This week, we are profiling the remarkable commitment of Keeanna Warren, the Executive Director of Purdue Polytechnic High Schools in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Keeanna Warren knows better than most that no single school is a fit for every child. After all, she’s lived it. During the course of her educational career she attended a homeschooling co-op, private schools, and public schools. She is grateful for having parents who knew how to navigate the system to get her the best opportunities—and who instilled a confidence in her own agency. She felt empowered to explore, to pursue her dreams. She has spent her career trying to give that opportunity to her students. Today, as the Executive Director of Purdue Polytechnic High Schools, a charter school network in Indianapolis, she has established herself as one of the charter movement’s most innovative leaders.
A Lifelong Learner
Keeanna always had an interest in social justice, and so teaching felt like a great fit. She jumped at an opportunity to earn her teaching certificate through TNTP’s Indianapolis Teaching Fellows. She taught elementary school for several years, and helped her students achieve remarkable academic growth. Yet her inclination was always to continue to learn and improve; she wanted to be the best teacher she could possibly be. She had many English Language Learners in her class, and so she went out and earned a certification in ELL education. She thought there’d be value in learning about school turnaround, so she enrolled in a course with that focus—not realizing that it was intended for school administrators, not teachers. Yet she remained in the program, eager to learn what she could.
It was there that her career changed its trajectory. One of her fellow participants encouraged her to join the team at The Excel Center, an initiative of Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana. The Excel Center is a tuition-free public high school for adults, designed for people for whom the traditional educational system wasn’t a fit. In addition to classroom instruction, students have access to coaches who can help to address any hindrances to school success—transportation, health care, or even childcare. Excel had an “all hands on deck” approach to education, and so Keeanna was soon asked to step into school leadership while still teaching.
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“Nurturing the Genius of Every Child”
While she may not have intended to work in adult education—or even in school administration, for that matter—the experience was transformative. Her students’ life circumstances required both flexibility and an enormous amount of self-direction. After all, they were at Excel because they chose to be there, not because they had to. The participants had so much agency in their learning; they could make so many choices and largely set their own vision for their educational experience.
Why, she asked herself, can’t we apply that same idea to K-12 schooling? After all, one of the reasons why students flounder in college is that they’re not accustomed to the open-ended environment. If high schools provided that experience, Keeanna figured, students would be better off—both in higher education and when they enter the workforce. “We should be working to nurture the genius of every child,” she says.
Soon she had an opportunity to bring that idea to life. In 2017, she was selected as an Innovation School Fellow by The Mind Trust, and was given the opportunity to launch a second campus of Purdue Polytechnic High Schools. The idea behind PPHS is that the traditional high school classroom—which is highly structured and prescriptive—doesn’t sufficiently prepare students for the self-directed and collaborative experience of higher education. The school also has a strong emphasis on STEM education to prepare students for high-tech careers. If students meet required academic standards, they are guaranteed admission to Purdue Polytechnic Institute, a college within Purdue University.
PPHS brings Keeanna’s vision of nurturing genius to life. While students are held to high academic expectations, they have a lot of say in what their school day looks like. For instance, they’ve re-framed assessments as “defenses of learning,” which often do not look like a traditional test. (However, Keeanna says, sometimes students do need to take typical tests, since that experience is critical for success in college.) If a student is interested in chemistry, they can seek out an internship with a chemist. In alignment with their mission, the school uses restorative justice practices—namely respectful, collaborative conflict resolution—to address disciplinary issues.
This emphasis on leadership and choice extends out of the classroom. Recently, Keeanna said, a student asked for a meeting with her because they had questions about something that had been discussed at the school’s previous board meeting. This wasn’t an inconvenience to Keeanna—in fact, she was thrilled. “Our students are obviously affected by the Board’s decisions. If they feel ownership of and investment in their experience in school—and believe they can make a difference—that means we’re succeeding in our mission.”
“This is our city”
Given her diverse set of educational experiences, it should be no surprise that Keeanna thinks beyond the walls of school. As she sees it, while schools always try to step their game up for students, too much competition is bad for students. “This is our city,” she says. “We need to be working together.” Keeanna serves as Board Chair for Enroll Indy, the city’s student enrollment platform that includes both charter schools and traditional district schools. She also has been a strong advocate for increased education funding.
Still, Keeanna is not one to rest on her laurels. She takes great pride in what the charter sector has accomplished, both at the school level and across the country. “We face so many challenges, but we figure it out and get it done, without excuses,” she says. Still, she says, the sector should do more to tell their stories and collaborate with one another. She has found her work with the Charter School Growth Fund particularly impactful in that regard.
So many of us are in the work of education—and in the charter sector in particular—because far too many students don’t receive the education they deserve. But it takes a special kind of leader to boldly rethink what that education can look like and bring it to life. Keeanna is exactly that kind of leader. Her students—and the charter sector as a whole—are lucky to have her in the fold.