INTRO
At the Clinton Global Initiative I had the pleasure of meeting Talia Milgrom-Alcott. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond 100K. The goal of the organization is to prepare and retain 150,000 new STEM teachers, especially for schools serving majority of Black, LatinX and Native American students.
RIA
So, I’m Ria Pullin. So nice to meet you. And what’s your name?
TALIA
So great to meet you. I’m Talia Milgrom-Alcott.
RIA
And tell me a little bit more about yourself, about what you’ve created and why.
TALIA
So, I—let see. I am a lawyer by training. But very quickly realized that lawyers tend to see problems after they’re fully blown. I had gone to law school because I wanted to help solve problems and contribute to making them, not just resolving them, but getting at the root of why they exist in the first place.
And what I began to realize pretty quickly during law school, not so long after that, too, was that it’s legacy problems and they’re fully blown into education. It gets at the deepest root. Even after all this time that I now been working in education for almost 20 years. Blows my mind. I still believe that if you can educate someone, if someone is educated. They’re unstoppable.
RIA
Right. Like, knowledge is always the key.
TALIA
Knowledge is the key. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is opportunity. Knowledge is not just a seat at the table. It’s getting to set your own table.
RIA
And can you explain to me what your organization is? Give us the name, a little bit of the history. I would love to hear about it.
TALIA
So, our story starts more than ten years ago when President Obama put out a call for 100,000 excellent science, technology, engineering and math teachers, and called on this country to teach because it changes a life. There’s nothing else you can do. There’s nothing better you can do to support this country but to help educate its next generation.
And we knew he knew that we needed those opportunities in STEM where the best paying jobs are, is where the greatest challenges are, and therefore, the greatest innovation is needed. And he put out that call and put in a request of Congress for some funding. And Congress said, no. That’s in 2011.
RIA
Oh, my goodness. He was a smart man. He is a smart man, isn’t he?
TALIA
He saw the need coming down the pike. He put out a call for 100,000 STEM teachers. Congress said no. And I was at Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Global Foundation. And I sort of heard this call. We have a deep history, a century long focus on teachers at Carnegie and a more recent focus on STEM as a way of effecting change.
And I thought here was this call that needed to be answered, and yet nobody was willing to step up to do it. We mobilized response and 28 organizations joined us actually on stage at CGI. In 2011 to make commitments to the school. And ten years later, more 300 organizations crossed the finish line together, we didn’t just hit the goal. We exceeded it.
RIA
That’s incredible.
TALIA
108,000 STEM teachers in ten years.
RIA
And is this STEM teachers across all levels of education.
TALIA
It is. Pre-K to 12 because we understood that you needed from the very first moment is kids are naturally curious. They are natural tinkerers. They will build and take apart. All of that is right there in them. But the question is, do we give them the opportunity? So, we knew we needed to start as early as pre-K all the way through 12th.
We had 8,000 teachers in STEM over ten years. And we got to that goal. We’re getting to the goal and seeing that it was coming. We thought if we stop the work now, it would. Like, what would happen? You know, the work wasn’t—that 100,000 wasn’t the end. The end needed to be ending a STEM teacher shortage once and for all.
RIA
Completely.
TALIA
Right? It’s not gravity, like, it’s not like it’s not a rule of nature that we have a shortage. And that that shortage, most impacts the communities and students who have been most excluded from STEM. This is not a rule of nature. This is a choice we’ve made. What if we make different choices? Could we make different choices to lead to different results.
And so, we came together, actually, and turned our next goal over ten people said, we need another goal that takes us on the way to ending the STEM teacher shortage for that next school shouldn’t just come from a president as amazing as our president is. It should come from the folks closest to those challenges whose experiences should guide us. So, 600 young people, almost all of them young people of color, told us 75% of them girls and kids who self-described as non-binary, told us their stories about them.
They told us about their experiences, and they were in math and science and they had a technology afterschool opportunity. And what we heard from them were three amazing things. And those have guided our goals. We heard from them that they wanted to create things in STEM, so not checked out at all. We heard from them that they need to belong if they’re going to succeed and persist.
RIA
And to be seen and maybe even the representation of scientists, mathematicians. I have a five and a nine year old and I know that—Our school is very focused on actually STEAM. It’s like STEM with art, which is really cool. You know, another way to integrate it and to teach, you know, science and technology. Yeah, I think that’s a great way that all also there’s sparks of curiosity and just like showing kids of color that there were incredible mathematicians and scientists that made revolutionary breakthroughs and they might, the people that you have, the kids you change might become the next people to discover amazing things. And have you tracked any of these kids from the beginning?
TALIA
That is literally what we what we believe. We believe that like the cure for desalinating water, that that person sitting in a classroom today. Like, Albert Einstein was once a little kid who was sitting in the classroom and like they are there right now, whether that’s energy solutions or desalination or new cures for diseases, old or not yet discovered. Like, they’re all in our classrooms today if we can give them the opportunities. And so, our next goal, we’re calling it Beyond 100K.
RIA
Beyond 100K because you want to get past that. That was not the finish line.
TALIA
That was not finish line. We have to go beyond. We’re going to prepare 150,000 teachers just in this decade. We’re going to retain 150,000 STEM teachers in this decade, because if we don’t have classrooms worthy of keeping our teachers we don’t deserve to bring them in there in the first place. Those teachers are going to represent their students and represent the racial diversity and vibrancy of this country.
RIA
Just to see a teacher that looks like you and to connect with that teacher on like a human level. I feel like that’s going to spark a young child’s mind. Like I could even be that teacher to teach the next one.
TALIA
I could—I could create too. I’m worthy of being here and I can do amazing things. A teacher can tell you that. And that’s really what we heard from young people. That teachers were the ones who unlocked that sense of belonging more than anyone else in their lives. And so, we are supporting these teachers to create classrooms of belonging for all of their students.
But specially the students who have been most excluded from STEM opportunities are Black, LatinX and Native American young people. So, that is the goal for this decade. Going beyond 100K.
RIA
I would love to finish with a teacher that really sparked you.
TALIA
I love this question. I think sometimes I have two teachers who always jump to mind. I’m one of them was my second grade teacher. Her name was Direct Diamond. We called her Direct. And she, like I mean, her name was Diamond, but she sparkled for me and you know, just got down on the floor and let us create with our hands and make other things. And that, like, sense of belonging I haven’t always felt like I belonged in in my first grade year. I remember feeling uncomfortable on the edges and that, that second grade year, she just, like, welcomed me and let me know that I had a place in this class and I could belong.
And then fast forward to seventh grade. Mrs. Mead was my English teacher, and she taught me about metaphors. We read a short story called The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. I can still tell you about this little girl reading, taking care of a plant.
This is about a science experiment and the effects of gamma rays on this marigold that she was taking care of in a home that wasn’t taking care of her and she and the, like in that moment when I realized that she was the Marigold.
RIA
Oh, mind blown. That’s it!
TALIA
Explosion in my mind.
RIA
What is your background could I ask?
TALIA
So, I am some a lawyer by training.
RIA
I meant your ethnic background.
TALIA
I am Jewish. I get asked all the time about my name Talia because I it has so many—there’s so many different traditions that have Talias and Thalias and Talias. And I love that feeling of connection. My name comes from Hebrew and it means like the morning dew “Tal” and “IA”, like hallelujah. It’s the divine.
RIA
Oh, wow.
TALIA
Like the sense of possibility. In the morning and the dawn is there.
RIA
I see that as a metaphor for what you’re doing as well. I’m sure you do as well.
TALIA
I really felt today especially and I think about this as a mom, I have three kids, they’re three girls, ten, 12 and 14. And I thought about them in this look, I was pregnant with my youngest when all of this started. And I, I think about their possibility, the possibilities that they have and like that sort of innate opportunity that every young with an incredible spark, that every young person has.
That could be—could be who knows what right? Like, that sort of whole world is contained inside of inside of one person.
RIA
Isn’t it pretty fun to figure out what makes them tick? I have a five and nine year old. So, like, you know, your kids are a little older than mine, but I’m really seeing it.
TALIA
And they’re completely different humans.
RIA
Oh, my God.
TALIA
I, I feel like it’s my best work as a parent is that they’re, each of them, completely different humans, but they’re fiercely loyal to each other. They share a room by choice. All three of them.
RIA
All three of them?
TALIA
All three of them. Bunk bed off bed. We have literally every night do a circuit and I’m just lying to each one of them to have a one on one time. It’s never with them. They still want to snuggle with us, but I’ve been thinking a lot recently-
RIA
That gives me hope.
TALIA
Yes. Totally gives you hope. You can still do it. There are so many things you think about as a mom, as a parent. And one of the ones I never thought I would have to do, like, have as a thing I focus on for my kids. But I think it is going to be true for people raising children right now, with everything that’s happening in the world is to keep them—
I think there’s a very fine line right now between despair and hope. I feel like part of our job as moms and as parents is to keep our kids on the side of hope and to feel like the future can be better than the past, even if things feel very challenging and what they do will matter.But they can take the next elegant step forward, whatever it is to carve a path to progress but what they do matters.
RIA
That is so beautiful. I guess just thinking about it, like you were saying, just having that one on one time, we do like this rose, thorn, and bud thing with my kids. Yeah. her rose was like the science project at school that was very, you know, STEM involved. They were studying this water cycle and they put the water in the plastic bags and set it on—and they saw like the condensation and the evaporation. But to teach science like that, as opposed to just worksheets.
TALIA
That it’s something you can hold hands and you can see it in the world around you. I just think like the world is full of magic, full of mystery and full of goodness. If we can just slow down enough to pay attention to it.
It’s there for us. My mom has this amazing metaphor I’m thinking about a lot. This is just like she talks about the cable cars in San Francisco. So, the cables are always running, but the cars only move when they hook into it. And when they hook in, they can take you up the steepest mountain. It’s like the cables of hope and connection are always there for us running and the question of do we hook in? So, if we hook in, we can climb up the steepest mountains together.
RIA
I live in the Bay Area, so I have climbed those stairs.
TALIA
Exactly. And you have amazing glutes for it. Don’t get me wrong there’s some benefits. But it sometimes helps to have—
RIA
Oh, completely. I love that metaphor. That’s amazing. Thank you so much for your time. I would actually love to have a longer conversation one day.
TALIA
I feel like we have a lot to talk about.
RIA
I think we have a lot to talk about and I just thought because with switching to this work, you know, I was always in the for profit world. I’m an MBA and I switched because my why shifted, like, my why was I need to leave this world better for my children then when I found it, and that is having more education, more representation for my mixed race children. You know that I need them to see, and I think what you’re doing, the work you’re doing, putting teachers and teachers of color in front of these students.
TALIA
Everyone. Everyone needs to see that they can be whoever they dream of being in the world. And the truth is that every child sees that when their teachers are more diverse, whatever your background Black, Brown, White, everything you look at that world and you think, this world’s a big place and there has to be room for me in it and for my like my uniqueness, my greatness can flower in this school.
RIA
I know my daughter wants to be a dentist ballerina. My son wants to be an astronaut who also drives garbage trucks.
TALIA
Obviously.
RIA
So, what are your daughters want to be?
TALIA
Oh, that’s a great—my, not 12 year old. We have a picture still of her up next to where our couch in the living room that says, I want to be a teacher in Hebrew and English.
TALIA
So, maybe we’ll build schools where all of our children will want to be teachers in them.
RIA
I love that so much. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. I want to have a longer conversation again.
OUTRO
At Global Partners for Development our mission is to advance community led initiatives that improve education and public health in East Africa. We envision a world in which every East African community has the capacity to implement dynamic, sustainable solutions to the challenges they face. To learn more, visit gpfd.org.
