S1 Ep7: Nobody Asked Me: A Campaign Illuminating the Voices & Experiences of Students and Their Families

Designing Education

In this episode, Dr. Richard Lofton, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and leader of the Nobody Asked Me Campaign, joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss the Campaign and how it sheds light on the experiences of students and families in Baltimore City.

When we think about designing education to meet the needs of the 21st century and provide everyone a robust pathway to adult success, we typically draw on two sources: the adults involved in the current education system and our own experiences. Education is the one field where just about everybody considers themselves experts, because we all have a deep lived experience of going to school. However, relying on these can result in an education system that is much less dynamic than the world around it, and one that doesn’t even ask the students and families that are experiencing it firsthand. Yet they are the most informed observers of where new designs are needed, what they might be, and the challenges we need to address. This is particularly true for the communities and students for whom the current education system works the least: communities and students who live in areas where residential segregation, structural racism, and disinvestment have produced concentrated poverty in underfunded school systems.

It is at the intersection of place, history, and student voice that Dr. Lofton is doing an inventive work to ask those whom nobody has asked and connect their knowledge and insights with a growing coalition of community groups and policy makers to redesign the most broken aspects of our education system.