Broad Alumni Spotlight: Juliana Worrell TBF 2021-22 on Charter School Leadership
Juliana Worrell, a leader at the public charter network Uncommon Schools, reflects on what excites her most in her role and how she’s applying lessons learned through The Broad Center at work.
What’s your current organization and role?
I currently serve as the chief schools officer for Uncommon Schools, overseeing all our pre-K–12 schools on the teaching and learning side of the house. I support and lead our regional superintendents and central academic teams in the service of maintaining high instructional quality and setting our students up for success in college and beyond.
Uncommon Schools is a charter management organization. We operate public schools in five cities in the Northeast: Newark, Brooklyn, Camden, Boston, and Rochester. In each of those cities, we have pods of K-12 schools; we also have three pre-Ks in Brooklyn. We’re coming up on our 30th anniversary as an organization, and we have over 52 schools and 20,000 students.
What are you most excited about in your professional role?
Coming out of the pandemic, so many folks in education found the work excruciatingly hard, and a lot of people left. We had schools of all first- and second-year teachers. Now the workforce is restabilizing, people are choosing teaching as a profession again, and that has meant a lot for teacher and leader hiring. We’re starting to see people staying in their roles, and that’s going to be a benefit for children.
I’m also excited about the research that’s been coming out about how we teach reading in this country, especially as we think about our NAEP scores in comparison to other countries in the world—the United States is flailing by all metrics. From the start, we remained consistent on teaching the science of reading, and we have doubled down on our belief that it is the best reading instruction for our students. We’ve retrained everyone in the organization, and we’re seeing the fruits of that labor in terms of significant progress and growth. Now we’re on the precipice of what I’m calling “the new war,” which is teaching math. There’s a big conversation about how we teach math, and I’m excited to be part of an organization that helps figure that out and hopefully becomes a model for others.
How has your experience as a Broad alum influenced the way you approach your work?
I had the honor of being a part of the first Broad Fellowship cohort once the center moved to Yale SOM. It came at a great time for me. I was still new as a systems leader, and we were coming out of the pandemic, when there was so much disruption. Talking to other systems leaders dealing with the same thing helped me remember that you’re not on an island—there are people you can reach out to.
The sessions we had with SOM faculty and practitioners taught me about scalable solutions that aren’t dependent on any one individual. That’s really the secret of systems leadership; you have to get everyone rowing in the same direction. I really credit The Broad Center for broadening my ideas about what is possible and how to lead effectively at the systems level.
What is one thing your organization has been doing to increase equity for the students and communities you serve?
We serve a predominantly Black and brown population, and we do think it’s important that the majority of our staff members and leaders are people of color, so that our students have great role models and folks that look like them leading the way. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we’ve significantly increased the number of leaders of color in our organization. We currently have over 61% leaders of color—and I am included in that number—and 72% teachers of color. When I first joined the organization 20 years ago, that was not the case.
The work of equity is about recognizing what individuals need. We can’t ask, “Why aren’t people of color prepared for these roles?” We need to ask, “What do people of color need in order to be prepared for these roles?” We started to identify and invest in talent much earlier, so that when people do apply to be a principal or superintendent, they have the skills to get the role.
What do you think school system leaders should be thinking more about right now?
As we consider the future of this country, we need to be bold in making the changes that are needed in order to serve our kids. They are our future; they are the next generation. I would hate for us to be archaic in our thinking and box them into a world that’s not even going to be there 10 or 20 years from now.
It’s hard to be bold when you’re a systems leader, because you want to be safe and rely on what you know. Programs like the Fellowship for Public Education Leadership allow us to be bold, because you have this network of folks who are doing the work alongside you and backing what you’re doing.
