Project Description
Shannae Jackson, Fellow
Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep
Chicago, IL
Shannae Jackson is entering her seventh year as principal of Brooks College Prep. Prior to becoming the principal, she was the assistant principal at Brooks College Prep for four years where she helped to lead and support the transformational changes to the school. Shannae Jackson's journey to principalship started as a teacher. She is passionate about ensuring each student is held to high expectations while also ensuring each student follows a customized path that responds and adapts to his/her individual learning progress, interests, and goals. She strives to provide students with the opportunities necessary to meet their post-secondary goals. Shannae Jackson believes in shared leadership. Therefore, her leadership team works collaboratively to support teachers and students. She believes it takes leadership from everyone on all levels working as a Team to reach a school’s mission and provide students with high-quality educational experiences. She also believes a strong leader can help design and implement structures in a school which can lead to positive impacts on a school community and increased student growth. Shannae is looking forward to participating in the Cahn Fellowship this year. She is interested in becoming a better leader and engaging in professional development to enable her to have a greater impact on her school community.
William Ejzak, Ally
English Teacher
Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep
Chicago, IL
Will Ejzak, an English teacher at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep in Chicago, is passionate about literacy and student engagement. In his time at Brooks, Ejzak has created two new courses: Contemporary Lit, a class designed to use 21st century films and nonfiction to explore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in 2021; and Executive Functioning, a class intended to help struggling students with fundamental organization and time management skills, while cultivating academic self-esteem and critical thinking about the institution of school itself. When he is not teaching, Ejzak is the founder and staff sponsor of The BALM, the school’s monthly arts and literary magazine. He is also the sponsor of the school’s award-winning spoken word and poetry team. An advocate for student literacy and student choice in the classroom, Ejzak has helped to pioneer a daily independent reading program for all 9th and 10th graders. As an educator, his passion lies in student engagement: How can we create spaces that students want to be in? How can we take advantage of students’ natural interests—academic and otherwise—to create dynamic, enthusiastic classrooms? Outside of school, Ejzak is a fiction writer. His short stories have been published in half a dozen magazines, and his short story collection was selected by Roxane Gay as a finalist for the 2020 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. He’s thrilled to be a part of the Cahn Fellowship program this year and looks forward to collaborating with innovative educators from all over the country.