Dr. Josh Pinto Taylor, EdD in Education | Executive Director at The Anchor School

In this episode, we discuss what made Josh pivot from his plan to become an architect to pursuing a career in education, the different ways he has applied the skills he honed during his doctoral training to his teaching and to his founding of a new charter school, and his advice for being a scholar practitioner and finding inspiration in inevitable change.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

To connect with Josh and to learn more about his story, visit his page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi! I'm co-host! Lois Dankwa, and this is the 100 alumni voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today, we're joined by Josh Pinto Taylor, EdD in education and current executive director at the Anchor School. Hi, Josh!

Josh Pinto Taylor

Hi, Lois, it's great to be here today.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, thanks for joining. How are you doing today?

Josh Pinto Taylor

It's been a wonderful day here in Atlanta. Although it's February, it's feels like March.

Lois Dankwa

I can't remember what it feels like in March, but in DC it's very sunny, so I would agree with you, even though I don't remember what March feels like.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, we could have another set of conversations about whether that's a good thing or not that it should be like March in February.

Lois Dankwa

Well, I wanna start by, I'm happy to have you here, and I wanna start by hearing a little bit about what made you interested in pursuing a doctorate in education and more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I came into the field of education in a very sort of circuitous path. I moved to Atlanta to become an architect, so I was at Georgia Tech, and thought that I would, you know, pursue studies in the field of architecture, and you know about 3 years into those studies, I I decided to do some tutoring in a math program and in the city, and through that experience I really discovered that I loved teaching. I loved working with young people as they were pursuing their dreams. And so, for me, I I pivoted my career before I even graduated from college and pursued a career in the field of education, and really haven't looked back. But while I was working in a variety of educational settings, I really wanted to ensure that I was not only practicing, but also understanding the best practices and the promising practices of our field of education, and so decided to pursue a terminal degree in the field that I wanted to spend the rest of my life in, and that was a decision that I am really glad that I made because it has formed so so much of my identity to this day, and the work that I do now as an educator.

Lois Dankwa

That's so cool. So, I love that you I mean, similar to a lot of us where we ended up, and what kind of guided our doctoral work stems from something that happened in the past for us. And I'm curious, then, since you kind of switched careers, or at least your mindset for what you wanted your career to look like in college, how did that influence then the type of doctoral work you did or even how you thought about the value of your work?

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, that's a really great question, I think, for me some of my early learning experiences were, were field based experiences, right? So, the first time I taught I was a tutor under the supervision of a teacher of record, and I was learning by doing. You know, Georgia Tech is a it's an institution that really encourages sort of project-based experiential learning for students. And so, I've always kind of had this attitude that it's very important to be a continuous learner in whatever endeavor you are in. And so, I've always just viewed my work as simultaneously learning and then as an extension of my learning, sharing that learning with the learners that are in the same space as me. And so, I, you know, as I was pursuing a doctoral degree, I was looking for a program that allowed me to continue my work, in the context of the school that I was working in, and the Johns Hopkins University EdD program is is intended for you know, really scholar practitioners. So, folks who want to spend most of their time in a professional context outside of academia, but with with that academic lens, with that orientation towards rigorous interrogation of you know what the problems are we’re trying to solve, and then what the solutions may be for those problems. So, you know Hopkins offered me an opportunity to again stay immersed in in my professional context, but also to continue my education at the same time.

Lois Dankwa

Okay, I totally get that then. It's funny, because I so as someone in a PhD program, my mind is always blown by people that are kind of in the scholar practitioner type programs knowing that you're bouncing a lot of different thinking and I’m curious then what does that balance look like knowing that your you're even in the same day you're forced to wear different hats. But then also it's not even about being forced to wear different hats. It's to your benefit, and everyone else's benefit that you switch your hat so that you're not acting as scholar, and practice, and vice versa. But I'm curious to hear a little more about what that looks like for you then.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's an important question for us to to ask in general as people, right. We have to explore who we are and where our purpose lies. And you know in reality, right, we are all multi-dimensional in our identity. And so, I am you know I'm a husband. I am a father of 3 children, in fact, my first child was born during my doctoral studies. I was at a Residency program in Baltimore, and and had to rush home to be with my wife for the birth of our first child. And so, you know, you're wearing many hats, both personally and professionally, but I think the the way forward for me in in regard to merging my my work and my studies was just in the acknowledgement that the two were so interrelated. What I was studying was also what I was practicing as a practitioner and so, you know, every day I had opportunities to build connections in my brain between what I was reading and what I was seeing in real time. You know, as I was designing and thinking about my research, I was in a context that allowed me to, you know, have a lens into what it looks like to to actually pursue those questions that I wanted to ask and seek and community, and so I think for me so much of this question of multiple hats is less so about all the hats that I need, and more so about how to integrate all of the all of those aspects of my identity into a whole self and into a whole life.

Lois Dankwa

That's a good point. It's about how the pieces speak to each other rather than going I have to be a different version of myself in X, like situation X, or something like that.

Josh Pinto Taylor

That's right. I think that's right. Yep.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I get that. And I think it. It makes me think about how it it creates a fun opportunity for you to then like when you have a question that comes up in work literally in your schoolwork was where you would be able to address and dive further into that question.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, and I think that I I was gaining new tools and new language and new, you know, new frameworks for how to think about what I was doing as a teacher and as an educational leader. And so, every day was a new opportunity to, you know, to explore new questions in my doctoral studies, but also then to attempt to apply what I was learning in my professional context. And so, it was that kind of interplay between work which was a place for providing excellence in in a professional context and my studies, which was a place for really what I would consider to be sort of deep contemplation and reflection and refinement of the work that I was doing, from, you know, from essentially 7:30 to 5 PM.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I understand that. So, then I'm curious about. So, you mentioned that being in a doctoral program kind of equipped you with different and more tools. And I'm curious, then what those tools kind of were? But then also, how are those showing up in what you're doing now post being in a doctorate program?

Josh Pinto Taylor

So, I think a number of tools became more readily available at my disposal as an educator as a result of my doctoral work. I think first and foremost you know, refining my ability to ask, ask a question that is very specific in nature and very answerable or testable. I think in addition to that, having access to and new approaches for research. So, some of the research methods courses expanded my repertoire of ways to ask questions, collect data, and then analyze and interpret data. So within within my doctoral studies I pursued a mixed methods approach to answering the question that was being asked, and as a result of that, you know, developed new qualitative, you know, qualitative measurement tools and qualitative assessment and evaluation tools. And so that was very helpful as well. I think I also had kind of a new framework for how to think about, you know, sort of the work of designing a program, and then evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of that program. And so, as an educator, and especially as an educational leader, a lot of my time is spent designing programs and policies and and solutions that that result in stronger student outcomes or greater student achievement, or better measures for the sake of of student well-being and in this program in particular, gave me an opportunity to really go through that whole cycle of program creation and design to program implementation and monitoring and then to program evaluation. And now I have that that entire skill set in my in my toolkit as well. And so so now, as an educator, whether whether we're talking about designing a new program implementing and monitoring one or evaluating a program, I feel really confident to participate in that work and and that that excites me because to me the the the purpose of of having these tools is to ensure that our young people have access to great resources, great programs, and great outcomes in their schools.

Lois Dankwa

That's so cool that you or like in being in the doctoral program you had the chance to really see, like from the conception of an idea to kind of the evaluation moment after implementation. And that's definitely something that like seeing all parts of the process and knowing how to engage with them in different ways, is certainly something that excites me. So, I think it's really cool that, like almost being at a doctoral program allowed for you to then think about the, it gave you more creativity to be able to engage in different parts of the process, basically.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yes, yes, and it allowed for sort of new solutions to emerge in what is typically a very dynamic environment. Like schools, schools are places that are highly dynamic in nature, and the pace of of change is is rapid at times. And being in a doctoral program actually allowed me to go through at least one experience that was slow enough, that I could pause and reflect, and and have a few sort of metacognitive moments where I could understand what was happening. And and then, you know, go back into the ground level and and start back up with the work again. And so, I think, being able to operate at both the like fast paced nature of the life of a school, and also, like the slow work of deep thinking, was a really nice sort of contrasting experience for me as well.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's really cool. So, I'm curious. So it's funny, because while I'm understanding all of the different bits and pieces of our chat, some of it feels high level in a way where I'm can apply everything that you're saying to kind of health services and the world and fields that I exist in, but I'd love to hear kind of more about the types of schools that you think about kind of problem-solving and just different efforts in, and just really what your work looks like now?

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yes, so I am a co-founder and the executive director of the Anchor School, which is a brand-new public charter school in the Metro Atlantic area. We are really a village of educators, families, and community members that that strive to partner with 6th-12th grade students as they as they develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to thrive in school and beyond. And you know, when I think about the work that we are doing at the Anchor School, so much of what we are doing, I can tie back to aspects of my doctoral studies. So, for example, in the in the earliest phase of designing our school, you know it was important that we were able to you know, understand and articulate a community profile so to speak, or a community and needs assessment or community map that understands the educational landscape of our context. And so, I was able to draw on experiences from my doctoral work to to essentially do just that right. One of the one of the earliest exercises we did in our EdD program was to to conduct a needs assessment, to really understand within our context whether there was a problem or not, and if there was, what that problem was. And so, that that articulation process very well prepared me for going through a similar kind of process in in the work of designing this new school. You know, furthermore, we took the time to engage with community members across our attendance zone. So be it, you know, parents, students, educators, community members just asking questions about what school is, what it could be, and what it should be. So, we would focus on questions like, how should school feel, right? And we would have workshops and focus groups and ask those questions. And we would, we'd ask questions like what's most important for students to learn in school? And you know the results of asking those questions in community was that we got a lot of rich data back and and I was able to then work with our co-design team, which is a group of folks who supported the design work of the school to evaluate and really seek to understand what we were hearing from from those conversations, and so again, going back to my doctoral studies, having an opportunity to conduct focus groups, to really understand how to do qualitative data analysis and to look for themes that were emerging from the data set like this is all you know, this is all skills and knowledge that I gained from being in my doctoral program, and so, you know, there are multiple points of connection I can articulate along the journey of the design of the Anchor school that I would tie directly back to skills that I've learned along the way. And you know I think the last thing I would say is that you know, I now have a perspective as a scholar practitioner, that it's really important that we as a school embrace this this style of learning that was taught to me through my program. So, as a school community every year we will define as a community, a question or a problem that we need to solve, and then we will go through a process of reviewing the literature to see whether this is a problem that exists in other contexts. And if it does, what is being done in other contexts, so that we have a list of potential solutions. And then, as a community, we will take a look at the problem and at the the potential solutions that exist in the literature and then decide how we will address this problem in our context. And so again trying to mirror the learning process that I experienced on an annual basis with our school, so that we, as a school, are a school that continues to improve and continues to deliver better outcomes for our students year over year.

Lois Dankwa

That's all so cool, and I am now in a moment where I'm trying to basically prevent myself from asking you like 500 million questions that just came to mind. I in the past worked at a charter school. So, it's helping me go, oh, my gosh! Yeah, duh, Lois, you can apply all of this research stuff to all of the stuff that you experienced while you were at the Charter School. So, it's it's cool to kind of be learning from someone who's doing that in real time, and knowing that I can't ask you 5 million questions, I'm curious then, what's the like, what are the fun parts about what you do? But then also, what are some things that are challenging about your work right now?

Josh Pinto Taylor

So, I love many aspects of my job. I think first and foremost, I feel incredibly fortunate to work towards a mission that I deeply believe in, and that I had the good fortune of co-creating with a community of other people, and so just being a really mission oriented individual working at a mission driven organization with a mission that I believe in is just fun in and of itself, and something that I value. I also think because we we're founding this school, you know, every day presents sort of new opportunities and new challenges for innovation. And so, we're constantly thinking about how we can take another step forward to ensure that we are opening this school that we that we set out to build. And so no 2 days really like the same for me. I have the good fortune of being able to work from many different places with many different people. As a part of this process I've been able to travel to a number of different cities and visit dozens of different schools to to expand my vision of what's possible for young people, and then to bring some of the best ideas that I've heard and seen back to our learning community. So, all that's very fun and exhilarating, and honestly, as a just as as a human, I tend towards really enjoying, sort of high-level, big picture visioning. And so, we've been able to do a lot of that visioning work over the last 3 years. You know some of the challenges are related to just the fact that starting something is, you know, it is challenging, and there are many obstacles that you have to overcome on the journey to building, to building something great, and you know we have we have some funding challenges that we run into as an organization. You know, schools are funded based on, you know, a certain amount of money provided to them per student that attends their school. Well, we are in a we're in an interesting spot where we don't have any students yet, but we're building a school, and so we've had to do a lot of work to, you know, fundraise and and resourceful in our planning year knowing that you know, most of our revenues won’t start coming in until we have students in in August of this year. So that's a challenge that we've had to think through. We're also working through some of the other challenges that that honestly, schools are working through across the country. So, so you know, we think about just the teacher labor force, right. There are national teachers, shortages, and so we as a new school experience that just as much as large districts would as well. So just just trying to figure out, you know, the best ways to find the best people and draw on top talent, which our students and families deserve into our organization. So, that's another example of of a challenge that that we are facing. You know, I think the third challenge that we have faced and fortunately overcome is, you know, identifying and preparing a facility for our students. And so, you know that journey required a lot of effort on our end. But but ultimately led to a solution where we now have a building that we are preparing for students, and will be ready for them 6 months from tomorrow.

Lois Dankwa

That's awesome. So yeah, it's while you're doing like a mission that's really exhilarating and exciting, it, I mean, it takes time, and different types of effort to really create a footing that lets you guys do and fulfill how you want to, and how like to kind of meet the expectations you all have for yourselves.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yes, absolutely.

Lois Dankwa

So, I have 2 more questions for you, and I I think that it's easy for some people to describe themselves as scholar practitioners, whether it's because of their degree or based off of the role that they've always had. But I think that a lot of us are scholar practitioners in some way, shape or form, and I'm curious what advice you would have for people who either are and view themselves as scholar practitioners, or who are starting to realize that they might also be scholar practitioners and what, yeah, what advice do you have for us folks?

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yeah, I think that I think that the EdD program for me gave language to a way of being that just feels more fully human to me. I think that we all are constantly learning and constantly acting as sort of free agents in the world, and whether we realize that or not, it's happening, and the learning may be happening passively or actively and the doing may be happening passively or actively. But I think the beauty of being in a doctoral program and working at the same time is that you are actively pursuing new knowledge while you are actively working towards a greater good, and I think my advice to anyone who's listening to this would be to really just contemplate and interrogate yourself around, you know, in what ways am I learning, and in what ways am I learning passively and what ways am I learning actively right? And should I be pursuing more intentional learning? Or is that already present in my life? And then, similarly, with work, what am I doing with my, with my time? What am I doing with my talent? What am I doing with the resources available to me? Where is my purpose, right? And and are my actions happening with purpose and with intention? Or are they happening in response to the world around me? And I think that, you know there really is a there's a space for all of us to be scholar practitioners, and that space is just an acknowledgement that we are all learning, and we are all doing every day.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I love that learning actively and passively. That's something that we all do inherently. But to really put a pin on the things that you're doing in one of those ways, it's really helpful. So, I'm curious as my last question, what inspires you right now?

Josh Pinto Taylor

Many things inspire me right now. So much of my work is inspired by the voices of young people and families who helped shape the vision of our school. I’m also really inspired right now by by the work of Adrian Marie Brown, and if you haven't picked up this book yet, I highly recommend it. It's called Emergent Strategy, but but it's sort of written on this premise that change is a constant reality in our world, right? That that that our universe and our world are in a continual state of flux and of change, and that there is this sort of like human instinct to resist change in a way and what what I like about this book is that it offers a way forward where, rather than sort of resisting the dynamism of the world in the universe, that we live in. It's sort of it's an invitation for us to to feel and experience these changes and to map these changes into our understanding and to assess how these changes impact, you know our current situation, and then to learn from this sort of like mix of patterns that's happening in our life. And and so from all of that, is this notion that strategy can emerge from from sort of like embrace of this, of this constant state of change and and you know, I think that I think that there's something there's some truth in in this book and in this concept that I'm really clinging to right now. And I sort of experienced it in in the design of this school, and in realizing that you know, in a way that the vision of this school was not instantaneous. It it has slowly emerged over time through dozens and dozens of conversations and through a variety of different inputs and so, you know, I think the inspiration there is is simply that the world around us is incredibly dynamic and there's an opportunity to embrace that and to learn from that, and to develop new strategies that emerge out of that ever-evolving understanding.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. And it almost sounds like the school was birthed from inspiration.

Josh Pinto Taylor

Yes, yeah, I would I would say so absolutely. Yeah. As an educator, I've had the good fortune of being inspired by many students over many years.

Lois Dankwa

Well, Josh, it's been so wonderful to learn from you today and hear a bit about your story, what inspires you, and just the things that keep you going. This has been so wonderful!

Josh Pinto Taylor

Lois, thanks so much for the opportunity.