Leadership Profile of Linda Wayman of CurrentlyTrending

Abstract

Linda Wayman has been a school leader in Philadelphia for 32 years, and a principal for 13 of those years. During that time, she found a pattern; the highest number of high school dropouts were consistently 9th graders. When a new set of 9th graders would enter high school, she began asking them a series of questions regarding 8th grade and whether they felt it set them up and prepared them to go to high school. The answer was a resounding no. A number of students felt like this was partly due to the fact that they were so used to being with the same children in the same school since pre-K. No one really took the time to sit down and talk to them about being scattered across the city once they enter high school, and the implications of that big change. They had to build so many new skills when moving schools -- around making friends, how to talk to a counselor, how to read a roster, etc., that they were overwhelmed. The students never learned critical skills to help them become self-advocates and navigate the complex systems and paths ahead of them. Linda knew then that when she formally left the school system, she wanted to start a nonprofit and fill that gap to address the dropout problem head-on.