Head and Heart at HMA

Jean Manas is the Board Chair of Ethiopia Education Initiatives and Co-Founder of Haile-Manas Academy.

I visited HMA in February 2023 for the first time since attending the groundbreaking in December 2018. During the intervening four years, I’d seen many photos and videos of the campus and community and heard reports from others who have been there, noting how vividly they described the school, the students, and the learning taking place inside and outside the classrooms—but nothing prepared me for what I experienced during my four day visit. 

For starters, the campus is stunning. After the two-hour drive from Addis Ababa, the campus emerges out of barley fields; the striking buildings and spaces could be anywhere in the world and be considered world-class. Even more remarkable than the physical facility is the HMA community. From the moment I entered campus, I was welcomed with amazing warmth by everyone from the staff to the teachers and of course the students. Soon after my arrival, I was invited to address the entire student body and to share a bit about my own story. In speaking, I choked up with overwhelming emotion as I realized that for the past four years, I’d been viewing the school primarily as an intellectual undertaking; experiencing the school first-hand as a thriving entity with  a finely-tuned culture all its own broke through that framework and directly touched my heart.

I was impressed by the outward focus of classroom work centered on solving real-world problems. Students, faculty, and administrators ask themselves, “I understand why it’s being done this way, but it's not working, so how can it be done differently?” The teachers didn’t just dispense knowledge, they outlined principles and frameworks, giving the students the rigorous task (which they embraced!) of applying those principles and frameworks to the problem at hand. The students were constantly challenged to use what they’d learned, and extend it further, creating new solutions, applying frameworks in new ways, and working collaboratively to find solutions that would work. 

The campus culture also looks inward. I attended a number of sessions about emotional development, where students talked about self-knowledge and self-expression. In our interactions, including a long, picturesque hike to a nearby gorge, students asked for my thoughts on everything: from the purpose of life; to how they could balance academic excellence with a manageable level of stress; to a person I admire in the world (I gave them an honest answer—my daughter Amalia, known to them from her year spent as a residential intern and from whom I’ve learned so much over the years). It was clear the hammer and nails of critical thinking—learning what kinds of questions you should be asking—are being employed at a personal level as well as at the classroom level. HMA emphasizes not only the mind, but also the heart, which is critical to a joyful life. 

I felt deeply engaged at HMA from the moment I arrived to the morning of my departure, when I went on a sunrise run with the head of security to the top of a hill overlooking campus. It was then that I realized what prior visitors had expressed to me: being at HMA, experiencing this special community firsthand, you become a part of it and it becomes a part of you. I fell in love with HMA—head and heart.  

The top of the hill overlooking the campus