Archer Fellowship Program Alumni Profiles
Pegah (Javidpour) Taylor
Spring 2007 Archer Fellow
Internship: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Undersecretary
Education
The University of Texas at Austin
B.B.A. Management Information Systems, B.B.A. Business Honors; December 2007
National-Louis University
M.Ed. Administration and Supervision; June 2011
Career
Founding Principal (KIPP Connect Houston Middle School) at KIPP Houston Public Schools
Teach for America Corps - previous
Spring 2007 Archer Fellow
Internship: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Undersecretary
Education
The University of Texas at Austin
B.B.A. Management Information Systems, B.B.A. Business Honors; December 2007
National-Louis University
M.Ed. Administration and Supervision; June 2011
Career
Founding Principal (KIPP Connect Houston Middle School) at KIPP Houston Public Schools
Teach for America Corps - previous
“I never felt my calling to impact the future so much as I did in the Archer Fellowship as I debated and spoke with other Fellows on the issues of our generation and our plans to make it better. This experience set out the course of my work in education since 2007."
Q & A with Pegah
Please tell us more about your current position.
In 2014, I became the Founding Principal of KIPP CONNECT Houston Middle School. We started with just 108 students and eight staff members, and in the last three years we have grown to 440 students and 50+ staff members. It has been incredible to see our school grow from 5th to 8th grade and to see so many families in the neighborhood I grew up in impacted! My day-to-day work includes managing 10 directors in our school (from Assistant Principals to Operations to Fine Arts/Athletics) to allow our school to be a well-oiled machine that specializes in educational excellence, character responsibility, and balanced growth for our students and families. This includes creating and living out a vision toward instructional coaching, managing a $2.5+ million budget, and making sure we have the right balance of character development in a time where test scores are the main determinant for funding.
Please tell us more about your Archer Fellowship Program internship.
As an intern in the Office of the Undersecretary, I worked closely with accessibility, affordability, and accountability of higher education. With accessibility, my focus was on how to increase the number of non-traditional students in higher education (usually students wanting to attend college after a couple of careers). For affordability, I worked on how to make the federal financial aid (FAFSA) process digestible for students who had never applied. And for accountability, I worked directly with staff on the different measures they were putting in place for higher education institutions to get accreditation. My day-to-day involved writing memos for Undersecretary Sara Martinez Tucker, planning the Higher Education Summit for that year and doing research on ways to make progress to the goals of the group.
What has been your general career path?
Since graduating in 2007, I joined the 2008 Teach for America Corps in Houston, Texas, to teach 8th grade math and algebra in the city I grew up in. I was placed at KIPP Academy Middle school, the original campus of a national charter network that now has more than 220 schools. After a couple of years in the classroom, I became a Dean and later Assistant Principal where I spent most of my time instructionally coaching teachers. I really enjoyed the balance of teaching students and coaching adults, so in 2013, I became a KIPP Fisher Fellow, a year-long fellowship for educators about to found a new KIPP school. Then in 2014, I, along with my team, opened the doors to KIPP CONNECT Houston Middle school where I am currently the sitting Principal.
How has your experience as an Archer Fellow influenced your career path and goals?
In the Archer Fellowship, I greatly enjoyed working on the policy end of higher education. And in that work at the U.S. Department of Education, I met with many citizens who struggled getting to their dreams of advanced degrees due to issues of accessibility and affordability. So after my Archer Fellowship, I decided to spend the summer teaching middle school students in Philadelphia (through Breakthrough Collaborative) to see if I could solve the same problem from a different angle. My big question was: if the K-12 education system was stronger for our all of our students (especially if they come from low-income and minority households), would we have the same issues that we were seeing in higher education? The balance of being "on-the-ground" in schools for the last 10 years and knowing the policy side of things in higher education keeps me committed and moving toward the end goal of all children in our nation able to attain and be prepared for an excellent education from kindergarten to their advanced degrees.
What did you value the most about your Archer Fellowship Program experience?
What I value the most about my experience as an Archer Fellow was living near the most important decision makers in our country to truly realize how our nation's policies are created, changed and built upon. Washington, D.C., is rich with so much history that helps us understand our present so that we can make things better for future generations. I never felt my calling to impact the future so much as I did in the Archer Fellowship as I debated and spoke with other Fellows on the issues of our generation and our plans to make it better. This experience set out the course of my work in education since 2007. And for that, I will be forever grateful.
What do you value the most about being an alumna?
What I value most about being an Archer Fellow alumna is the amazing network of people I continue meeting that I have this shared experience with. For two years, I was the Houston Social Chair for the Archer Fellow Alumni Association, and I looked forward to meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones at our monthly happy hours. These get-togethers allowed me to meet alumni new to the city or from different semesters to continue building my network of friends and like-minded people even years after college graduation!
What is your favorite memory as an Archer Fellow?
My favorite Archer Fellowship Program memory was Professor Swerdlow's "field classes." These were classes where we met at a national site to learn about history or government and to imprint the learning in an experience and location that still is available today for me to revisit with my family. These "field classes" not only made Professor Swerdlow's lessons sticky and memorable, but they gave me a newfound appreciation for our nation's capital and all it encompassed.
Please tell us more about your current position.
In 2014, I became the Founding Principal of KIPP CONNECT Houston Middle School. We started with just 108 students and eight staff members, and in the last three years we have grown to 440 students and 50+ staff members. It has been incredible to see our school grow from 5th to 8th grade and to see so many families in the neighborhood I grew up in impacted! My day-to-day work includes managing 10 directors in our school (from Assistant Principals to Operations to Fine Arts/Athletics) to allow our school to be a well-oiled machine that specializes in educational excellence, character responsibility, and balanced growth for our students and families. This includes creating and living out a vision toward instructional coaching, managing a $2.5+ million budget, and making sure we have the right balance of character development in a time where test scores are the main determinant for funding.
Please tell us more about your Archer Fellowship Program internship.
As an intern in the Office of the Undersecretary, I worked closely with accessibility, affordability, and accountability of higher education. With accessibility, my focus was on how to increase the number of non-traditional students in higher education (usually students wanting to attend college after a couple of careers). For affordability, I worked on how to make the federal financial aid (FAFSA) process digestible for students who had never applied. And for accountability, I worked directly with staff on the different measures they were putting in place for higher education institutions to get accreditation. My day-to-day involved writing memos for Undersecretary Sara Martinez Tucker, planning the Higher Education Summit for that year and doing research on ways to make progress to the goals of the group.
What has been your general career path?
Since graduating in 2007, I joined the 2008 Teach for America Corps in Houston, Texas, to teach 8th grade math and algebra in the city I grew up in. I was placed at KIPP Academy Middle school, the original campus of a national charter network that now has more than 220 schools. After a couple of years in the classroom, I became a Dean and later Assistant Principal where I spent most of my time instructionally coaching teachers. I really enjoyed the balance of teaching students and coaching adults, so in 2013, I became a KIPP Fisher Fellow, a year-long fellowship for educators about to found a new KIPP school. Then in 2014, I, along with my team, opened the doors to KIPP CONNECT Houston Middle school where I am currently the sitting Principal.
How has your experience as an Archer Fellow influenced your career path and goals?
In the Archer Fellowship, I greatly enjoyed working on the policy end of higher education. And in that work at the U.S. Department of Education, I met with many citizens who struggled getting to their dreams of advanced degrees due to issues of accessibility and affordability. So after my Archer Fellowship, I decided to spend the summer teaching middle school students in Philadelphia (through Breakthrough Collaborative) to see if I could solve the same problem from a different angle. My big question was: if the K-12 education system was stronger for our all of our students (especially if they come from low-income and minority households), would we have the same issues that we were seeing in higher education? The balance of being "on-the-ground" in schools for the last 10 years and knowing the policy side of things in higher education keeps me committed and moving toward the end goal of all children in our nation able to attain and be prepared for an excellent education from kindergarten to their advanced degrees.
What did you value the most about your Archer Fellowship Program experience?
What I value the most about my experience as an Archer Fellow was living near the most important decision makers in our country to truly realize how our nation's policies are created, changed and built upon. Washington, D.C., is rich with so much history that helps us understand our present so that we can make things better for future generations. I never felt my calling to impact the future so much as I did in the Archer Fellowship as I debated and spoke with other Fellows on the issues of our generation and our plans to make it better. This experience set out the course of my work in education since 2007. And for that, I will be forever grateful.
What do you value the most about being an alumna?
What I value most about being an Archer Fellow alumna is the amazing network of people I continue meeting that I have this shared experience with. For two years, I was the Houston Social Chair for the Archer Fellow Alumni Association, and I looked forward to meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones at our monthly happy hours. These get-togethers allowed me to meet alumni new to the city or from different semesters to continue building my network of friends and like-minded people even years after college graduation!
What is your favorite memory as an Archer Fellow?
My favorite Archer Fellowship Program memory was Professor Swerdlow's "field classes." These were classes where we met at a national site to learn about history or government and to imprint the learning in an experience and location that still is available today for me to revisit with my family. These "field classes" not only made Professor Swerdlow's lessons sticky and memorable, but they gave me a newfound appreciation for our nation's capital and all it encompassed.
