Get to Know: Caitlin & Emma

There are few people in Nashville as young, driven and passionate about education than Caitlin Stubner and Emma Supica. Okay, that’s not true. As you’ll come to find on Friday, there are a ton of people in our city that care about making sure our city offers all students equal access to an excellent education. But Caitlin, Communications Director for Liveschool, an app designed to support positive school culture, and Emma, a former public school music teacher, are committed to exposing other young, driven people to join the cause.

“I moved to Nashville to become a teacher in my life when I was ready and willing to work hard to make something broken, better,” Caitlin says. (Note: Caitlin and I were both a part of the 2009 Teach for America Nashville Charter Corps. She was an awesome teacher. Still is.)

“I love reading—like all-consuming-fiction-reading—and lucky for me I became a reading teacher. At 23, I was not prepared to see 7th graders reading on average at a 1st grade level. After that, I became passionate about education because all students, no matter what their background or zip code, deserve to love reading or math or science or art or PE. They deserve to love school.”

Caitlin’s first teaching experience was at Smithson Craighead, a now-defunct charter middle school that closed after running through four principals in three years, and achieving little in terms of academic progress for students. In it’s last year, only 5 percent of students were proficient in math. Unfortunately, that experience isn’t isolated to one school. And despite the fact that Tennessee’s schools have seen some of the most rapid progress in student achievement in the country, there’s no denying that the problems are pervasive and difficult to prioritize.

“There are a gamut of problems facing schools today, both locally and nationally,” Emma says. “And there are a LOT of opinions out there on what’s going to “fix” the system.”

Recent debates have dominated state and national headlines: top-down reforms, such as the controversial Common Core standards, unclear direction and strategy around charter school implementation, funding… the list goes on and on. So much so, Emma says, that people tune out.

“Things get lost,” she explains. “And the cries for help from the students and teachers who need it most won’t be heard over a shouting match between powers.”

While Caitlin and Emma clearly see the challenges ahead—they both hold onto great hope for the future of our schools. For now, Caitlin places much of that faith not in the bureaucracy of politics, but in the power of effective teachers. In her work at Liveschool, Caitlin builds training to accompany an app that enables whole schools to incentivize positive characteristics from respect and empathy to grit and perseverance—characteristics that have significant and long-term impact on student academic achievement. After all, the ability of a teacher to change a student’s trajectory and life is always going to start in the classrooms of Nashville not in the board rooms.

“There is so much hope for our schools,” Caitlin says. “Do I have a million stories that will break your heart? Yes. But I also have a million that will make you laugh with joy. Education effects all of us — and it’s time for people to get informed so that they can help make our schools worthy of our students.”

Contributed by Claire Gibson