Ep 5: Beyond Compliance: How jacob adams’ Inner Spark Learning Lab Cultivates Critical Thinkers

Nicole Jarbo:
jacob adams's first teaching gig was at a majority Black elementary school in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The school had a Breakfast Program.
jacob adams:
The kindergartners would come the first couple of days before anybody else came.
Nicole Jarbo:
These are five-year-olds. Maybe they're excited to meet other students, nervous about whether their teacher will be nice. It may be the longest they've ever spent away from their families and their whole lives.
Student:
I'd say what I'm most excited about on my first day of school is meeting other students. I'm a bit nervous because I hope my teacher will be nice. I've never been away from my mom and dad for this long.
Nicole Jarbo:
You'd hope that this would be a safe and supportive environment for students, instead.
Teacher:
All right, now listen up. Today we're going to learn some rules.
jacob adams:
They got to sit there with their hands folded.
Teacher:
Don't let those hands come apart.
jacob adams:
Got to have their feet on the ground.
Teacher:
Uncross those legs right now.
jacob adams:
And then when you're walking in line, hands are on your legs. You are looking at the person in front of you.
Teacher:
Eyes on the back of the head of the person in front of you at all times.
jacob adams:
As soon as kids take their hands apart, people are walking over and taking the kids' breakfasts.
Teacher:
You can get this back when you learn to follow the rules.
jacob adams:
We're just controlling these kids, the way they think, the way they sit, the way they move, where they look, how much they could talk. There'd be like 50 people at breakfast just watching all these Black kids eat breakfast and not talk, just so they can learn how to go back to their neighborhood and have a bunch of Black kids be quiet and be still and do whatever they say.
Nicole Jarbo:
I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo, and this is Pitch Playground from 4.O. This week, jacob adams shares his pitch for Inner Spark Learning Lab, formerly known as STEM to the Future.
jacob adams:
What we're doing is helping kids be able to develop their own literacy of the world and not be able to just accept things the way they are.
Nicole Jarbo:
This season we're hearing 10 ideas from entrepreneurs reimagining the future of learning, and we pair them up with funders who can help them strengthen their pitch.
Today jacob pitches his idea to Niloy Gangopadhya, a long-time leader in education with over two decades of experience launching initiatives in Texas, New York, and Louisiana. He's now a vice president at Teach for America National.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
And I feel like there are so many ways to reach students outside of the traditional curriculum, and I'm really passionate about mental health and emotional well-being, behavioral health.
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob is eligible to win $50,000 towards his idea. Stay tuned for when voting will open.
jacob went to the public school down the street from his house in Georgia until grade four. Then he got accepted into a more prestigious school further away. jacob excelled there. He was getting all A's and B's, except in conduct.
jacob adams:
Every time you would get in trouble during the week, you usually had to go sign a book, and that would be like deductions off your overall conduct grade. I was signing that book a lot, so I'd usually have a C in conduct.
Nicole Jarbo:
Why were you not getting straight A's in conduct? What was going on?
jacob adams:
I feel like there was just a lot of things to comment on. I like to be the narrator of the class and the commentator, and that's how I kept things eventful and fun for me at school. The academic stuff, it wasn't interesting. It felt boring. I didn't really know why we were learning the stuff. It didn't seem like I was ever going to use it, most of which I never have used.
It wasn't like I was coming in there looking to be disrespectful or cause chaos. I was just getting bored and be like, "All right, we need some entertainment, and I guess that's what my role here is."
Nicole Jarbo:
The school had an A/B honor roll. It recognized students who didn't have any grades lower than a B on their report card. jacob wasn't eligible for the award because of all those C's he had in conduct.
jacob adams:
Then during the Honors Day, the principal is like-
Principal:
Next we have A/B Honor Roll, with the exception of conduct, jacob adams.
jacob adams:
I was like, "What?" So I went up there, got my award, sat down, and they went on to another award, and then they never did that thing again.
Nicole Jarbo:
There was a teacher who created the award category for jacob. That teacher was Ms. Battle. She saw something in jacob that she thought deserved to be recognized despite his poor conduct grade.
jacob adams:
I really appreciate that teacher. I wish I could talk to her about it, because I'm wondering what made her advocate for me, but I think some of it had to do with ... I was still engaging with the stuff we were learning. I was asking questions, I was being respectful. And the stuff I was getting in trouble for was just being silly.
Nicole Jarbo:
Getting that award sent a powerful message to jacob.
jacob adams:
You're still a good student, you're a good learner. You still need to be recognized. And the fact that you're not following all these rules the way the school wants you to follow them, it's not a character flaw, and it's almost now something that I embrace.
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob went on to college at the University of Southern Tennessee. To get in, jacob had to do some courses over six-week summer school,
jacob adams:
And I remember my first day of school there, I remember going there thinking, "This'll be easy." My first day of class I was like, "Oh, I'm not that smart." Mid three-week point, I had two C's. I just remember going to my room and crying like, "Dang, I'm not prepared. I'm not as smart as I thought. The first person in my family to go to college, I'm not even going to get in and this is about to be the end of my life."
Nicole Jarbo:
But jacob figured it out.
jacob adams:
I had the belief in myself that whatever this is, I'll be able to get through.
Nicole Jarbo:
He started seeking mentorship and support wherever he could.
jacob adams:
Someone on the football team, he was supposed to be playing football and he was a math major. So I would start to go talk to him almost every day about what we were doing in math and then also go to all the office hours with the professor. And then there was someone who would read our papers every night in English, just at our dorm, and I would go talk to her every night.
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob had to learn how to learn in an environment like that, and the work paid off.
jacob adams:
And after the summer, college was easy. I just needed those six weeks to figure out how to be a student.
Nicole Jarbo:
After college, like many of the founders on this podcast, jacob signed up for Teach for America.
jacob adams:
I got placed at this elementary school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and was teaching first grade.
Nicole Jarbo:
This was a school serving all Black students. They had a week's long professional development at the beginning of school before bringing students in.
jacob adams:
You're doing the practice with adults and you're simulating kids. It's like, they got to sit there with their hands folded. Got to have their feet on the ground. You can't even swing your legs. And then when you're walking in line, hands are on your legs. You are looking at the person in front of you. If you're not doing all that stuff, you're getting in trouble. So I was like, "Well, this is weird."
Nicole Jarbo:
After practicing that along with the other teachers, jacob got to see it in action during the Breakfast Program at the school on his first day.
jacob adams:
The kindergartners would come the first couple of days before anybody else came.
Teacher:
Now listen to me, today we're going to learn some rules.
jacob adams:
And the kids are at breakfast and we've simulated this, but it's different when it's a 21-year-old, 22-year-old, and when it's a five-year-old, who, first day of school. But the kids there, they got their hands folded, they got their breakfast. As soon as kids take their hands apart, people are walking over and taking the kids' breakfasts until they do whatever they're told to do.
There'd be 50 people at breakfast, just watching all these Black kids eat breakfast and not talk, just so they could learn how to go back to their neighborhood and have a bunch of Black kids be quiet and be still and do whatever they say. And at that point you're like, "Whoa, this can't be right."
Nicole Jarbo:
But everyone was telling jacob that it was right. Test scores at the school were some of the best in the whole state.
jacob adams:
And then they justify it because they have these high academics. And school's led by a Black woman. The VP of the network is a Black woman. It's mostly young white women working in there, and I'm like, "Yo, this is racist." And they're like, "How's it racist? There's two Black people leading it." And you're like, "Oh, man." You almost have to check yourself, am I okay or am I the one that's tripping? Because almost everyone else around you will look at the outcomes and say, "You are tripping because look at what these kids are able to achieve."
Nicole Jarbo:
This school is applying something called the broken windows theory. Basically, it encourages teachers to address small signs of disorder that could help prevent more serious issues. It has an environment of strict enforcement of small rules and harsh discipline.
In recent years, this style of teaching, especially as it applies to Black students, has been heavily scrutinized. Studies show that Black students are more likely to be disciplined and face harsher punishments than others.
jacob adams:
We're just controlling these kids, the way they think, the way they sit, the way they move, where they look, how much they could talk. In service of them just to remember a bunch of stuff that I know they're not going to need this stuff.
Nicole Jarbo:
How do you reconcile being the kid who wasn't getting A's in behavior and conduct, and then being the person who's in charge of a bunch of little kids and making sure that they're overly compliant?
jacob adams:
I can't even lie. The very beginning, so maybe the first few weeks, I'm just do what they tell me to do so I'm not getting in trouble. And even while I'm doing that, I know it's not something I want to do. That's not how I want to talk to kids, not how I want to treat them. But I was just so caught up in looking out for myself, I honestly wasn't thinking about them how I wish I would have at that time.
But my co-teacher, she got real sick and she was out for a month. And I was like, "All right, well, now she gone. I can't deal with that and try to be this overseer that they're trying to make me be, so I'm going to just try to figure out how to be myself and how can we navigate these different rules without blowing up the spots."
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob decided to start running the class his way.
jacob adams:
At some point I was telling the kids, "Yo, let's just chill. If it's just me and y'all in here, sit how you want to sit. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to talk how I'm going to talk, and we'll do our own thing." I was like, "If the principal come in, the vice principal come in, the teacher across the hall, any of them come in, we all got to switch it up."
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob started teaching the students from a resource called Learning for Justice. It's a community education program developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It addresses racial injustices in the South and encourages learning, reflection, and action.
jacob adams:
Talking about the level of engagement where it's not forced, and they get to have the opportunity to think critically and question the way things are, just seeing how that would go in those moments really showed me, "This is what it could be."
Nicole Jarbo:
What should school be in your eyes?
jacob adams:
It's a place where you come and you develop the tools so that you can constantly be able to figure out who you are and what do you care about. How does your mind work? What things are you passionate about? What things are giving you meaning in life?
And from there, now how can we use all those things to create the things that we need and do what the community needs? As opposed to now I think it's a place where more or less just learning how to accept the way the world is and teaching us a worldview or a belief that this is as good as it can get, so accept it.
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob went on to get a job as a teacher coach with Teach for America in LA. It was his first opportunity to see schools other than the one that he taught at.
jacob adams:
But one thing that I'm seeing consistently, is even if it's a, quote, unquote, "high-performing school" that I was supporting, the curriculum was whack. It was boring. So at that point I wanted to start to think of a way to teach that will allow kids to start to tap into who they are.
Nicole Jarbo:
jacob met someone who ran one of the only majority Black charter networks in LA who supported his idea.
jacob adams:
And then I did a eight-week pilot with 25 kindergartens and first graders. It went amazing and just validated a lot of the things that I was thinking were possible even with kids that young.
Nicole Jarbo:
With that Inner Spark was born. What is your Inner Spark elevator pitch?
jacob adams:
Inner Spark Learning Lab is creating a way of teaching that allows elementary and middle school students to go through this process of self-actualization and learn more about who they are, who they want to be, and how to create the change that they want to see in themselves and then in the neighborhood and in the community.
Nicole Jarbo:
What do you think adults and potentially educators, what do you think is their biggest misconception around what's important to young people right now?
jacob adams:
I think that as adults, we think we know what's best for kids. And to some degree, sure, we definitely are responsible for these little people, but we can't and we shouldn't discount their thoughts and opinions just because they're younger. For one, they see the world in a much different way than we do. How do we teach kids how to be? Just teach them how to be, which feels so simple.
But no matter what happens in the world, we know you're going to need to be able to think critically. You're going to need to believe in yourself and you're going to need to know who you are. I would like to think you're going to need to know the things you care about and the things that give you meaning, but I think if you look at most curriculum or more schools, none of that is being taught.
Nicole Jarbo:
Give me some examples of how this work has positively impacted kids.
jacob adams:
We have this Youth Participatory Action Research program, and two years ago the engineering program, the girls had made two different things. And one was they built and coded this multi-layer candy machine where, depending upon what color Lego you drop through the thing, that will dictate which candy comes out. Cool, kind of sophisticated. Then right next to that, they've built this prototype of a shield that'll protect the kids during a school shooting. And there are like nine year olds, 10 year olds.
And so it's like, just seeing those two things right next to each other made by the same group of girls, is on one hand you see what you think kids are thinking about and what you might be hope they're thinking about. And then on the other hand, you see the other sad reality that they're dealing with.
Nicole Jarbo:
The programs jacob is running a lot for students to research and create projects based on their lived experience.
jacob adams:
They've also built these hand sanitizer machines that were used at mutual aid events, so unhoused folks were coming to get food.
Nicole Jarbo:
This is the voice of one of those students speaking at one of these events.
Student:
Hi, I'm Alamnash Youssef. I'm 10 years old. And I'm here today at the mutual aid center right here.
Now imagine people who are just homeless, there will be fighting for water. That's something we should not fight for. That's not right. It's not right, and it breaks my heart to see that. So today I helped make the hand washing machine so people who are homeless can have reliable access to wash your hands.
jacob adams:
And then another example that I think also just speaks to what happens when you give kids more ownership over what they learn, is in doing the research for their projects, the kids going to the farmer's market, asking people about different issues that they care about, the second most cared about issue was homelessness, and the issue that had the least amount of support was the LGBTQ community.
And so we were talking to the kids about the data and the kids were like, "We want to do something for the LGBTQ community because that's the thing that got the least amount of support." And I was thinking, "Dang, as an educator, you probably wouldn't have designed the class like that."
Nicole Jarbo:
The feedback jacob has been getting from teachers whose students have participated in the program has been really positive.
Teacher:
Also, I have seen students come out of their shell and really want to participate. And so I think it helps their personality, it helps their imagination, it helps them broaden their horizons and do other things that they wouldn't normally do, and I really enjoy working with the program.
Nicole Jarbo:
What has been the impact to date of Inner Spark?
jacob adams:
We have just last year alone, until the '23/'24 school year, worked with over 35,000 students. And I'm proud of it. For us to be a small team and be working with that many kids, it's definitely something to be proud of.
But I would also say in terms of impact, we just got our first year impact report back from our researchers. 94% of the kids saw an increase in psychological safety, high 80% had a strong sense of belonging. Those things really stand out to me because I think ultimately, that's what we're trying to do. It's to create the space and the environment where kids can go through this change that we think is necessary.
Nicole Jarbo:
Along with the direct work that jacob is doing in schools, they're also generating research that they hope can support similar programs broadly.
jacob adams:
And so what we are really focused on is being an organization that generates knowledge. And then being able to share those with schools and districts through our research papers, through our professional development.
Nicole Jarbo:
Right now, jacob is shifting the model of Inner Spark. In the past, they've tried to be in 10 schools, but they haven't always been able to develop the deep relationships that they feel are necessary to create lasting change. They're transitioning to focusing on three schools and adding in a new role called a dreamweaver. If jacob wins the 50K, he'll use the money to partially fund that person's salary.
jacob adams:
And their role is to be learning as much as they can about the kids at the school, their families, and then the more broader school community. And then they're using that information to figure out what unique needs does the school have, and then what connections do we have in the community that can help meet them.
Nicole Jarbo:
Now jacob gets to pitch his idea to Niloy, who spent over 20 years making public education more equitable. He co-founded a charter school in New Orleans, led statewide programs for at-risk students at the Texas Education Agency, and has been shaping policies that make a real difference for students in schools.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I'm passionate about figuring out ways that are not traditional or the orthodox ways that we followed in education. So it doesn't necessarily need to be disruptive, but just in getting the ball rolling on new ideas. And I feel like there's so many ways to reach students outside of the traditional curriculum, and I'm really passionate about mental health and emotional wellbeing, behavioral health.
Nicole Jarbo:
Niloy dives into what questions he has about jacob's pitch and how he can strengthen it. Things like who are all the facilitators of the program and what is their role? What is jacob's business model and how is it tied to the program model? How is jacob measuring the impact that the program is having on students? Here's their conversation.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I want to jump in. So who is actually running the labs or doing the programming at schools?
jacob adams:
Out of school we have a facilitator teaching our curriculum, which is the foundation of it is based off of the Social Justice Standards. So the facilitator is holding that down weekly. And then we also have someone at the school, their role is a dreamweaver, and their dreamweaver is someone who is there to learn more about the specific needs of that school.
And then last, the third person at the school is the person who runs our Youth Participatory Action Research program, where the kids are doing research in and with the school community and then working with someone who has the expertise within either engineering, design, or health justice to develop a solution to some unmet need that's come up at the school.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I'm curious to learn a little bit more about your financial model and a little bit about just the programmatic model as it's tied to the financial model.
jacob adams:
The financial model, we have a fee-for-service aspect of our nonprofit, which is actually all we had for the first few years when I founded it back in 2018. And so the schools' budgets, they can't afford full-time people and an after-school program, but they'll cover a portion of it. And then the rest of those funds are covered by our foundation partners and then also individual giving.
And then we also have a whole professional development that we do. Schools, districts, youth development organizations also pay for that. That covers I believe 30% of the budget and the other 70 is philanthropic.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
The other question I had, just in a few sentences, just the idea of, if you could crystallize the impact that the program has had on students.
jacob adams:
I think about this one student who ... We're still really close. I was talking to his mom recently, and she was saying every other program that he's in, they have to drag him to it. But when he was in our program, that was the only thing he'd be out the door waiting to come to. And I remember him specifically saying in one of the classes that, "This is different than school because y'all actually care about what I think." You give kids some power and you give them some autonomy, they typically want to be there.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
What do you expect students two years out having gone through the lab to do academically, and outside of the classroom, what are they doing?
jacob adams:
We have the outcomes we care about, psychological safety, critical thinking, ownership over their learning, and belonging. And so we're like, if you can create an environment where kids are able to ... they feel like they belong, they feel safe, their critical thinking is developing, they feel like they own what they're learning, if you can create that environment, all these academic outcomes, our hypothesis is, if you have those outcomes, that's going to be able to set the school up to excel or at minimum improve these more academic outcomes that they're prioritizing.
Nicole Jarbo:
When Niloy and jacob talk about academic outcomes here, they're talking about the things that schools typically measure. These could be things like reading proficiency tests, math scores, rates of absenteeism. But jacob taught at a school that had high academic scores while enforcing strict systems of control. You have to ask, are the systems of measurement broken?
jacob adams:
If we only focus on these academic outcomes, you got a lot of kids who have a good memory at minimum, but do they really know how to question things? Are they able to think critically and not just learn how to think within a certain box that the school is trying to put them in?
Who is that academic achievement helping at that point? Is it helping society as a whole? Is it helping a certain aspect of society? Is it helping the community that they're in and coming from? I think those are the questions I started to think about when we think about what outcomes are important and why they're important.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I mean, I think something I was thinking about, a lot of times students don't feel successful in school and they get derailed early, which leads to chronic absenteeism, leads to classroom culture issues, and generally gets them down a path that's not successful, at least in the classroom setting.
But it strikes me as if you can feel excited about coming to school because you see yourself being successful, I think that could be a game changer. And I think mental health and emotional wellbeing, behavioral health on its own right, is great. Hands down, we all need that. I think the strengths of the program obviously are that it's putting students at the center of their learning, inspiring them to want to know more, learn more.
I think the other strengths are it's got a model, but where you have a dreamweaver, you have facilitator, and then you have PD. In terms of learning, you have outside folks who are doing research, but also internally spending dollars, investing human capital in getting better at the product itself and making tweaks of adjustments. So I think those are strengths.
As a school leader, when I think about ... I want to have students at the center of learning. I want every student or every child to be excited. I think I would want to know, "Hey, if I do the program, what are some measurable outcomes?" And so being crystal clear about we're going to see an increase in decreasing chronic absenteeism, an increase in classroom participation, and engagement in classwork being completed, in terms of from a pitch perspective, you got to mix in some quantitative data. I think that's really important, jacob.
jacob adams:
Last year was the first year we invested in our four-year research partnership. Some of this stuff is like, I know we need to know and now we're taking the time to figure it out. It's also good that the feedback is like, "Yeah, y'all need to keep learning and then you need to be able to share that learning," because that's exactly what we want to do and need to do.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I'm excited to continue to learn and follow your journey of learning in the lab.
jacob adams:
No, for sure. No, thank you, Niloy. This was super helpful.
Nicole Jarbo:
As jacob continues to inspire students to think critically and question the way the world is, he'll need to balance that with finding ways to demonstrate success with some of the traditional learning measurements that schools want to see. Here are a few things that I'd like you all to keep thinking about after this episode is over.
jacob adams:
It wasn't like I was coming in there looking to be disrespectful or cause chaos. I just getting bored and be like, "All right, we need some entertainment, and I guess that's what my role here is."
Nicole Jarbo:
You may be tempted to label the class clown as a troublemaker but remember, there might be a deeper story there.
Student:
Now imagine people who are just homeless, there will be fighting for water. That's something we should not fight for. That's not right. It's not right, and it breaks my heart to see that.
Nicole Jarbo:
Listen to what's important to students. Don't just dictate what you think they ought to care about.
Niloy Gangopadhyay:
I think mental health and emotional wellbeing, behavioral health in its own right, is great. Hands down, we all need that.
Nicole Jarbo:
Putting wellness at the center of learning can have ripple effects across all aspects of education. jacob, it was so great to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing your story. And, Niloy, thank you for your mentorship and advice. Remember, jacob is eligible to win $50,000 towards his idea. Stay tuned for when voting will open.
Thanks for tuning into Pitch Playground from 4.0. I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo. Learn more about Pitch Playground at pitchplayground.com and leave us a review if you liked the episode. Next episode, we'll be hearing a pitch from Aaron Frumin, the founder of unCommon Construction.
Aaron Frumin:
We really hang our hard hat, so to speak, on the development and demonstration of soft skills. We focus on teamwork ethic, problem solving, professional attitude, communication. These are research-based frameworks that we've adopted that are formative assessments of whether and how our young people are on track for success in work and life after graduating high school.

‍