How Fellows and Coaches Are Bridging Divides

NEW HAVEN – I’ve always lived in divided cities. First, Washington, DC: a city broken in two by Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River, bounding two polarized and disjointed socioeconomic communities. I attended Woodrow Wilson High School in upper northwest, where 1500+ students filed into two sets of classrooms—AP classes for those with families of means; basic courses for those who had less. Two groups, economically and racially segregated, who shared a lunchroom but never spoke. Today, I live in New Haven: another city of patchwork neighborhoods, where streets are broken into blocks labeled “safe” or “dangerous,” “on-campus” or “off,” “ours” or “theirs.”

Until The Future Project arrived, there were few, if any, opportunities for collaboration across city lines. And so, it felt significant when a diverse group of Future Coaches recently gathered for dinner at a restaurant downtown.

That night, I sat next to Stefan, a student at Southern Connecticut State University. Upon learning I was a student at Yale, he remarked: “It’s terrible, but—do you know what we say about Yale students? It’s a running joke that you guys don’t know how to cross streets. That you feel so entitled you just walk out in front of cars and expect them to stop for you.”

Of course, Yalies like to respond that New Haven residents just don’t know how to drive—they don’t even stop for red lights—so any opportunity to cross the street should be seized with both hands. Continually, two groups justified their silence with comments that reinforced stereotypes of aggression and entitlement. Stefan and I agreed: both campuses should collaborate on some big project, whether a service project or a field day or a dialogue about city relations.

Stefan’s comment reminded me of a story I had heard earlier from Laura Winnick, Executive Director in New Haven. During the first week of Huddles last October, a bright but rowdy Fellow named Mike closed the session with a few generous words about his Coach, Darius. According to Laura, Mike said something like,

“I want to thank Darius for coming here and inspiring me. I found out today that he’s just like me—he didn’t have much growing up, but then he went to Yale and now he has this great job at a finance firm and he loves it. I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t know that I could go somewhere like Yale and have a job that makes a lot of money.”

Despite the fact his school is only blocks from Yale’s research lab and New Haven’s banking district, Mike had never considered them part of “his” New Haven.

When discussing educational reform, we talk a lot about the “achievement gap,” the diverging quality and outcomes of education available to white versus minority students, rich versus poor families, urban and rural versus suburban communities. We recognize the injustice of the divides, and we pose solutions to equalize disadvantaged groups, but we rarely acknowledge the ways in which these groupings resound on a social level. We don’t often speak about the ways in which gaps in circumstance and education tug apart whole schools and entire cities, creating fragmented worlds that first grow distant, then cold, then hostile.

Every week, when I greet my Fellow and the others in my Huddle, I am consistently grateful for the ways in which The Future Project prompts conversation between strangers. We don’t merely build projects; we build relationships that bridge age, income, schools, professions, neighborhoods, pedigree. Those conversations—between each Coach and Fellow, within Huddles, among Coaches and among Fellows—provide a starting point for richer thinking and larger impact. After all, inspiration is not just a feeling of epiphany. Rather, it’s an endless process of reaching: reaching deeper, reaching forward, reaching out. We find purpose in context; we find value through comparison; we find ideas by asking for others’ perspectives.

In The Future Project, those connections are what blur the lines, bringing new futures into view.

Alison Grubbs is a Future Coach in New Haven – and was one of the founding team members who helped make The Future Project a reality.