in research and policy. Later I decided to venture into law school I can tell you more about that at some point And then clerked for federal courts, had a law practice, practiced law large firms in Washington DC, and then ventured into politics and actually reconnected with Barack Obama. He was a US senator. I reconnected with him I'd met him initially way back in Chicago days and had a chance to do that And so that led to an appointment in his administration and I left Washington after all of that to come to Mississippi, to come to Pineywood's space, where I think that I'd always been destined to come. And so now I'm doing this work with the hopes that the next generation of young people will have some of the kinds of opportunities that I had and that you've had and that those listening may be familiar with.
Speaker 2:I want to know how did you find out about Pineywood's?
Speaker 1:So which time is, i suppose, the question? I was invited back on this previous. On this return, which now is nearly some 10 years ago, i was invited back to be president, but I first found about Pineywood's through our church, and so I've had some things happen in life that were I'm not even sure I appreciated how important they were when some of them were happening. I got to go to University of Chicago, harvard University, university of Virginia. I got declared for a couple of federal judges One clerkship is usually hard enough and I got to clerk at the federal district court and then the federal court of appeals. I got to work at one of the nation's largest law firms and got an appointment from the president. I had to do some amazing, amazing things, but I think my biggest sort of claim to fame and the biggest experience that made me who I am is that I received a scholarship to Pineywood's when I was 12 years old, and it was the experience that changed my life, and so that time of coming learning about Pineywood's, coming to Pineywood's, i learned through the church.
Speaker 1:It is what a friend of mine calls a mediating structure. Churches are Those institutions and communities that are not quite as big as government but are smaller, are bigger than the family but not quite as big as government, and they played a sort of role of connecting people. And so it was through our church that we first heard about Pineywood's. Someone there had a family member who had attended. The schools in Chicago were not great, They were not the greatest options. This was back in the 1980s And there were gang problems and there were all kinds of. There were a few, there were a few magnet schools, but if you were not in that group then your options were quite limited. And so we learned about Pineywood's and it changed my life.
Speaker 2:Then it will be mad because I'm hogging on the questions beginning, but then we're going to let you ask your questions, because I have to ask this. This is an important question for me, and so you talked about mediating institutions. In my mind you had what I got as an HBCU student. I just didn't get it until I was 18, 19 years old, and where I came from was a little different from you.
Speaker 2:I grew up and I was raised in what I consider to be elite white public schools, and the public school district that I grew up now is so elite that it's mostly Asian and highly aspiration. I mean, like these kids, like everybody's trying to go to Harvard. The public district is better than the private school that's five miles away. But what going to this mediating institution did for me was connect me to black community in ways that I didn't get growing up, and I imagine that it did the same thing for you, but in a slightly different way in terms of class maybe. I want to know about your journey into education. So you talked about you had the opportunity to be a school teacher. What was that like for you, and how does that play a role in you becoming who you are now as president of the Pineywood School.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think we are all products of our experiences, and then it's just a question of how do we shape and mode our future. What do we aspire to as a result of what we've experienced in the past? And so you're growing up in Chicago, you know, i just I grew up on the south side of Chicago not the best. That neighborhood called Englewood is where my, my big mama lived, and we lived with big mama, my grandmother, and so so I grew up, and I'll tell you how bad my grandmother, she would watch all. She had 15 kids, and so when she got to a certain age, all of her kids were having kids, and so she, her job became taking care of the grandkids, and so me and my cousins, we would all be at it sometime. There would be 10, 12 of us there at one time, and she had this little porch on the front of her house And we would always big mama, big mom, can we go outside, can we go outside? And she would say, okay, but you can't, you can't go off the porch, you know. And so you would see, you would see 10 kids crowded playing on this little porch in her front yard. But the reason we couldn't go off the porch was because the neighborhood was not safe, because of, you know, what was being sold in the neighborhood, because of violence in the neighborhood, all of that. And so I sort of grew up in that space.
Speaker 1:But during all that time, you know, i was, i was wanting to be successful in life, and I'd seen pictures.
Speaker 1:It was black folks.
Speaker 1:So we, we, you know, many times we see preachers and ministers, and so, you see, like a Martin Luther King or you see, i was coming up, john Lewis and all these people who are doing these things, whether it's in civil rights or whether it's in other things, and I wondered what it took to be successful.
Speaker 1:And so, and it dawned on me, that was education. And so, as I sort of moved through my own, had my own educational experiences, i wondered why is it that I had some phenomenal opportunities of Piney Woods, a university in Chicago, a Harvard University, et cetera, And some of the folks that I grew up with and I'm not talking about the folks down the street peddling things right, i'm talking about the folks who were on the porch with me, who their path was different, and so my own family, my own cousins, who didn't have those same opportunities and ended up in places where I could have been, and so I wondered about the discrepancies, the inequities and the educational opportunities that were available for for people like me, and why it was so. And so that's what drove me really to to pursue education really from the time that I was young until this day, in certain forms of fashion.
Speaker 2:So, now that we've gotten some of your your history and some of the the experiences in your life that propelled you and molded you and shaped you to be in the position that you're in now, can you give us some history of the Piney Woods school? And, as you give us this history, if you can add in there, how did Piney Woods survive Brown versus Board? Because we saw it. Listen, daniel and I do research on black sports and black education And we know what happened after Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball new release. We're done So in a lot of ways. What's special about Piney Woods to me and, i think, to Daniel in a lot of ways, is that it actually survived Brown versus Board. But before we get into that conversation, how did Piney would begin? What are the origins? What's the origin story of Piney Woods school? I think it's probably like what's the X-Men? Y'all watch, y'all know what X-Men? It's the Xavier. It's the black Xavier school for gifted, for gifted people. So tell us, tell us that origin story, that superhero origin story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Piney Woods was started by Lawrence Jones, the original founder of Piney Woods. He was himself successful in life. He, in the early 1900s, was the first graduate of his high school predominant white high school, obviously in St Joseph Missouri And he was the first black person to graduate from high school there. And then he was the only African American in his graduating class from the University of Iowa in 1907. And when he was in high school and college he read about Booker T Washington and what was happening at Tuskegee and knew the story, what was happening at Hampton and other places. And so he wondered how he could have an impact on for his people, for African Americans. And he actually came to Rankin County, Mississippi, rural Mississippi, because the literacy rates were so low over 85% illiteracy in Rankin County Mississippi, And this is the entire county, it's not just black folk And so he came to a place where he knew his craft and what he had, the way in which he had prepared himself, could be utilized, could be needed, And it was there that he saw it to start Pinewood School And he actually failed. You talked about entrepreneurship in your opening and Pinewoods is sort of the quintessential experiment in social entrepreneurship. Perhaps some ways we still are today. As you also alluded to Lawrence Jones, he couldn't get it going. He tried to partner with churches Many of our HBCUs grew out of support from the church communities And so he tried that for months and months. And he tried partnering with others in the local communities And it was actually at the end of the line of that trine and had actually taken a seat on an old log fallen log where he was doing some reading but later said he was actually contemplating returning to Iowa where he had come. He had passed up job opportunities and so forth there. Rare, a rare African American college graduate in 1907. So it was there, sitting reading, that a young boy came out of the clearance wanting to learn how to read And he invited him to sit on the log. And Lawrence Jones would later come to paraphrase that where a teacher and a student are seated upon the log, they're in Liza School And that's where we began. And Lawrence Jones invited him back the next day to learn how to read And he brought a friend And it really was each one bringing one. That allowed the space to grow And before long they had a class sitting around on fallen logs learning how to read, you know, sitting around campfire, etc. The space that they were in was actually on land that was owned by a black man, And what moved Piney Woods from fallen logs to the start of where we are today was our first major benefactor, who was actually born a slave in Mississippi Ed Turner.
Speaker 1:Ed Turner was born in Mississippi before the Civil War, born into slavery, And after the Civil War an opportunity to go north, was successful in business, came back and bought land in Mississippi and became essentially wealthy as an African American in that space, And so he donated the first log cabin schoolhouse. It was a little sheep shed there, two room log cabin, And it became the first home of Lawrence and Grace Jones, his wife Grace that joined him down from Iowa. It became the first schoolhouse for Piney Woods And it became the first boarding house for Piney Woods. They did it all in that little log cabin building. Ed Turner also donated $50. Lawrence Jones had started Piney Woods with only a dollar and 65 cents in his pocket. Ed Turner donated $50. And Ed Turner donated the first 40 acres of land to Piney Woods. And so that was the start of understanding the importance of land and agriculture and science to the work we do, And today we have over 2000 acres of land in our holdings. But it began with a black teacher, a black student and a black supporter, former slave. Yeah, that's where Piney Woods began. Oh, you asked me to tell you about Brown, I'm sorry and how he survived. So this is the amazing thing is, how do we get started in the first place? And I will tell you.
Speaker 1:Lawrence Jones had the good sense to recognize that he needed not just black support to make Piney Woods work, he needed white support. He got to have white support in Mississippi in 1907, 1909, which is our founding year to make this happen, And so he was sort of a master at that. And I think by him growing up in Missouri and Iowa, he was familiar with interacting with white people in a way that perhaps those raised in slavery or sharecropping in Mississippi did not, And so and there are a couple of texts written about this but folks would look at him sort of crazy because he would walk up and talk to white people in Mississippi, which they could have gotten you lynched. You had the gumption to just go talk to a white person, look them in the face and talk to a white person, But it was something about both his humbleness but also his boldness of being able to do that that allowed him to connect to the white community in Mississippi. He was also educated right, He was educated, and he spoke as if he was an educated person. And so he identified whites who own businesses, who own the banks and who were politically involved, etc. And he built their support really from the very start of Piney Woods, And so there were chances, there were occasions, in which individuals were talking about stringing him up when it was some of the upper class white Mississippians who put those things down before they got started, And that was because he built those relationships even before Piney Woods had gotten going well, And so that was true.
Speaker 1:As we went through the 40s and 50s and 60s and all that, that Piney Woods was always deemed as a place that was worthy to continue. One thing is just that we're just tucked away. You have to come to our campus to see it, but most people drive down the high. There's a highway that runs through our property, but they're pine trees And we're sort of hidden behind them And unless you know, we are there then, you and I. So we are sort of tucked away, which is sort of the perfect environment I would argue for raising and developing the minds of black children, where they can really focus on themselves and not on the world around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. I appreciate how you said raising and developing, Because I think that that's something. I don't have a boarding school experience, but I would imagine that the responsibility that you have at Piney Woods is quite different from a traditional K through 12 public school, a charter school or even a private school where kids go home afterwards Like all are literally raising minds. So I think it was perfect that you added that statement there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i mean one of the things about our history, one of the things about our history that is so amazing and profound, is Piney Woods historically black throughout our entire existence, but it's never been exclusively Black. Piney Woods has always been a space of opportunity for folks I like to refer to as undervalued by society at large, and so that throughout our history has included whites. It's included, you know, the Latino, brown, it's included, asian. We just, we've always been a diverse institution.
Speaker 1:In the 1920s and 1930s there was a group that began called the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Speaker 1:That went on to fame and was, a few years back, celebrated by the, about 10 years ago, celebrated by the Smithsonian on what would have been their 75th anniversary.
Speaker 1:But it was the first interracial all girls jazz band in the United States, and it was founded at Piney Woods. And so Piney Woods was this, this kind of safe haven, this kind of space tucked away from challenges of segregation and Jim Crowism, and indeed, the times in which Lawrence Jones's life was most threatened And one time with the literally a noose around his neck And were times when he was not on the Piney Woods campus, it was when he had gone out to do things in the community And so and so, anyway, so that so there's this, there's this history and this uniqueness about investing in people. That's core to what we do. And so Lawrence Jones would talk about cultivating and orchard for humanity, which was bringing into the work that we do in agriculture. We have a 250 acre demonstration farm and the work that we do with people, the work we do on the land and the work we do with people And in many ways we still do that today. It's about leadership or for future generations, and it always has been.
Speaker 3:So I'll jump in now and segue a little bit, but I want to start with a little bit of my autobiography to look at, like, the complexity of three black men on this podcast talking right now and bring those three together to kind of set up how we think about private or independent schools presently in the dominant narrative And then we'll kind of see how we juxtapose that with what we see happening at your school, mr Crossley. So Dr Clark talked about this predominantly white and suburban area and you gave context on predominantly black inner city experience in Chicago. I have a third layer to that That's not like either of those two. I'm from Prince George's County. Maryland Today is known as like the wealthiest, predominantly black region in the country. So I grew up in the suburbs about 25, 30 minutes south of Washington DC, but it was all black.
Speaker 3:If anybody has seen the movie The Sandlot, my childhood was very much like the sandlot. So it wasn't so much that you couldn't leave the stoop, it was your garage door and open You grab your bicycle, you pedal down the street, you knock on your neighbor's door, you know, asking if everybody can come out and play, and we literally had a lot and we would just be outside all day playing together And people have gone on to do great things like football players. Joe Hayden probably will end up being a Hall of Fame cornerback. How Arrington lived down the street won a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots. Ricky Burton is a pastor, has his own church, so it was. It's quite different. Look at the complexity of all three of our upbringings. But then when you start looking at the schools as well, even though that was the context of our neighborhood, our schools still were not thriving And people were still looking for a conduit to get their students or to get their children not in Prince George's County public schools but to get them into independent and private schools, and it wasn't anything like Piney Woods. They were trying to get them into predominantly white and private Catholic schools. So, as listeners are hearing this right now when I say names like Dematha, high School, good Council, gonzaga, right, those are ringing bells And those are historically white enclaves. Some of them were created in the 1880s, 1890s. Some of the more recent ones were created leading up to or just after the Brown decision. People are trying to create these all white enclaves to make sure that their own white children don't have any contact with black students. So very different context. So when I grew up, a lot of people were trying to get their kids into these predominantly white and private Catholic schools.
Speaker 3:So I did two studies, right. I did one looking at the experiences of black boys in a predominantly white private school that was created in the 1950s, right, and at that time it was about 12 of them in that school. All right, 12 black boys in the school of about 600. And they were the only black students in the school period. So if you think about, or the only black presence in the school period, so if you think about administrators, secretaries, cafeteria workers, custodians, teachers, everything, it was only these 12 black boys. So they really had a deeply problematic experience. They never saw themselves represented in the curriculum, as you can, as you could imagine.
Speaker 3:And I did another study, my dissertation was looking at black male teachers who were working in predominantly white private independent schools And they were, for the most part, they were the only black teacher in the building And they went through great lengths I mean, some of them are taken five, seven, almost a decade to get the only black history or black literature class taught in the school building And they're typically also the only conduit to help recruit and retain and graduate black students in these spaces, right?
Speaker 3:So very different type of black, very different type of independent school going on here. So when you hear that that's kind of like the dominant narrative of what people think about in other places about independent schools, i didn't even know about Piney Woods or these black led independent schools until a couple of years ago, right? So how would you describe the demographics of the student population there and the experience of black students relative to the way that many other folks right Like? we kind of know that there's only about well less than a dozen of the black led independent schools in existence, so a lot of people are having these experiences in predominantly white spaces if they're going to independent or private schools. So can you say a little bit about the experience of black students and teachers in those spaces?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know, we actually just sort of tackled this a little bit on at our institution, piney Woods, as we were looking at we were looking at our mission, and our mission didn't say anything about being historically black or predominantly black. The word black wasn't even present And we kind of thought about it a little bit. One, we didn't want to appear exclusive, because we have never been exclusively black, as I referenced earlier. But secondly, we thought that there were things other than the fact that we were black that were important, and so it was just a process of where do you, where do you sort of place this? And we landed on including it. And so our mission is Piney Woods prepares leaders for tomorrow's challenges by empowering learners, and we do that through this holistic approach that educates the head, the heart, the hands. But we also do it in a community that we call faith inspired and that we say has an African American ethos. And we think that the experience and the culture and traditions and you know, the challenge is the fact that we are an African American institution is important, not just for us, but it's an important and important experience for people of any race to actually benefit from. Right, there are things about the black experience in America, things like resilience, that anybody can benefit from, understanding and knowing and appreciating and being developed within, and so we decided to be very forward and up front about that question. I think what's so important this is true for HBCU experiences too, but I think what's so important about it particularly kids at the age of we started, age 13. And so kids between the ages of 13 and 17, 18, roughly in there I think what's so important is to be raised in, to be developed. What's so important is to be developed in this environment where you're not the only one right, where you're not We.
Speaker 1:Actually, when I was you can include this and not include this in my case, but when I was here in DC, we actually lived in Bethesda. I still have a home in Bethesda. I'm actually in DC as we speak. I know Prince George's County Well. We're at home in Bethesda and my kids went to Montgomery County schools and they were touting all their diversity And they are diverse, but a lot of their diverse is because they're diplomats that live out there. They're people from all around the country And so you know. But I'm going to tell you Black white diversity is a different kind of diversity in America, given just our history and our experience of who we are as a country. And often my daughter found herself the only African American in her in her class And we actually moved her to a private school, still here in this area, and she had more quote unquote Black folk in her private school classes that she had had in what was supposed to be an extraordinarily diverse public system And that was helpful to her and empowering to her.
Speaker 1:But here's how I like to think of it. I'll tell you a scenario, and you know, when I was practicing law, one of the things I made time for was to take my daughter to soccer, soccer practice, soccer games, and we would go and her team was unfortunately not very good. They lost most of their games And but we were, we were fine, and the thing about it was that I looked back on it later, you know the ball was always down on their end of the field And, as a result, they were always playing defense The other team. Sometimes it would just be pure luck. Somebody would almost accidentally kick the ball and it would roll the right way and go into the goal.
Speaker 1:But that never happened for my daughter's team because they were always on defense, and I think about our work at Piney Woods in that way that young people who come to us, you come into a space where your culture is now the predominant culture.
Speaker 1:Right, the kind of music you listen to is now predominantly the kind of music that everyone else on campus listens to. Right, the history is familiar, and all the things that make up what we call the African-American ethos is yours, and so you're not no longer in a position where you have to now adapt everything that you know in the way that you grew up. And as it was true for my daughter's soccer team when they kept losing game, it's true for our children, it's true for black children, that if you are always on defense, it's really hard to put points on the scoreboard, and so we create an environment where you can just be who you are, right, You don't have to function in a defensive mode, and that's. You can't find that everywhere. That's a unique thing that we're able to offer our young people. No, that's powerful.
Speaker 3:I love that analogy of always being on defense. Yeah, that was good.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering about like what is it? What is it like to be a teacher at the Pineywood School? In my mind, what you're going to tell us is to be very different than the experience that Daniel shared about these, these black teacher coaches who had to take 10 years to get the black literature class in the white Catholic school to be adopted.
Speaker 3:And before you answer that, i had pulled this up too. It's just looking at a few things. So the Pineywood Summer Reading List for 2022. And a lot of the books on this list in public schools. If you're in Florida, for example, or tech, they're banned right now.
Speaker 3:Or if you're the teachers who are in those predominantly white private schools I was. These are the type of texts that they almost took a decade trying to get a class to teach. I'll just say like a few of the titles and then kind of give us your sense on the black teachers experience there. But some of the books were Native Son by Richard Wright, the Hate You Give by Auntie Thomas That book is definitely banned right now in Florida and Lorraine Hansberry's classic, a Raisin in the Sun, right. So these are some of the the texts and there are others there that were on the Summer Reading List. But, mr Crossey, take on the teacher's experience to have that type of curricular freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's interesting you asked, and getting time back to the sort of notion of entrepreneurship, you know, i think part of what we're doing that Pineywood is preparing our youth, our young people, to be entrepreneurs. I think an entrepreneurial state of mind is going to be necessary for young people to be successful, especially as we think about AI and what's happening in technology and this movement away from, you know, the GEs or you know sort of big assembly line type corporations that that's only going to accelerate, right. And so, as we do that, you know how we creating young people who can be entrepreneurial, not just in what they do, but in how they think and how they approach the world. And Pineywoods was sort of started that way. Pineywoods was started that way, and I think we have to pattern that. I think we have to practice that for young people. And so what I look for in our staff is I look for someone who wants an entrepreneurial opportunity to invest in, you know, this next generation of leaders. And if you want to be, if you want, if you want an entrepreneur opportunity, pineywoods is a perfect place to do it.
Speaker 1:We provide our staff with curriculum and a set of standards. Right, there's curriculum from which they can pull, but we also allow them to decide if they want to teach a particular subject using a certain kind of material or whether they want to focus on something else. The reason I talk about the entrepreneurship approach is that, ultimately, i think what we've got to give young people, what we've always done at Pineywoods, really is it's been about the development of certain skills. The content can be subbed in and subbed out, but the skill development whether that's a cognitive skill development or whether that's certain kinds of vocational skills we focus on skills. I mean, in cognitive skill development you're talking about helping young people have experiences, analysis, doing certain kinds of comparisons, being at their critical thinking development, all of the cognitive skill development which we know we use in college, in grad school, in life and in work, and the subject matter changes. The subject matter is different.
Speaker 1:So perhaps the best way is to give an example.
Speaker 1:The curriculum materials that we made available had a lesson about Chicano poetry And there were certain skills. There were certain skills and that particular was an English course and there were certain skills that we wanted our us to use and we wanted to make sure the kids got those skills. The skills were the key. It was an understanding of the different practices that one can use, and so alliteration or rhyming, or you pick your that you use in poetry, and so that was the key, and so it just turned out that the substance was from the Chicano experience. Well, our teacher decided to sub out the Chicano authors for Maya Angelo, for Langston Hughes, for Niki Giovanni, et cetera, and so it really gave them the opportunity to go after those particular skills and ensure the kids had those skills, but do it in a context in which we would also be exposing our young people to the rich history and culture of who we are, who they are, and so that kind of flexibility, that kind of freedom, is just really core to who we are.
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Speaker 1:If Pineywood stands for anything, you know, we stand for freedom. Lawrence Jones, our founder, said to the first incoming class I called him you've come here for freedom, not from the kind of slavery your parents endured, but freedom from the slavery of ignorance of your mind. So freedom runs deep to the core of who we are. Mind you, we're a boarding institution and so all our kids want freedom. But we also say to them we'll give you as much freedom, as much freedom as you want, but understand, freedom is not free. This is my own, i added this. Lawrence Jones didn't say this, but I tell him I said freedom's not free. It costs something. And what does it cost? It costs responsibility. They go together that the more responsible you are, the more freedom you earn. Right That the more irresponsible you are, the more restricted your freedom becomes. And so we have those bedfellows of freedom and responsibility that really govern how we operate every day on our campus.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to do I'm going to do a shameless plug for my other podcast, okay, so in my other podcast it's called the African Americans in Sport Pod Class and had the opportunity to interview a brother by the name of Canaan Severin. Now what's interesting is that Canaan played football at UVA, so he's a UVA alum. It's also interesting because he made it to the league and it fell. He had three years, so he did this totally for a little while. He works in tech right now. I think he works for Coinbase. I think, yeah, i think he works for Coinbase. Now, what's interesting about Canaan is that Canaan is on the board of the Worcester Academy, and Worcester is one of those elite white private schools, i think, in Connecticut or something like that.
Speaker 1:No, i just said might be Massachusetts. I know this was the Massachusetts.
Speaker 2:I think it is Massachusetts, right, what are those New England states? But it's up there, right, we're all the old original presidents and colonizers were and all that stuff. So the history of this school goes way back and he tells me about, like you know, when he got there, they cared about his football abilities, but they didn't really care about his football abilities And they were like, when you come here, we expect you to be able to be in the C-suite to do well academically This, that and the third. He got the whole. He got that positive pressure to do well in all things. And now he's on the board of the school and I see that as him being accelerated. So he didn't just get a typical schooling experience, he got an experience above and beyond what the normal average person gets, regardless of where.
Speaker 2:Even if you went to the school district I went to, i don't have the opportunity to be on the board of a school that raises the minds of billionaires, kids and things like that, right. So talk a little bit about what Piney Woods does to accelerate students who go there. In this, i wouldn't say isolated is not the word I want to use. I want to say it's like a womb, right. How does the womb that that Piney Wood is create enduring opportunities for acceleration of of its students?
Speaker 1:You know, i, i just I think so much of the world. We talked earlier about this notion of living life on defense and sadly, in many of our communities that's a reality for many of our young people. I don't I've not done the research I imagine that that does a number on one psyche And I think that one of the things that Piney Woods does best, one of the things that's perhaps a most defining about who we are, is the sense of resilience that Piney Woods instills and inculcates in our young people. But it's also the sense of resilience that we live as an intuition that you can almost think of it as Piney Woods is this living, breathing thing And look, you've got to come to campus to experience that. It is. Everyone tells me, i still feel it myself, but it's, it's just palpable. You can, you can sort of feel the spirit of this place, stand on the grounds and and this sense of resilience, that's a part of who we are. And so how we do that, the start of everything we do is affirmation. Our young people come to us from all over the world. We have young people from Mississippi, but actually less than a third, probably just child third of our kids are from Mississippi. Most of our kids are from somewhere else. We have kids from Atlanta and Baltimore and Los Angeles and going around the country, but we have kids from South Africa and Rwanda and Ethiopia and Brazil and going around the world.
Speaker 1:And the first thing we do when young people come is we focus on affirming them, and we do it over and over at the start of every year. One way. One way we do that is just to remind them that they were specifically invited into this space. Pioneer is private institution. No one can tell us who has to come, no one can tell us who has to stay, and so everyone is there by invitation And so not everyone gets invited. And at the start of every year, i remind our students new and, you know, returning students that they were specifically invited. Sadly, some years we have students who we don't invite to return, but new and returning students. They were specifically invited to be there, so they belong there. And then, secondly, i remind them that Piney Woods was actually built specifically for them, no one else. And it's true, right.
Speaker 1:And so when you know that, when you understand that and that runs deep to your core, that this is yours, right, that you own this space. That's a different, you know. That's a different walk, and that's the reason we, you know, we ask our kids not to wear hoodies on campus, and it's not a cultural thing, it's not a fashion thing, it's only because I want our kids to hold their heads high. I don't want them something draped over and they're walking with their head hung down and they're all. I just take the hood off, stand proudly, head high, chest out. This is yours, this is your space, and we want you to own it and we want you to help us cultivate and curate it for its future.
Speaker 1:And so every morning, we have a gathering, every morning at Piney Woods, where we talk about how to live life exponentially. And life is an acronym that stands for love, integrity, faith, excellence and empowerment. And so we talk about living life exponentially. We it's not mathematically accurate, but we spell life. It has two e's, and so we, just we square it at the end instead of and when we talk about living life exponentially and and doing it through those values and those and those principles, and this is, this is daily for us. It's the same kind of affirmation I gave my, my daughters, when they were going off to school in the morning about who they were and they were walking. They were walking into a predominantly white environment and I had to remind them of who they were and what they were capable of And, yes, what their job were, what their responsibilities were and all of that. And we do the same thing for our young people at Piney Woods every single day, and so that that kind of that kind of environment gives us an opportunity to really speak life into our young people, we spend a lot of time. Our kids love it, i love it. I never get tired of Howard Thurman's. No, if you all are familiar with Howard Thurman's theologian and this, this one of my heart I introduced this last year to our kids and one of them who spoke at graduation used it in her graduation.
Speaker 1:His quote, howard Thurman's quote don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. That's a grounding quote for us, that we want our young people to find those things which excite them, which they're passionate about, which will drive them forward, and to pursue those things in life. And we'll figure out the other. And I tell young people I'm spoiled right, because I get to do that every day. I'm doing it right now in this podcast with you. Right, i get to talk about something that runs core to who I am and really gives me life, excites me. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not excited about what we're building and what we're pursuing and who's coming to be a part of it. I want every young person to have that, to have that excitement, to have that joy, to have that passion to pursue that, and so we focus on that. There's plenty of opportunity to focus on statistics that say what you can't and what you aren't, and you know. But statistics are a whole nother piece. We don't spend time with that. We spend time building our young people for what they are to become, so that when they leave us, that's what they know.
Speaker 1:When I went to the University of Chicago as another graduate student, that's what I was, because I had gone to Piney Woods. I had gone to Piney Woods. They said it differently back then. The president of Piney Woods would tell us every day He'd go to the. We have dinner together every day. It's a communal time. And so he'd go to the microphone and he'd say you're just as good as anybody else. You can compete with anybody else in the world. Don't let anybody ever tell you that. He would tell us every day, every day. So when I got to the University of Chicago, he asked me earlier about my experience in education, why it drives me.
Speaker 1:I got to the University of Chicago and I had come out of Piney Woods where I was making straight A's and I was involved in sports and I was president of the government, on and on and on. But it was also a smaller, all black environment. So I got to the University of Chicago, which was 3% black. When I was a student there, back in 19 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes from my big mama's house, worlds apart, i didn't know what University of Chicago was. Growing up, i thought it was like an abandoned castle because it's right near the museum district. So I was like, oh, they never took that down, so you must tour that because they got these Gothic buildings and these guys right. And so I didn't. I had no idea. And I got there and it really hit me in my face And there was no amount of academic preparation.
Speaker 1:I think that I could have run to in that moment. That would have helped me survive the University of Chicago, there was only this sense of resilience and perseverance and this understanding of who I was, and so I realized that some people had had 10 plus years more experience at certain things than I did. Some people were. When I was at University of Chicago, people were testing out of foreign languages and certain college credits, et cetera. There was no way for me to get, for me to catch up on that right.
Speaker 1:However, that's not what I needed in that moment. What I needed was to remember that I was just as good as anybody else, as I've been told for years, and so what I decided? what I decided is that someone may have had more preparation than me, but Piney Woods had taught me that no one, no one, would ever outwork me. And so if I had to stay up late at night, if I had to not sleep that night, if whatever it required, no one was ever gonna outwork me. And so I did the work.
Speaker 1:I did the work because that was something Piney Woods had gave me, and I never gave up, even though there were some challenging times. I finished graduated with honors and I did fine, but it wasn't because I'd had the same level of preparation and AP courses and all that kind of stuff that some of my counterparts had had. It was because I had this sense of resilience, i had this sense of meaning and preparation, and it was because periodically we still do this today. People from Piney Woods would send me a note while I was in college that said we're proud of you, we're counting on you, keep up the good work. And so in those moments I knew that I had not just the freedom to go to University of Chicago, but I had the responsibility to excel while I was there, because somebody was counting on me.
Speaker 2:Daniel, i know you wanna jump in but I hit unmute first. So Go ahead, go ahead. I hit unmute first so I get the response at first, because so far I think this is my favorite part of the conversation. I appreciate all the things that you said, but getting your story and how Piney Woods poured into you and prepared you for your experience at University of Chicago, i think about. I told you about the type of school I went to, the district I was in public school district, predominantly white, better than the private school, i think, about the outcomes of black males For the type of school district I grew up in. I think our parents thought the black parents thought that the outcomes for the black males would be more like you or more like me or more like Daniel. overall. That's not the case.
Speaker 2:My brother has schizophrenia. he lives with my mom. I have a friend who was in the same grade as I am. Her brother was between my brother and us. He's like a year older than us. He has schizophrenia. he died. he was out on the streets.
Speaker 2:I got other guys who didn't go to college, didn't finish. I'm not saying they're not doing well. I would say they didn't meet the expectation for the acceleration that we thought we were gonna get by going to the district we were in. And so it's almost like you have this group of us who are doing really well My best friend, ricky Naval Academy. he just finished war college, he's about to move his family to Italy. He's doing fantastic. Then you have this other group of guys who just they're just all right.
Speaker 2:But then there's this other thing where there's this assimilation that happened among many of us. I think the perceived social contract for the assimilation is that if you assimilate then you get to accelerate. But there was the assimilation without the acceleration. I'm like these guys, like you are one of the bros in high school but you're not VP of the bank, like the white guys are. You were one of the bros in high school, but you don't have your NBA from Duke or Chicago or wherever, like the bros in high school. So what happened? And so to me, i appreciate your story because I think sometimes, like a generation ago, my parents thought that if you just got the kids to the white school, it would be okay. And it's not. it's like the white man's ice it's not colder, it's not colder. And so the affirmations, and I would even say, the warmth and the care that you got from Pineywood is something that really should be the goal for when parents think about where they want to sit in there and sit in there and sit in their kids.
Speaker 1:So yeah, no, listen, it is love, it is integrity. Right, it is faith And, yes, that is religious. But it's not just religious. There are times you all have to know this, right There are times when things just don't make logical sense and you've got to power through something, you've got to fight to overcome something and you've got to fight for something bigger than yourself, and so. But it's all those things that run, excellent, and then there's just this sense of empowerment which, you know, i just don't think we have out in the world, i don't think our kids have out in the world. And I, you know, again, i treat kids at Pineywood's like they're my own, and so I make references to my own kids because I would always push them. You know, when they would go to school, i would tell them your job is to ask questions, that's your job to ask questions. If you come here and ask questions that you could have asked, you weren't doing your job, and that's right. But what if I ask the question and then it's already been answered? Then I said your job is to ask again. And I said and if somebody gets frustrated with you because you're asking questions, then it becomes my job. And I was telling them that, because I was trying to empower them to take their role in the learning process Right. A lot of what we do at Pineywood's and I learned this too, i mean are. The reason I have such pride about being able to do this work today is because I'm a beneficiary of this work.
Speaker 1:A pine was from our very beginning. It's been about learning by doing. It's been about experiencing the learning, and so when I was a student there many years ago, i remember going to biology class and we walked in the door and it was sort of drop everything And we all went out and they took us down to the farm and there was a veterinarian there and a pig had died and he proceeded to do an autopsy on the pig. He cut it open and he pointed out the various parts. I was trying to determine whether there was a disease which was going to take out the rest of the pigs that they had on the farm and turned out it was not. But that's an experience that I remember from 35, 36 years ago. I remember that much more than I remember anything that was written on a blackboard or it was blackboards And those days. Whiteboards are these days, and so it's the learning by doing which is so critical.
Speaker 1:And so we currently have projects that we're doing, for example, with Brown University, doing an environmental research project with Brown University where our students are serving as the research assistants on this and the data that they're collecting. We started testing water in Jackson Mississippi, 20 miles up the road. We started testing water in Jackson before anybody across the nation knew that Jackson had a water problem. We've been doing it for the last two years and just several months ago it hit national news because a lot of people lost water. We were already there, we were already testing, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is funding that, is now re-upping. So we're going into a new phase of that research with Brown University in August of this year And our kids are working as the research assistants.
Speaker 1:They are learning by doing the work, and so we're continuing to. We continue to. If you learn through discovery, you never forget that, and so if it's just about memorization, it may be there, it may not. You go back and look it up, et cetera. But we prefer to have, we prefer to discover alongside our young people, and we find we discover things about them that we didn't know, and we find that we discover things about ourselves that we didn't know, and so that's the work we're involved in every day.
Speaker 3:You got Langston ready to go ahead and send in his tuition check 15 years in advance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're gonna take a trip down to Parniwes, man, we gotta fix that now, yeah.
Speaker 3:So two things you just said. In that last one it dovetails perfectly to this next piece. So you said, one of the affirmations you say to your students is you own this space was one and this is yours was another one of those two affirmations. And that's not figurative, that's quite literal, that ownership piece.
Speaker 3:So there's a book that Langston and I read in grad school We had the same advisor, dr Anthony Brown, and take this class on like curricular history. One of the books we read is called The White Architects of Black Education by Billy Watkins, and it's looking at how people like the Rockefellers and Julius Rosenwald partnered with the Southern Education Board in the deep self to create. It's like this process of ideation. You're using curricular control to have a particular learning outcome and slot people in the economy. So it's like philanthropy coming together with education, but it was done so in an oppressive way.
Speaker 3:We are sending Black boys to school so that they can work in some type of agricultural outcome for white folks. We're sending, like my grandmother went to these Rosenwald schools and my great grandmother did too in Virginia. They went to school to learn how, supposedly to become domestic workers for white families. All right, that was the goal of the learning. But to the point that you said earlier, they were always on defense. As a scholar, vanessa Sill Walker talks about how they were always on defense in those schools, contesting that.
Speaker 3:So even though that was the goal from the philanthropists for that particular type of education to carry it out, it was always contested. So I'm fascinated if we zoomed out now and shift and look at the philanthropy side and the types of educational aims that these philanthropists are having. Like I was looking earlier saw that Charles Schultz It's not just Black folks, but you had philanthropists like Charles Schultz is coming People who don't know. Charles Schultz is the creator of Snoopy Peanuts and Charlie Brown It's contemporary figures like Kathy Hughes And you got current partnerships with Tesla. So can you say a little bit about the intersection between philanthropy and the board of directors and the type of vision ideation that's being carried out now?
Speaker 1:You raised too many points. I don't respond to them all but I'm going to try, because this is like what you just raised is why I do the work. What you just raised is why I did not. The philanthropy part Right. The philanthropy part is how we get to do the work. People support us in what we do, but this notion that our education I'm fairly radical in my thinking put that out there.
Speaker 1:I think our education systems are completely broken in this country And I don't just think it's about white architects of Black education. I think it's about the architecture of education in this country. Writ large, i think public schools by and large, say, will assemble a group of kids that can outperform kids in the private schools, but they're really doing the same thing. The architecture of what they're doing is the same thing. They just curate a group of folks that got more money and more resources and can get a head start, and but the education is completely broken in this country. Why do this work? Because we got it all back, because education in this country was founded for the very reason that you mentioned. It was to put people in factories Right, and so we got rid of the bails at Piney Woods because we don't want people waiting for a bail to ring before they start to think about the next thing, or telling them, right, when they're immersed in thought on this thing, that they have to stop because of some artificial timeline or time limit that tells them it's break time, right? That tells them, ok, you can go to lunch now We know when we're hungry And so we're just like. How do we eliminate this factory model of grooming people to be this certain thing? So when people tell me, well, we don't have enough plumbers in this country, why don't you just get a bunch of kids and teach them how to be plumbers and they'll have a job? But then that cuts against the lesson of Howard Thurman Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go. Do that, because what the world needs is for people to come alive.
Speaker 1:And so what we do is we focus on helping our young people develop who they are and the passions that they have and that they can bring and impact the world. And that's just a very, very different approach in terms of what we do. And so how do we break that down? Because education is individual. We owe it to our young people, to remove them from this mass production style approach to how we educate in this country and think about what is the personalized, individualized approach that will help them not just develop cognitive skills and all of those pieces, but that will help them become who they were truly intended to be as individuals, as people right, who will then have an impact on other people, who will then have an impact on their community, who will then be entrepreneurial in how they approach the world. And you can be entrepreneurial. You can sit in a government office and be entrepreneurial, or you can go to Silicon Valley and be entrepreneurial, because there are problems to be solved in all those places And it's the people with the entrepreneurial state of mind that are going to bring solutions to those problems. And so we use what we do at Pinewoods as a platform for how we can develop that, how we can facilitate that kind of growth and development in our young people.
Speaker 1:In terms of the philanthropy, we do what we do and we reach out to people to tell them about it And we hope that they will support us because we think what we're doing is the exact right thing that we should be doing. That's what Pinewoods has done for 114 years, and it's what we continue to do today. But we've had our run at some of this. We had some because it was the order of the day. This was how education was in this country. But the very founding of Pinewoods the thought that you could go into a space where it was illegal, literally, where people were being lynched for educating Black people, black kids, and start a school And you could somehow for NATO, the local community, for NATO, whites and Black all and get support. And so we've gotten support from across the spectrum for the work that we do. And so, yes, we had this venture with Tesla. This was a few years ago as we were starting to do a solar array on our campus, but that again just comes out of part of who we are. So part of what we want to do is teach people how to be both sustainable and regenerative, and so we do that.
Speaker 1:We have our own water system on our campus which we invest in and renew over time, but we run it, we control it. We have our own sewer system on our campus which we own and control. I have people who come to me and ask me if they can deliver their waste into our sewer system because we're not at full capacity for the amount of waste that our system can handle, and so we have our own. that's a whole another conversation. A whole another discussion.
Speaker 1:We have a farm where we grow food. We have a farmer's market that we've just gotten renewed Again. Our kids will be running a farmer's market in the fall, but we've already kicked it off with our summer group this summer and our staff that are on the farm. But we also grow food that we then supply to our own dining services on campus, and so we thought we have our own water, we have our own food and we order some food. It's not at the level I'd like it to be at. We're probably at 20, 25%. I'd like to scale that up where we've got 50% coming from our land And then maybe we're ordering some things in that it doesn't make sense for us to. But so how can we be more sustainable in that way? And our largest cost was electricity, was power. It's just going up because kids bring full five devices with them when they come right, these things, they plug up and charge it up And then you put that over the whole campus and it gets expensive. And so now we're doing 25% of our own power through a solar array that Tesla gave us panels for and a foundation gave us construction dollars to put in.
Speaker 1:And then, yes, we have people like Cathy Hughes. I mean her time in Washington DC as we speak. She has a long legacy of Pineywood. Talk about entrepreneurship. Cathy Hughes is the granddaughter of our founder, lawrence E Jones, and so Piney Woods was an entrepreneurial endeavor for him. His daughter, helen Jones Woods. She was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which I told you about, and later became an independent Trabonist And then later became a nurse. But her daughter, cathy Hughes, started radio one and TV one and now Urban One, their family of companies, and we could go on down the line.
Speaker 1:All of these individuals. They support Piney Woods because of what we do and because of their support for it, and so we're independent. Most of our students receive some level of scholarship the sliding scale and so, depending on how their parents do, we ask parents to contribute more or we contribute more from our donor community. But we're independent And no one can tell us who we have to take. No one can tell us the curriculum we have to run. We get to decide all of that And our donor community gets to decide to support us or not, and there's some people who we may not be the right fit for, but we're thankful that we've gotten people who folks would say are conservative, who support us because they like our independence, because they like the lessons that we teach, because of who we are, and so I don't vet our donors or the relationships that we're going to have. I hope everybody will learn something from Piney Woods and will decide hey, we need to implement a little bit of that in our school, and that's whether you're in a high wealth school district or you're in a low income school district, or whether you're in a black school district or a white school.
Speaker 1:I think what we're teaching is a way of life. It's a way of facilitating the development of human beings that can impact every single individual in this country, And so we're doing what we do the void of the partisanship and political challenges that we face every day. Someone had this way off topic here, but folk had to ask me well, what do you think about Black Lives Matter? And I said, look, we've been doing Black Lives Matter for 114 years, right, and we're going to continue to do it. It's the whole reason we've existed. The question answers itself, really, if you understand who Piney Woods is and why we do the work that we do.
Speaker 3:No, mr Crossley, I really appreciate that response. It already answered something else that I was going to follow up with. But at this current moment a lot of people are, i think, trying to do what Piney Woods has been doing for over a century. People are trying to return to that. They're pivoting away from public schools and trying to get into like Jeffrey Canada's, trying to get into this charter school space entrepreneurially and through the Harlem Children's Zone in New York.
Speaker 3:And then when I did an analysis of the curriculum there particular social studies curriculum and it's the same thing. It's the same thing that they're already doing in the public schools. They're just doing it in a nicer building and in uniforms. See, people are trying to do it in Montessori schools, but in many ways it's a co-dependent relationship. They need the state, they have to do certain things in the classrooms, abide by certain norms, where they're not going to have the freedom to do some of the innovative things you're doing at Piney Woods. And so I think increasingly, a lot of folks are going to try to shift into this independent school model, to have this freedom, to have this ownership and to be able to act entrepreneurially, as you described. So I definitely appreciate that response.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we started. I don't know if we got this only recorded or not. I can't remember if that was part of the initial conversation, if I hadn't recorded yet, But I mentioned that. You know, me and my wife had talked about when we have kids, sending our children to Piney Woods or a black boarding school in general, and so the question I have for you is why should someone send their children to Piney Woods?
Speaker 1:It's really just about who we are. I was watching a conversation of billionaires the other day and they were like the ass in the world of AI. What are the most important things that young people coming along could be doing and learning and developing at this time? And, in short, the answers that they gave sounded a lot like Pineywoods. It sounded a lot like what we've been doing for a long time and what we continue to do, what we continue to do today. Let me start by saying I don't think Pineywoods is for everyone, because they don't think everyone's ready for who we are and what we do. We are not conventional and some folks are looking for the public school, but a little bit better, and if that's what you're looking for, we may not be it. But if you have a young person, if you are a young person who happens to think that you have this sort of deep well, this potential that you're not being able to fully realize because of the circumstances of your neighborhood, because of circumstances maybe in your home, because of circumstances in your school, whatever the case may be, pineywoods may be a space for you.
Speaker 1:I think of our work very much as bringing opportunity that will allow young people to excel beyond where they are. Think of our work as investing in young people in ways that will allow them to express the dividends of that while they're with us and certainly long after they leave us. And this was what we did in 1909 when we were first founded. That Lawrence Jones, our founder, had the audacity to think that these folks that others said couldn't read, couldn't learn, couldn't add, etc. He proved them wrong. And so we see young people every year who are being told what they're not and what they can't and the limitations that they have. And Pineywoods exists to prove that wrong. We exist to be this safe haven where young people can be developed and cultivated, to show the world what they're capable of, so that when they leave us, they do go out into the world and they do compete with anybody else on anything that drives their heart and that they're passionate about, and allowing them to have a great impact on the world.
Speaker 1:And so if there's a parent, there's a student that's looking for that kind of an opportunity, i can think of no better place If there's a parent or a student that's looking for a space that's going to give their young person the kind of resilience that allows their young person to continue to get back up when they get knocked down, continue to strive even when they don't reach the goal the first time. There's no better place. Pineywoods has been hit by six tornadoes throughout our existence The one since I've been there I'm still recuperating from a tornado a couple years ago And every time we fight back, every time we come back, every time we eventually succeed and continue to have impact on the world. That's what we teach, that's what we live, that's who we are, and if there's a parent or there's a young person who wants to be a part of that, we're waiting to hear from them. We're at wwwpineywoodsorg.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for taking the time to speak with Daniel and I. We will be in contact, for sure, because at some point we're going to come visit Pineywoods, because I think it's a place that we probably don't get the full scope of what it is unless we're there.
Speaker 1:We would love, love, love to have you. We would love to have you, Daniel.
Speaker 2:do you have anything you want to add before we sign off?
Speaker 3:I don't have children yet, but I'm excited to have them go to a school like Pineywoods. Thank you so much, mr Crossey, for your time. Again, pineywoods and other schools similar to it is something that I have just learned about within the last few years, so this is new. This is refreshing to me. I wish I had access or knew something about this for my own educational experience. So thank you so much for being so, given your time with us today.
Speaker 1:And I would just say, just for your research, it's not necessary for the pocket, but you can. I don't care if you include that, but you know there were over 100 institutions like Pineywoods throughout the South and Southeast after, after civil war, Wow, and many of them lost their independence, right, they essentially became state schools, state funded schools, and Pineywoods has received some of that some points in the past, but many of them lost their independence and eventually have gone away. And I think it's our independence that's really allowed us to continue to be here and continue to do the work. And so, again, that notion of entrepreneurship and independence is, i think, critical to our survival and will be to those who are attempting to found the next thing.
Speaker 1:Now, where do you find the money? That's always the question And it's still a question for us. You know I'm here fundraising. You know everywhere I go I'm fundraising. But but you know I'm fundraising for the thing that I know works and the thing that that I've lived And. And it's a whole lot easier to do that when you're independent, quite frankly, because one people recognize the challenges you will have. Because I don't, you know, i don't get a state education. I do get grant funds and these kinds of things for our farm work and some of the other things we're doing, but but I don't get education dollars. So so people recognize that And and then I would say we don't turn up. The ability to pay is not a is not a factor under consideration for anything we do. If there's a young person of good character and great promise, we find a way to get them there. I'll find the donor, i'll find the dollars to have the flexibility and freedom to be able to do that is just an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 2:Thank you again. Will Thank you for joining this edition of entrepreneurial appetite. If you like the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. give us five stars and leave a comment.