Today we’d like to introduce you to Ray James.
Hi Ray, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your back story.
I grew up in the small, but mighty, town of Monroe, LA (hometown of Delta Airlines & Huey P. Newton). I was blessed to have a stable environment with my mom and dad both present and engaged in my daily upbringing. After high school, I attended LSU for both undergrad and master’s degrees. While in graduate school and working in higher education admin, I realized the extreme gap and dire need for Black males in schools.
I applied and got accepted into Teach for America, Metro Atlanta. Since starting as a classroom teacher in Clayton County Public Schools, I’ve worked and led in schools in KIPP Metro Atlanta, APS turn-around schools, and KIPP New Jersey. In 2020, I had the pleasure of coming back to ATL to support the founding of KIPP Soul Academy here in Atlanta as the Assistant Principal of Humanities. Since then, I’ve been a consultant with 2Revolutions, a national education design lab that focuses on deeper learning and competency-based education. In October, I proudly joined the Boyce L. Ansley School as Head of School. We are a tuition-free private school for children who have or are currently experiencing homelessness in our city.
Our mission is to not only be a school that provides the needed holistic family wrap-around services and wellness support to our children and their entire families – but most importantly, provide a world-class educational experience that allows our students to move beyond their current circumstances and into pathways and avenues for economic mobility! Most important to who I am, I’m Christian, the husband to a beautiful educator who leads academics at the Atlanta Speech School, and we are the parents of a recently turned 8-year-old and a soon-to-be 3-year-old!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve experienced many obstacles that I’ve been conscious of. Most of which stem from my upbringing in public schools in small-town (and low-income) Louisiana. Since I was simply “doing school,” I never realized the true purpose of education. However, as a teacher and pseudo-researcher, I quickly realized that schools in Louisiana (state # 46 in education, #50 overall), due to funding and many vestiges of old, simply do not equip children with the needed skills and knowledge to actualize dreams. It’s one of the main reasons Louisiana is ranked as #48 for opportunity. During college and early in my career, I struggled with academic and achievement success due to the lack of quality educational preparation growing up.
Specific to my career in schools, since property taxes and state funding prioritization are ways that public and charter schools receive their year-to-year income, the most persistent struggle is that education and life outcomes will always be determined not by merit – but instead by historical and current wealth accumulation and acumen. Even when considering private schools like mine or those with deep foundational endowment and investment, the money in and out impacts who and what the students and community become. Considering the schools I’ve worked with in the past, each student outcome, teacher retention, and overall success were always predetermined by the local zip code. In this sense, our educational system in America, and certainly north and south of i-20, is predetermined by the wealth associated.
While I AM asserting a need for a deep reallocation and reprioritization of funding for schools, I’m also asserting a need for a change in how we “do school” and the social and societal impacts of it.
Our schools should generate vibrant experiences for each student through the business, private, and public sectors, encourage innovation and collaboration with the community, and ultimately cultivate the conditions for a more expansive understanding of where and how learning can take place with a deeper commitment to expanding what’s possible. In this vein, a more reciprocal, empathetic, co-created, and inclusive experience for all would be nurtured.
While education and economics may seem disconnected and distinct social issues, the interconnectedness of the two forever births harm in communities, not just achievement gaps and “learning loss” in school. This harm, when (and often) unaddressed results in predictable outcomes and realities for the most marginalized of our society. Simply put- we don’t need small shifts in education, we need large and audacious shifts.
A world-class education should be incredibly expensive for the government and 100% free to its citizens, just like national defense. I firmly believe that with a greater economic investment in education, coupled with equitable reprioritization, reallocation, and implementation, we would offset costs associated with a lack of quality education later in life (wealth, property ownership, healthcare, crime, safety, and so much more).
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is the work of the people! I provoke change, challenge norms, agitate professionalism, and push the bounds of what might be. I’m a seed planter- meaning I’m forever conscious of the youth I reach and teach daily as an educator, and even more cognizant of the seeds of my direct lineage. I constantly think about my actions, mindsets, and dispositions and how they imbue or hinder those who will come after me. I live by a James Baldwin quote, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
This quote and my daily consciousness make me realize how “sweating the small stuff” really does matter since kids are always watching and learning, explicitly and implicitly. Specific to my 9-5, I am responsible for all budgetary, fundraising, academic, operational, safety, and staff development of the school. I work directly with our board of trustees to ensure our school’s mission vision is aspirational and executable.
I oversee the coaching and development of all staff members, work to recruit, retain, and develop quality staff humans, communicate effectively with stakeholders, demonstrate integrity at all levels of the school, and ensure our mission of providing a world-class educational experience is afforded to children and families who have or are experiencing homelessness in the metro Atlanta area.
What’s next?
My plans for our school (and my life, tbh) are to bring to life the long-standing school slogan of “This is our city, and these are our kids”. More poignantly, all of us are all our kids. I truly want our kids to be seen as just kids. Not seen as other, as special, as different, but afforded the same humanity and dignity that all children and adults should be afforded.
As a “private school” with such a unique mission, I want our school to be trauma-informed, language and literacy-rich, and a palace of educational excellence. Eloquently put by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Since starting at the school, I’ve quickly assessed and learned that the work of our school cannot and will not realize its mission without greater support and investment from our entire community. Daily, we are prototyping and rapidly iterating solutions, answers, and relationships that will change the trajectories of our children and their families and ultimately impact Atlanta society at large.
Our work impacts affordable housing and homelessness, therapeutic and counseling services, financial literacy, employment skill training and opportunities, adult education, metro transportation, food apartheid, physical trauma, and sexual abuse, transientness and mobility, disabilities & medical issues, of course, education & learning loss, and so much more. Since I will be at the school for many years to come, the potential for impact on Atlanta now and directly in the future is so vast. However, without the continued and long-term investment and support from our community, our school will inadvertently and directly replicate what it seeks to eradicate. Generational poverty won’t end in one year, or even 5. Therefore, this labor of love is playing the long game. There are many folks to meet, know, learn, and collaborate with since the interconnectedness is vaster than we can imagine.
I welcome each reader, supporter, and friend to come and see us in action on Saturday, March 16th at the Fox Theater for our school’s annual gala, this year’s title: The Ansley Renaissance. Link: https://theansleyschool.org/our-kids-gala-2024/.
Pricing:
- $5,000 – Structured workshops in reading/literacy training for 2 lead teachers
- $2,500 – School bus transportation for two families for the year
- $1,000 – School uniforms for 5 students for the year
- $500 – One month of breakfast for all students
- $100 – Gas/MARTA cards for 3 families for one month
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theansleyschool.org/
- Instagram: @the_RAYvolution
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ray.james.7169709/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnyrayjames/
Image Credits
The Cathedral of St. Phillip, LSU Image, Rosethorn Studio, Tanya Leung, Anthony Wallen Photography, Bayou Desiard, and J&J Cotillion Ball
