PBN 2021 Leaders & Achievers Awards
William Bryan | Principal in charge, R.I. Pre-K-12 education projects, Gilbane Building Co.
In his role as principal in charge of Rhode Island Pre-K-12 education building projects for Gilbane Building Co. in Providence, William Bryan oversees construction projects that use innovative practices informed by the most advanced thinking on how children learn.
Part of his role includes persuading parents and communities to let go of their vision of schools as the “cells and bells” model of children packaged by age into classrooms and to instead imagine a fluid, individualized school that moves students along by mastery of material, rather than by age.
Bryan says these tasks of persuasion are difficult. He has strong views on the differences in how people learn, and the responsibility of societies to make schooling – and, by extension, career preparation – work best for individuals and for the general economy.
Bryan has plenty of personal experience. He and his wife have a son with developmental disabilities caused by oxygen deprivation in the womb.
Due to the needs of their son, Bryan and his wife got involved with the nonprofit J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center in Warwick, a service provider for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Bryan served as chairman of the board of the center in 2014, when it was going through a huge self-reassessment and generation change.
The current school design of hallways lined with siloed classrooms was imported to the United States 150 years ago by industrialists who needed better-educated workers during the country’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, Bryan said. Experts agree that model doesn’t work anymore.
Bryan wants to see everyone from kindergarteners to parents to school boards to politicians embrace a “learning community” model in which schools, designed and built to support that model, are yearlong learning sources for the whole community.
Leadership, Bryan said, requires “listening to understand who the other party is and what their perspectives are. I always try to find ways to help people work from their strengths.”
