A CEO is made, not born.

Although I am a futurist, it’s in the hindsight where I can see how every opportunity for workforce development (from my passionate interests then and now) was a chance to learn valuable skills that I would employ as a co-creator of Temple X Schools.

This second year has been a whirlwind of emotional energy, from practicing intentional presence to juggling multiple programs, partners, and keeping in frame the short-term and long-term goals. Reliant on my own self-mastery, my partner and Head of Schools (Terris), key connections, partnerships and silent counsel, I have taken on this role as best as I could. In true start-up fashion, the uncomfortable learning as you go process has humbled me beyond the grief of it, and yes I’m still learning.

The model is viable, the company is standing, the parents have spoken, and now we manage our time and developments with refined gusto. We have certainly failed in some areas, we have majorly succeeded in others. There’s so much more to come in 2023 and I hope you will join us.

As we roll into year 3 of programming, we are leading and acting from motivation that is culturally responsive so that we may etch in stone the principles that set our model apart. It was just 2021, the year that we began with ideation and formation of our core values, to this year of pilot and solidified programs, we moved into the stages of implementation with more authority and gleaned wisdom for shaping policies and procedures moving forward.

In January of 2022, we ran the xLab at Liberty Grace Church of God for about 17 weeks. A mixed age group routinely took trips to the garden to taste, smell, wonder and observe the urban ecology that stemmed from the church. During this time, on Saturdays we also piloted The Baltimore Forest School at Stillmeadow Peace Park; another mixed age group that met rain or shine, snow and wind, in our outdoor classroom. Our deepest gratitude goes to every expert, parent and affiliate that showed up, showed out, and helped us give our best to the community.

The Temple X team has had synergy around moving parts, aiding in the relative ease in which we are able to fill in gaps for the structure and implementation of programs last year. We saw 100% growth in our children’s literacy, provided work force development for Youth Workers, engaged and activated community partners around our efforts of environmental justice, and became official vendors with BCPS and the US Government for special contracts. We served over 200 students from 20 different neighborhoods, ages 18months-18 years old.

We have a major opportunity right now in Baltimore to steward the (urban) ecology in ways that are more beneficial for children today, creating innumerable benefits for the future worlds to come. We’re talking locally sustained food systems, more care focused on the illness in the environment, closing the digital divide, and creating viable alternative systems of economies. I understand the grandness in that statement, the far reaching effects of a sustainable city that with Temple X, I believe is possible. Atiya Wells of Backyard Basecamp leads a great example of environmental justice in action, bringing together the right people to serve the public good.

It’s vital for those who can influence policy to be proximate to the situations that desperately need to change. One obstacle to finding and implementing sustainable solutions to our problems in Baltimore is that policymakers and well intentioned institutions usually lack critical touch-points in the sorts of communities that need their help. This is why it is critical to have community liaisons with credibility and trust in their communities: The Church. If the gravity of human suffering can be adequately conveyed to the people who can upend perpetuated structural inequalities, we can move with haste to find solutions.

The events and partners of Temple X encapsulated so much of what and whom I admire. The year felt like an entire climactic moment for all those reasons. Real allies are people who know that we can go further together and create a manageable excitement for the 2023 team.

A recent edit to this report, made January 8th, 2023, comes just days into the new year — 3 children have died by homicide. At the publishing of this article, there will be another death of a child by homicide here in Baltimore. The statistical trend is validating the outrage we felt in 2021 when we anticipated this worsening. If the forces of structural poverty are too strong to change our city tomorrow, then my wish is that in the name of those children gone too soon today, everyone reading realizes that we can not stand in solidarity with each other if you aren’t truly aware of where you are in society, how your privileges impacts those around you, and what parts kept us together that we now have disengaged from – promoting our demise. We have to be aware of the levels of engagement, the numbing effects of seeing so much tragedy all the time without proper recourse. Before there is a weaponized diagnosis for our youth or their families, consider that diagnosis in white communities give access to systems, and diagnosis in Black communities create targets of them.

At Temple X, the audaciousness in our approach is to dare to create a wave so seismic, that it usurps the degraded infrastructure that exists to sustain harm to our children; to our longevity. It is urgent, and luckily we are not alone in our efforts.