About Us
History
During her second year as a Teach for America teacher, Education Opens Doors’ Founder & CEO Jayda Batchelder met with several of her former students, expecting to hear stories of their success after leaving her middle school classroom. Instead, she learned that content mastery alone had not prepared them to succeed. Her students were already making decisions that were putting them off track to their college and career dreams — and they didn’t even know it.
As a first-generation college graduate herself, she realized there was a pressing information gap to be filled. Batchelder led a team of teachers to collaborate and write the first Education Opens Doors Student Guidebook filled with critical knowledge and information not traditionally taught in school, and then brought those lessons into their classrooms. After two years of utilizing the Guidebook in her own classroom, Batchelder quit her job to found Education Opens Doors with the goal of scaling the program across Dallas and beyond.
Since 2012, Education Opens Doors has grown from impacting one classroom to hundreds, partnering with principals and teachers across multiple schools, districts and cities. We continue to strengthen our existing partnerships and have expanded beyond Dallas to reach students in cities including Austin, Houston, San Antonio and New Orleans. Learn more by watching Jayda’s audience award winning pitch at the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’s 2018 edition of One Up the Pitch here.
Our primary focus is to open more doors for middle school students from communities of color, low-income communities and future first generation college students. We effectively are redefining the status quo around college access by legitimizing and increasing exposure to college knowledge for all middle school students during the academic school day.
Education Opens Doors plays an integral role in arming students with the knowledge and skills that are necessary to successfully navigate the complex and costly college-going process, so they are ultimately able to attain a postsecondary degree and secure a meaningful career. As a result of our program, students demonstrate increased motivation, pathway and agency toward their goals and dreams. Learn more about our model by watching our pitch at the Stand Together Closing Summit here.
