Following is a conversation with Paige Ponder, Project Exploration’s new Chief Executive Officer. To read more about the evolution of Project Exploration’s leadership team, read an interview with Founder and Senior Explorer Gabrielle Lyon.

Josh Fox: Start by telling me a little bit about your background, and specifically the experiences you’ve had that are relevant to Project Exploration.

Paige Ponder: Well, starting way at the beginning, my parents are both educators, so it’s a family business. Although, when I was in college I was really interested in poverty and inequity, and interested in the social justice angle of things, so that’s what I studied.

Right after college I wound up working in a Catholic elementary school in the south Bronx, which scratched both itches in a way, because the south Bronx is inner city, very poor—many of the same obstacles that our Project Exploration students are facing. I became more attracted to the idea that education is such a great place to work on these issues, because it’s all about potential and possibility, and what kids can do with their lives. Which is really exciting. I was at that school for four years, and was a jack of all trades. I was development director, assistant principal, adviser to a group of seventh graders, a little bit of everything. I weeded the flower beds, painted the walls. I loved it. It was such a great experience.

While I was there I decided, “I don’t really think it’s instruction that’s the problem.” You know, we know how to teach kids. I decided to go to Kellogg for an MBA because that matched my sense that the issue is really the leadership and the management, being able to articulate a mission and a strategy to the people with the money. That’s what we struggle with, not the instruction and curriculum so much.

After that I worked for five years at the Grow Network, a start-up education assessment reporting company, using huge data sets to create tools for teachers, families, and students. Tools that make it very transparent where they are, what they need to do, how they can use that information to grow.

I joined CPS in 2007, and I was a project manager concentrating on the freshman on-track rate. We created really simple tools for schools to identify: “These are the kids who are in my new freshman class who have struggled before, whose grades were not good before, who had low attendance before… So, I need to develop a strategy for them to help them stay on track.” Not rocket science. (laughs) But, people were really jazzed about this spreadsheet that we created, and I was sort of like, “There must be something that I’m not getting here. Because, this is so obvious and simple, and I’m not understanding why everyone is so excited about…

JF: …something that should have been done fifty years ago.”

PP: Right. Then, I led an office that took on all of our dropout prevention work, one aspect of which was the freshman on-track stuff. We joined all of that kind of work with our out-of-school time portfolio, which is huge. My question became, over time, “Are we targeting the right kids for these experiences? The ones who are telling us they need something more? Or are we just offering a buffet of out-of-school time (OST) stuff that kids can opt into if they want, but there’s no strategy or method to how we’re recruiting kids, creating things for kids who need it the most?” The irony is that kids who opt into those kinds of things are probably kids who are, in the scheme of things, doing fairly well, whose parents would probably figure out something else for them to do if it wasn’t available at the school. Out-of-school time was either being used by the school as a system of rewards for the “good” kids, and the kids who are causing them trouble are systematically excluded from it; or it was just not being thought about strategically at all, and it’s a missed opportunity. And we were actually spending a ton of money replicating what the Park District might just as well do.

The exciting thing about CPS is that it’s on such a large scale that even small changes have huge impact. But, I never knew any of those kids. I could never be actually sure that any of what I was doing had any impact at all on them. It was entirely theoretical.

When the opportunity at Project Exploration came across my radar I was really excited to be in an organization that is doing exactly what I care about, with the kids I care about, and that totally gets the “education is a lever for social justice” mentality. To really be a part of something that does impact kids’ lives, and we actually know those kids, and we can really follow them and understand the impact we’re having—that was really exciting.

JF: What is so important about learning in out-of-school time? Why should kids spend their summer and after-school doing more learning?

PP: The research shows that summer learning loss drives the achievement gap. It’s an equity issue, because the summer learning loss is driven by lack of opportunity, which has everything to do with your socioeconomic status, so there’s a direct correlation.

But summer school, the way CPS was doing it, felt punitive. It was just about taking our lowest performers, trying to get them over this arbitrarily low hurdle on a test so they could be promoted to the next grade. What a missed opportunity!

My whole schtick at CPS became, “What if we made summer not awful?” (laughs)

In my mind I have a vision of the whole city buzzing all summer. With companies, cultural institutions, sports teams, community organizations, and nonprofits working together to offer kids problem-based, project-based learning—authentic, real-world stuff related to the real experience the kids are having. It doesn’t have to be soul-numbing, horrible school. It can be fun.

I think Project Exploration is best-in-class in terms of how we create those learning experiences. So, I’m excited to see that for my self this summer. And I’d love to actually be digging next to a kid, and just really observe for myself the impact that that experience has on a kid.

JF: Do you feel like, in an ideal world, what we do in OST would be exactly what they do in school as well?

PP: Yeah. In an ideal world we wouldn’t be teaching stuff in 45-minute increments. And why not leverage what kids like?

JF: Can you tell me a little bit about how you understand the role of CEO? Why this new position has been created? And what you see as your task, or your mission?

PP: Well, I give Gabe (Founder and Senior Explorer Gabrielle Lyon) so much credit for being willing to say, “There comes a point in the life of an organization when you transition from the founder to a manager.” Someone who’s going to, in a more systematic way, lead the organization forward. It’s kind of like Project Exploration is getting ready to go to college or something. I see my role right now as asking a lot of questions. And hopefully asking good questions that make people really think about “How does what we do impact students?” “How do we know that?” And, “How do I spend my time vis-à-vis those things?” We need to get clear on what our priorities are. What are the key questions we should be asking ourselves? Get everybody on the same page regarding our strategy and moving forward. Those kinds of things.

My relative newness to the inner workings of the organization puts me in a great position to ask these questions, because right now I’m sort of drinking from the fire hose, everything has equal weight for me. I can’t differentiate between this, that, and the other thing. It’s all new to me. It’s all hitting my windshield at the same time.

JF: It’s like when you’re working on a document, at a certain point you need somebody with a fresh set of eyes to look at it. Someone who isn’t invested in any particular way.

PP: Yeah. Who’s objective.

JF: So, you’re like Project Exploration’s new proof-reader.

PP: Yeah, exactly.

JF: What are some of your ideas for new things that you’d like to see happen at Project Exploration?

PP: Well, the main question is “How do we expand our footprint?” That’s what I’m going to be really focused on. I think we should explore working within larger systems of schools to serve more kids. And/or creating these more complex, more comprehensive Pathways. That’s what I’m going to try to tackle initially. Which seems like plenty to bite off.

JF: Ten years from now, what do you think Project Exploration is going to look like?

PP: We will see dramatically more kids doing what we know to be the most powerful experiences. Tons and tons of kids out in the world investigating things in a real and meaningful way. Is it dramatically more kids in Chicago? Is it other kids in other parts of the country? Is everybody going to Wyoming? Is everybody going to China? I have no idea. But this is part of the benefit of me having a fresh set of eyes. I don’t have any preconceived notions. I don’t have any pre-loaded agenda at all. My agenda is simply to understand what our “secret sauce” is. What is it that we do that has an impact on kids, and how do we maintain the integrity of that while scaling up? Wherever that takes us, that’s where we’ll go.