By Sami Majeed
I can remember being a toddler, steadying myself against my grandmother’s wooden chair in Karachi, Pakistan, as she sat with an open book, running two fingers down a page for a few seconds, then running two fingers down the next page. I asked her an unpretentious question, “What are you doing, grandma?” “Reading, bata [little one], reading,” she said.
My grandmother’s dream was to open a school of her own, one where she would have the freedom to teach to the child. One that was informed not by punishments and rewards but through scouring neuroscience articles on learning and child development.
You see, I come from a family of educators. My maternal great grandparents were high school math teachers and district leaders in India. In fact, my great grandfather made a highly scandalous and controversial first step: he threw away traditions and allegiances to patriarchy, stood deftly in the face of criticism and ridicule, and took the miraculous and radically simple step of educating his daughter, my grandmother.
And, indeed, such bravery paid off. By the time my grandmother was 12, she had completed high school and at age 16, she had earned her master’s degree in philosophy from a prestigious university in India. That superhuman, accelerated pace is something that I have always admired.
My grandmother’s ferocity spread throughout our family of educators, leading to the thoughtful, meticulously designed curriculum at Self Development Preschool, which my mom opened in 1988 to provide an academically challenging environment with an emphasis on early education. The parent demand for this type of curriculum spurred my family to further fulfill my grandmother’s dream. My mom opened Self Development Academy public charter school in Mesa in 2000 with just 37 students. The Mesa campus was a huge success. Throughout the 00s, I would come home from college to learn my mom’s school had won another award. Or a teacher had won teacher of the year. Or the school was ranked fifth. Then fourth. Then third. Then…
Since that time, our little Mesa campus has grown to serve 460 K-8 students, rising to become one of the top 10 schools in Arizona. Our accelerated curriculum provides hands-on learning opportunities for our students and was of course built around the same philosophy that the preschool was built upon: every child learns if we make it hard enough and fun enough.
But our family wanted to create more opportunities for disadvantaged students. The core Self Development group got to work on opening a school in a highly disadvantaged area in Phoenix using the Mesa campus as a model. At the time, I was living in Washington, D.C., having just finished law school. I worked with the staff on a grant for the school and felt that stir of excitement around the idea of working for something larger than you.
The Phoenix campus opened in 2015 to 185 students while I was in D.C. My mom would send me updates on both schools, and I’d feel that same longing I’d felt as a child in a family of educators who spent my summers in Self Development’s Summer Program.
In early 2016, I received some news that finalized my decision to move back to Phoenix: my beloved mother who embodies the spirit and drive of my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. You see, my grandmother had died of cancer around the same age as my mom was when she was diagnosed. There was no way that life’s ironic sense of humor, that mere coincidence and symbolism would shake my mom’s indefatigable desire to educate the impoverished.
After that revelation, I moved back to Arizona help my mother and continue building on the legacy of my grandmother’s dream. It’s also allowed me to begin forging my own path.
Today, Self Development Academy’s combined enrollment exceeds 700 students. Yet, there are more disadvantaged populations that need serving. We are planning to open up a school on the border of Phoenix and Scottsdale, hoping to enroll more than 400 students. We are also planning to open a school in the forgotten neighborhoods in East Mesa, where we eventually plan to enroll 700 students.
As an educator, I have grown to appreciate the time I have with my students and I feel as though I know their brains—such details as what could make them eat beets, how to get them to write their science report. I feel deeply enriched.
These moments with the children, I have been on all sides of it. I have been the child. I have been on the outside watching the adults learn how to handle those moments. I am now the adult in that moment. It is my own arc curving toward the path it was always meant to be on, a path that began generations ago with my grandmother’s dream.
