Raising Rochester · Raising Rochester, a podcast from The Children's Agenda

S2:E4 – ROC the Future Executive Director, Brian Lewis and Collective Impact

·45 min·2 clips

Brian Lewis says fourth-grade reading scores help shape prison-building plans.

1. Raising Rochester focuses on Brian Lewis and Rock the Future, a Rochester collective-impact effort tied to Children's Agenda. 2. Brian Lewis is the Alliance Director of Rock the Future, and Larry interviews him about community systems change. 3. The episode asks what Rock the Future exists to do in Rochester and how collective impact works in practice. 4. Lewis says Rock the Future convenes more than 60 participants to improve cradle-to-career education outcomes for Rochester youth. 5. He names the Children's Agenda, the Children's Institute, the Mayor's Office, and university networks as partners at the same table. 6. Lewis says he first learned about collective impact through Stanford Social Innovation Review while teaching nonprofit management and development. 7. He says the idea was familiar in theory before he saw how it worked in practice. 8. Lewis traces his route from Washington, D.C. to the south side of Chicago, then New York City, then Rochester. 9. He says his father was both a lawyer and a public school teacher, which shaped his view of education. 10. He says his own path included the New School for Social Research, Chicago parks organizing, and teaching on Chicago's west side. 11. Lewis recounts a Chicago Sun-Times internship where he got bylines as a high school senior. 12. He says a reporter sent him to interview Barack Obama before Obama's national rise. 13. Lewis describes Exalt Youth as a New York City nonprofit serving young people involved in the criminal justice system. 14. He says Exalt provided internships, educational support, and court-related advocacy to reduce deeper system involvement. 15. Lewis connects that work to Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy, and the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 16. He says fourth-grade reading scores are one of the highest contributors to how states think about prison-bed planning. 17. Lewis says young people respond to that fact by seeing that systems were designed and can be redesigned. 18. He says the Frederick Douglass literacy lesson helped young people connect reading with liberation. 19. The conversation has an interview format with long, reflective answers from Lewis and detailed follow-up questions from Larry. 20. Listeners interested in Rochester education, parent leadership, and systems change will get the most from it.

As heard by us

A grounded conversation about how Rochester turns shared purpose into measurable action.

Raising Rochester treats a local civic conversation as a clear look at how change gets organized. Brian Lewis presents Rock the Future as a convening of more than 60 participants, including leading institutions in Rochester, all working toward cradle-to-career education outcomes…

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear map of how Rochester leaders are coordinating around youth outcomes.

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