What is Thirty-Eight Minutes?
A Department of Education study found that the average high school student spent a total of 38 minutes with their guidance counselor in the course of their high school career. 38 minutes: Enough time to get the conversation started, to be a catalyst for action, but not enough to bring plans to fruition–to turn dreams into realities. 38 minutes is not enough.
That’s where we come in.
Thirty-Eight Minutes is a project centered on discussing issues–good and bad–that we feel define our generation. Our goal is to help frame the public discourse and lend a voice to what we believe is a dramatically underrepresented population: Students. Kids. Us.
This site is a way for us to share our opinions and perspectives on life and society as we figure out what the heck we are doing in the world. We’re smart enough to know we don’t have all the answers, but optimistic enough to believe we can make a difference nonetheless.
So spend some time with us–maybe even 38 minutes, if you’d like. It’s not enough to change the world, but we can at least get the conversation started.
Who Are We?
As of this moment, Thirty-Eight Minutes consists of five core contributing bloggers:
This is Ernest. Ernest is the one who came up with the idea for this site, and he is our fearless leader. He is a super accomplished guy, so for the sake of brevity here is a small list of things used to describe him: Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2006, novice freestyle rapper (Hot Ice Tea in many circles), aspiring educator and education policy influencer, former person of importance, current regular guy, resident cool kid.
This is David. When he’s not traveling around the world or giving TED Talks, he spends a lot of time promoting education reform in Oklahoma. He also writes. A lot. He has been featured on Wordpress’ Freshly Pressed, Rotary International’s blog, Thought Catalog, and Buzzfeed, among others. Mostly though, he is just a chill guy that enjoys not taking himself too seriously.
This is Lester. Lester is going to head the Department of State someday, or something like that. He is incredibly intelligent, extremely well-spoken, and universally well-liked (this guy gets at least 75 likes on every Facebook status he posts). Lester is a master at expressing his opinion while being both respectful and encouraging to those who might disagree. That is a rare skill in the world today.
This is Lorenzo. Lorenzo is passionate about the pursuit of equality in educational opportunity and currently serves as a Teach for America Corps member on the south side of Oklahoma City at Jefferson Middle School. Additionally, he works with State Senator Mike Johnston’s Urban Leaders Fellowship in Denver, CO. Basically he is a warrior on the front lines of the fight to reform education policy.
This is Aaron. Aaron is awesome in every single way. He also holds a Masters in Speech Pathology, and is a Speech Pathologist in the Oklahoma City Public Schools system. On top of having a pulse on the realities of education, he is an accomplished writer who critiques and reviews music and films on his personal blog.
That’s us for now. But we also hope to add another contributor: you. Take part in the conversation. Voice your opinion. Join the party. It’s pretty fun.
Thirty-Eight Minutes 