Three quick questions.

One great cause.

Okay.

Brenda, who are you?

My name is Brenda Leeks, and I am the head of school at Seattle Girls School.

SGS as we're finally called is a school in the Central District.

We have been there for 20 years and we serve students, girls and gender nonconforming students in grades five through eight.

And our mission is to inspire and develop courageous leaders who think independently, learn collaboratively, work joyfully, and champion change.

And that's important because in middle school, our kids are really searching.

They're searching for who they are.

They're searching for where and how they can contribute in their communities.

And it's important for them to have a community that's intentionally designed to support them in that searching and in the eventual answers that they find.

What do you do?

We have a lot of fun.

That's the first thing that we do in our mission statement is the phrase joyful learning.

And at the heart of middle school, we want it to be an experience that's joyful for kids.

When I ask people what their middle school experience was like many of them will say that it was hard, that they felt isolated, that they didn't connect, that they didn't have teachers who understood them, and that it wasn't fun.

And we believe that our kids learn better.

They connect deeper when they're actually enjoying themselves.

I want to be clear.

Joyful does not mean happy.

We have to talk to our students about the fact that they can have a deep sense of joy because they're being challenged to do something difficult and not exactly like it all the time.

Right.

But that's okay, because we want our kids to understand that they can do hard things, that they can believe in themselves and that they can trust their instincts once they've had lots of time to practice and get better.

Why do you do what you do and why is it important for the community?

So middle school is a time in kids lives when they're really questioning their identity.

And SGS came about because we had a group of parents who saw that their kids, particularly their daughters, were struggling even in elementary school to find connections.

And they were reading the research that was coming out 20 years ago and has only amplified over the last two decades.

That talks about the ways in which girls begin to lose confidence themselves, begin to step back from experiences, begin to accept and internalize the gender stereotypes that are put on them from society.

And they wanted to create a community that was going to approach educating girls differently.

And it was from that spirit that SGS was born.

It was from that spirit that we've continued to operate for the last 20 years.

If you'd like to learn more about Seattle Girls School, visit crosscut.com.