Other Experts

The moment that I reflected on the most on my time on Saturday was just a pull-aside conversation that I had with Dottie Green and realizing the many, many connections we had just around the work she's been doing for decades and work that I'm interested in researching and doing policy work around. It turns out that Dottie was a principal in several jails and correctional facilities across the state of Connecticut. So it's like the exact nexus of a lot of the research I do around the criminal juvenile justice system around the education system. So I just remember having that conversation with her wanting to connect with her afterwards, and then just spending a lot of time just reflecting on this conflict between who does sort of this broader scale programming and policy on the institutional level or on the national level, on the government level. I just thought a lot about how much of an expert somebody like a Dottie Green was, and all the time she has spent in jails and correctional facilities, and her time spent in middle and high schools and then as a principal within these facilities and how much she's an expert on the change that needs to happen, whether it's in education or whether it's in different systems reform, and just thinking about different rooms that I've been in with policymakers and in government where nobody has that expertise that Dottie has.

those who are facing the obstacles or challenge are closest to the solution and know best the solution. So being somebody who feels like a little bit of an outsider to this science outreach field, in some ways, or in a lot of ways. So I guess the one thing that wasn't spoken about in this dialog was, and maybe it's because there's just knowledge of it beforehand, but it's a big problem that we're trying to solve for, it's how to get science out into communities and received by different communities. I think that I would approach that in centering the voices of those who are at the end of that solution. So the young people in the room who should have that access to sciences should be gaining knowledge of science. So I just think about how much as we think about like, what does this look like when it's scaled or expanded or replicate this outreach? I think a lot about not just thinking, just trying to listen to the voices of the young people and how they react to this sort of outreach or just more broadly like where... I don't know, Rick, if this happened to anywhere along your process, but have you ever sat in a room with kids from the Dwight community, or from the New Haven community and just ask broad questions about what are the best ways to engage you around science? Is it coming to a fall festival? Is it coming into your classroom? Is it doing something in the neighborhood? Really centering those voices because that's the solution that you're solving for.