This week, we are profiling the remarkable commitment of Salome Thomas-El, the extraordinary Head of School at Thomas A. Edison Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware.
Chess looks like a relatively simple game. A chessboard has 64 squares, arranged eight by eight, and each player has 8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, a queen, and a king at their disposal. There are strict rules about how each piece can move, with the goal of attacking and trapping your opponent’s king.
Yet those parameters belie infinity. Mathematicians have calculated that there are more chess positions than there are atoms in the observable universe.
So to Salome Thomas-El, bringing chess into schools makes perfect sense. It’s one thing to learn the fundamentals of the game. But true chess skill is about learning how to make good decisions. Yes, the student chess teams he has started and led throughout his career have won many national championships. But the true impact of chess, as he sees it, is how many of his students have managed to apply their skills away from the chessboard.
Salome has been a teacher and school leader for nearly four decades, serving as Head of School at Thomas A. Edison Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware since 2010. But his impact goes far beyond the students and teachers in his schools. Today, as a valued mentor, education commentator, and author, he feels a responsibility to share his expertise with the world.
“Why Aren’t You a Teacher?”
Salome grew up in a North Philadelphia housing project with his mother and seven siblings. He worked hard through high school, and ultimately graduated from East Stroudsburg University. But, in his words, he wouldn’t have ever accomplished that without the support of his teachers. That support went beyond the classroom. Salome’s mother didn’t have a car, and so his teachers drove him to school every day, and even helped move him in and out of college.
After earning his college degree in communications, he started working in television, producing news segments on professional basketball. He was asked to present at a career day, and he told the students about how he wouldn’t be where he was today without his teachers stepping up.
One of the students raised their hand. “If your teachers helped you so much, why aren’t you a teacher?”
Kensington Books
Salome didn’t have a good answer—and so he immediately went to go rectify that. He went back to school to earn his teacher certification and started teaching math at Vaux Middle School in North Philadelphia. Just like many teachers, he spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make math engaging and accessible for his students, particularly those in special education. That’s when it came to him: chess. On the chess board, knights move in an “L” shape, perfectly illustrating a right angle. Bishops move diagonally, like the hypotenuse of a triangle. Many of his students had family members who had spent time in prison, where chess is popular. So they were already familiar with the game.
But it’s not just geometry. As Salome puts it, chess is all about learning how to make good decisions. It requires patience and thinking several moves ahead, being thoughtful and deliberate, anticipating potential pitfalls. “All kids are good kids. But they sometimes make bad decisions because their brains aren’t fully developed,” he says. “Chess can help make them smart.”
Salome eventually became a principal in Philadelphia and served in that role for many years, even winning the Marcus A. Foster Award as the top school administrator in Philadelphia. He had to take a sabbatical due to a family matter, and when he returned, he was told he had been transferred to a different school—an unfortunate consequence of working in a big school district. Largely due to that frustration, he accepted an offer to lead Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia. A few years later, he stepped into his current role at Thomas A. Edison.
“Stop praying for a lighter load, and start praying for a stronger back.”
Throughout his career, Salome has accomplished so much and has handled practically every situation a school leader can face. He sees it as his responsibility to take what he’s learned to support others. To name just two examples, he delivered a keynote address at the 2023 National Charter Schools Conference. . .
. . . and also filmed a segment for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools about teacher retention strategies.
In his view, one of the major reasons why school leaders struggle—and many leave the profession—is that they don’t have connections with other leaders. That’s particularly true in the charter sector. After all, charter school leaders have so many responsibilities; they are, in effect, managing an entire school district, but without the infrastructure of support that you find in a traditional district. There may not be anyone to lean on.
For that reason, Salome has prioritized serving as a mentor for charter leaders both locally and nationally—by his estimation, somewhere around fifty. One of his tried-and-true pieces of advice, especially for young leaders, is the importance of leaning into the challenges of the job. Leading a school is incredibly difficult; you have to wear so many hats in service of your students and families—and that never changes. So Salome reminds his mentees of a simple phrase: “Stop praying for a lighter load, and start praying for a stronger back.” A mindset of attacking those challenges head-on, as opposed to hoping they go away, sets leaders up to stay for the long haul—and also improve every day.
Even after nearly four decades in education, Salome applies that mantra to his practice. While he has learned and experienced so much, there are always new challenges. It’s not unlike chess: no matter how many games you play, there are so many variations that you’ll always see something you’ve never seen before. There is no such thing as complete mastery. But with diligence and commitment, you never stop learning.