Hi DSST! My name is Jan-Louis Burroughs and I’m the 2019 Core Value Award Winner for Doing Your Best.

To me, doing your best is more than giving it your all or not giving up.

It means fighting the battles worth fighting, putting the work in that needs to be done, and knowing you don't need to fight them and work alone.

Doing your best means to honor every single person where they're at while each of us grow in our own ways.

Doing your best is acknowledging and expanding upon an individual's skills, thoughts and experiences while naming that those things are exactly what we need to be stronger together.

It means that every day doesn't have to go to plan as long as we learn from it, and most of all, that teamwork truly makes the dream work.

Doing Your Best is the Core Value that unites the power of the individual with the power of the team.

Team. Vision.

Individual. Strength.

Collective. Empowerment. Action.

Whether it be in my C3 Teams (shout-out Math 6 these last several years and my current Math 7 AF team!), my grade-level teams (that's you, CV6 and AST's Team 7!), my Affinity Groups, the VLCs / Tech Leads, or with my coaches and mentors at CG, CV, AST, and at HO, there is one thing in common: vision-led, action-oriented, experience-based, and data-driven conversations.

I think about our students, staff, and community members that make our schools so great. It all comes down from ideas and teams.

Ideas turn into these conversations. Conversations turn into aligned action. Action leads to reflection and more action. And of course, it all leads into results.

That is the power of the team, and the source of that power is the promotion of ideas.

People's ideas matter.

People's voices matter.

People's experiences matter.

In the Metro Denver/Aurora communities, there are just as many powerful stories, thoughts, and organizations out there that, just like DSST, aim to better humanity.

One organization elevates these ideas, voices, and experiences and turns them into conversations.

TEDxMileHigh is the local and independently organized affiliated of TED. Throughout high school, college, and absolutely here in DSST, I've watched my fair share of TED Talks and all of us can at least name a few that have touched our hearts and stick with us today.

The TEDxMileHigh affiliate specifically is the conference I've been a part of - twice virtually and once at the BellCo Theater itself - featuring ALL Metro Denver residents.

Thanks to TEDxMileHigh, I have been introduced to ideas, voices, and experiences that push me not just as a teacher but as a local community member and citizen of this Earth. I am reminded that I have agency BOTH inside and outside the classroom.

Through their conferences and workshops, I've learned about RISE Colorado and Veronica Palmer-Crespo, whose organization works with Aurora families so they can become advocates for their students in school.

There is Jovan Mays, another local Aurora resident, who works with the youth of Aurora Public Schools express themselves through poetry and writing.

I have been pushed to think about think about gender equity and feminism more from local pastor Paula Stone Williams from her experiences as a transwoman, and why art isn't a waste of time and why people are afraid of art from Regis University's R. Alan Brooks.

I've learned from local scientists about how a future pandemic can still happen or how our actions are impacting marine populations; from a local historian about the racism permeating American high school history curriculums and a local state representative on a local foundation that sends social workers to certain 911 calls alongside or in lieu of police to deescalate situations.

I've been asked to reflect on the importance of white allies from the National Equity Project's Nita Mosby Tyler, the importance of reflecting on my biases not once but often from Joan Williams, and some ideas about how to expand voting and immigrant rights and how to avoid giving notoriety to those who commit mass shootings. --and among many more.

Sometimes, we need the opportunity to hear ideas, voices, and experiences in the first place. TEDxMileHigh believes in the power of teams and working together as much as I do and as much as DSST does.

Everyone has something worth sharing.

I hope that our ideas continue to guide our network, schools, and staff in service of our students and communities at DSST.

Let us continue our mission for true equity, inclusion, and justice here at our campuses and across the state; one conversation at a time.

(And I hope to see one of us, students or staff, onstage at a TEDxMileHigh conference sometime.)

DSST will be donating $1,000 to TEDxMileHigh. For more on Doing Your Best, check out this video where former Doing Your Best winners share what this Core Value means to them!