William Franks (he/him)
OEL Master’s in Education ‘24
Missouri/Shanghai, China
Having grown up on a farm in northwest Missouri, it was a long road to living in Shanghai, even before that road led me to HGSE. Coming from a family split between farmers and teachers, nurturing the growth of others was always going to be my life’s work. That drive to learn and support led me to teaching in rural, suburban, and urban schools in Missouri before moving to international and bilingual education in Shanghai in 2016.
The OEL professors told us before our first class that we would learn more from our fellow students than from the faculty, and they were absolutely right.
Living in China (12 hours ahead of Boston), my OEL classes were the start of my workday. Each class, I was energized and inspired to take what I had learned in the morning and leverage it for the good of my students and school before the end of the day. Since graduating, I have genuinely missed the curiosity, kindness, and incredible competence in my peers and professors that pushed me each morning to go further and do more.
The OEL program gave me a plethora of tools, perspectives, frameworks, and strategies to tackle the infinite range of challenges one can face in education. It also helped me understand the ways that systems and policies must be shaped to serve the needs of learners (be they students or teachers). That powerful toolbox was always presented and practiced in classes that allowed me to see what best served my own work in cross-cultural, bilingual, and international education.
The OEL professors told us before our first class that we would learn more from our fellow students than from the faculty, and they were absolutely right. The inaugural cohort is a group of endlessly inspiring, eternally curious, utterly driven, and overwhelmingly warm individuals who created a community of heart and soul that extends far beyond our graduation date. The other international students were also an essential support structure of peers within the larger cohort, helping each other find creative ways to address cross-cultural and international issues as we bridged our courses and the work we do in our careers.
Nearly every professor had a lasting impact upon me, to a number and degree that I can’t adequately cover in this small space. I absolutely have to give a shoutout to my advisor, Dr. Irvin Scott, who brings a level of energy and care to each advisee that helped us to get the most out of Harvard that we could in a way that directly connected to the work we are doing out in the world.
From the Cynefin Framework to the Educational Ecosystem, Immunity to Change protocols to Driver diagrams, every semester gave me tools and perspectives that will not only shape my ongoing career but were so powerful that had to immediately roll them out in my job. Many of us in the inaugural cohort started collecting impactful quotes from class, breakout groups, and other meetings – by the end this constituted dozens and dozens of shared touchstones that one classmate so helpfully gathered online for us. I also know I’m not the only one to have had at least one notebook by my computer for the duration of the program, always ready to jot down a phrase or idea; those notebooks have continued to be a goldmine of guidance and grace.
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