In Focus: Mary Winters
By Rosie Hughes
Mary Winters has taught in Namibia and the Federated States of Micronesia, studied international education policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and managed education programming in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Iraq. She is now a Programme Specialist with the LEGO Foundation, whose goal is to build a future where learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners. At the LEGO Foundation, Winters helps expand the organization’s support of learning through play to refugee contexts.
Winters spoke with us about what it’s been like to put her classroom learning into practice, how she uses research in her work, and what keeps her going.
“You have to focus on the small wins and the small gains all the time.”
Why do you do what you do?
I used to be a teacher, first in Namibia. Namibia had something like 97% of children enrolled in primary school at the time, which I thought was incredible. Once I began teaching though and saw how some policy decisions were negatively impacting children, I realized how the inside look told a very different story than the statistic. Once I better understood the challenges to implementing quality education in Namibia, I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to do the same in a humanitarian setting. I thought, if I’m gonna do this and dedicate a career to this let’s go all in and try and work providing not just access but quality educational opportunities for the most vulnerable children, those in conflict settings.
Can you talk about what it’s been like to take your classroom learning from the Harvard Graduate School of Education into the field?
Something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately that I first learned in Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson’s class (Education in Armed Conflict), is about the protective and possibly destructive factors of education in conflict settings. This is a big thing that drew me to emergency education. My personal perception at that time was that it was more about the access piece. I thought, as long as a child is in a building and that child has a teacher and is learning, education in and of itself is protective. Working in the field in really volatile, complex conflict settings such as the Mosul response in Iraq really reframed my thinking around this protective factor. Of course education helps children with resiliency and coping and to return to a sense of normalcy. But what is it about education that helps? Is it just the act of physically going to school each day and being surrounded by other children? I’m realizing it’s the environment in a school that’s the protective factor. And that environment is largely created by the teacher. So I’ve developed a strong interest in teachers and teacher well-being. I think that teacher well-being in emergency settings is so critical and is often overlooked.
Do you integrate research in to your work and if so, how?
Research is a key part of our work at the LEGO Foundation. We have a team of researchers looking at a variety of topics related to learning through play, and we collaborate with and fund different research partners globally. In our humanitarian portfolio one of the things we are looking at is the relationship between toxic stress, resilience, and learning through play for children in settings of conflict and crisis. We are gathering and building upon existing evidence, and using it to spread knowledge and as the basis for our advocacy activities. We’re also looking at gaps in the evidence, and investing in programs that can help fill those gaps.
You’ve worked in some really challenging environments and have been exposed to enormous degrees of suffering. What gives you hope?
You have to focus on the small wins and the small gains all the time. You can’t focus on the big picture. Me and my dad have this thing where he’ll just text me “one smile” to remind me that at least one child has smiled that day because of the work my organization has done. So the one smile, that’s the thing. Bringing it down to the individual and personal level.
Also I’ve worked with the most incredibly dedicated, kind, smart, intelligent and compassionate staff members who were so eager to learn and do better for the organization and the children we were working with. In the field, the days when I left the office where I thought, ‘Wow that was a great day’ was often a day that I’d worked closely with a national staff member on solving a problem together.