Jay Gillen is a teacher and organizer in Baltimore. He has been affiliated with the youth-run Baltimore Algebra Project as both a classroom teacher and adult facilitator/advisor since 1995. Gillen’s focus is on finding ways for young people to earn money sharing knowledge and skills with peers, as a way to create “crawl spaces” in which those young people can learn to make demands on themselves, on their peers, and on the larger society. Currently, Gillen is developing the idea of a new constitution for public education with this preamble: “Every middle-schooler will have the expectation that when they are in high school, they will have a good-paying job, sharing knowledge or skills with younger children, peers, or other people in the community.”
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