Aisha Ndayishimiy

Student, STEAM Academy
Lexington, KY

Aisha walked into the small work room to meet with us and we immediately knew we were in the presence of a force of nature. Her energy was palpable and she held nothing back in her conversation with us about her refugee experience, her extended family still in Burundi, and her perspectives on school and community. Aisha defines passion and purpose in her approach to life. Aisha’s voice brings clarity to her drive to make a difference in the world. She values that her school supports her personal agency. And, there’s no doubt when you listen to Aisha that she’s an influencer who has created her own mission through the freedom and opportunities available at the STEAM Academy. Meet Aisha. 

A Greater Sense of Community

We visited the STEAM Academy in Lexington, Ky, on a warm, fall day. The principal and assistant principal had lined up a few students to talk to us about their school. When we arrived at Academy, an older school building refurbished to house this public school,  the multi-hued murals on its facade caught our attention. In the foyer, teens gathered on the floor as muted sunlight cast shadows onto their faces. They greeted us with smiles, and then went back to their conversation. As we interviewed teens that afternoon, each with a unique story, we found one theme in common. They all saw themselves as learners who need to be hands-on in their learning. 

The Power of Community Across Seas

“So my community, I have an American [community, but] like me being African as well as pretty much being raised in America I don't consider just my neighborhood community, I don't consider Lexington or Kentucky, just like I don't consider America just my community. They're my community but I also have a community across seas.”

Aisha Ndayishimiy has absorbed a global education, the hard way. Born in a Tanzanian refugee camp to parents who had fled civil war in Burundi, she is now a student in the public STEAM Academy High School in Lexington, Kentucky, having arrived in the states in 2007. She is also the founder and CEO of a remarkable non-profit that supports the lives of learners in her nation of origin.

“I’m not a great test taker,” she says, “I’m more of a hands on learner,” a sentiment she expresses multiple times as she describes her path from a kindergarten student who did not know the languages or the customs, through eighth grade, when she realized she really was not taking education seriously. Yet, her perspective is not framed through only a first person narrative, she sees the bigger picture. “I have not experienced bad,” she states.

The Power of Empathy in Community

Nothing is more relevant to becoming an activist who values capacity-building to change the world than social-emotional intelligence, and in that resides  the power of empathy. Since A Nation at Risk was written in 1985, educators have doubled-down on students acquiring content knowledge and basic skills so that they are college and career ready- traditional measures of life success. In the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that drove development of state tests, state standards, and eventually, the Common Core Standards, educators seemingly lost sight of the importance of developing the whole child - socially, emotionally, physically, and cognitively. The path to success in life was politically defined as becoming academically successful. We have subsequently learned this is not true. 

“When kids come to school with challenges that we might not understand,” Aisha expands her empathetic frame to the need for a depth of understanding in schools, ”as far as the refugee camp it was a challenge but I would say was more of a challenge for my parents. I was like five years old when I moved here, and from what I can remember, I had a pretty nice life. I haven't experienced [the poverty and struggle in Burundi] except for me physically going and seeing something like other of my family members living the way that they're living.”

The Power of Choice

Nothing can motivate a teen to engage as a learner more than having a sense of agency in mapping out their own pathways to pursue a learning interest, or even passion. In schools across the United States, project-based learning(PBL) and community service have become common-place paths to motivating learners to get engaged in active learning. Project-based learning opportunities can range from highly teacher-directed to student-owned. In teacher-directed PBL, student projects may look more similar than different and even if the project work is enjoyable, it’s evident in the final work that students have followed a similar path through the lesson design. When PBLS are owned by students, we can be surprised and delighted by the depth and breadth of their learning and even impact locally or globally. 

In our work with learners we have seldom found the commitment to amplifying learners’ voice, choice, and agency as in the stories we heard from teens about their learning opportunities at the STEAM Academy. Aisha’s story illustrates her own agency and how a teacher supported her in her quest to follow her passion back to her nation of origin and, in doing so, to create a project that was far bigger than what the teacher envisioned occurring in her class and which took Aisha on a journey linking Lexington, Ky to the Muyange School in Burundi. 

“My freshman year I had an English teacher. Her name was Kari Patrick and she would do this thing called 20% time so like 20% of our class time we would have to pick something that we felt was something that needed to be fixed within our community and we would have to pretty much come up with our plan to fix it if we could fix it,” she says with the great confidence she has discovered. 

The Power of Future

It’s evident listening to Aisha’s story that her impact has been an education for her school community and the greater Kentucky community. She’s received awards for her work to bring school supplies from backpacks to computers to the Muyange School where she also has spent time working with learners there. She’s grown competencies that the typical teenager never has a chance to grow in schools operating under traditional norms and standards. She’s not just organized, she’s an organizer. She’s not just a school leader, she’s a community activist. She’s not just an academically successful student, she’s built a personal capacity to emotionally connect and relate to those who represent equity divides and to design ways to reduce those divides. She’s not just a recipient of school culture, she’s an influencer of cultural responsiveness that’s been a checkoff in most schools. 

“I’m able to be African and American at the same time,” Aisha describes the contrasts between the worlds she inhabits. She brings a sense of gratitude for “the so many things we take for granted,” in the U.S.

The Power of Opportunity

Lexington’s STEAM Academy is a model program created with the support of University of Kentucky education faculty. Located in a ‘less wealthy’ area of the city, the school itself serves as an expansion of opportunity, while simultaneously demonstrating the power of trust in adolescence. That opportunity has been a gift to Aisha, and it is the kind of gift she’s determined to give others, through her non-profit or through wherever she goes.

The Power of One

Aisha’s deep belief in the need for opportunity for all comes through as we listen, “it’s literally that simple,” she says, “that person could be you.” And she lives that every day. A plane full of school backpacks loaded with every kind of ‘school supply,’ including laptops, arrives in Burundi each summer with a girl who has found a special way to be both learner and educator.

“I’m going to college next year. I thought I wanted Howard in D.C. but I don't want to leave my mom, so maybe Kentucky, so I can stay a little longer.”