Hilderbrand Pelzer III

Multi-Award Winning Principal, Author of "Unlocking Potential: Organizing a School Inside a Prison" & Educational Equity Champion

Travels From Travels From:
Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Hilderbrand Pelzer III Biography

A multi-award-winning principal, Hilderbrand Pelzer III’s career in educational leadership began when he became Philadelphia’s youngest high school principal in 2000. In his career that involved leading five different schools and serving as an assistant regional superintendent, he achieved his most significant accomplishment while serving in a school in one of the largest jail systems in the United States— the Philadelphia Prison System.

He made a significant impact by introducing a leadership style characterized by high expectations for all incarcerated youth, by utilizing all available resources to transform the system’s entire school culture, and by demonstrating that incarcerated youth can learn. In his book, "Unlocking Potential", Pelzer underscores his nationally recognized work in the Philadelphia Prison System. Highly sought after by educators at all levels, Pelzer continues to inspire audiences using multiple platforms all over the world—including TEDx and national conferences—to spread his word and spirit of hope.

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Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 10/15/2024.

Hilderbrand Pelzer III Speaking Topics

  • Education Motivation and Teacher Motivation: Teacher Perseverance: Encouraging teachers to persevere in the face of challenges

    Being a teacher is an astounding responsibility. Sadly, however, at no other time in Hilderbrand Pelzer III’s career has educational work been so difficult for teachers. Their resolve and dedication are tested every day. Despite teachers’ strong commitment to helping children succeed in school, teaching is demanding work. Instead of instructing children in reading, writing, and solving math problems, teachers face challenges that make many of them rethink their chosen profession.

    This keynote presentation will explore challenges that teachers face, focus on the support they need to turn these challenges into opportunities for growth, reconnect them to the reasons they entered the profession, explore ways to regain their strong commitment to furthering the academic achievement of students, reignite their self-confidence and discuss what a good teacher is expected to do to help students improve their lives through education.

  • Education Policy and Reform, Strategic Leadership, Teamwork and Team-building, and Disruptive Thinking

    Unlocking Potential: What I learned about strategic leadership when I took on the fifth-largest jail system in the United States

    The white school buses and the prisoners who rode them served as a constant reminder of why Hilderbrand Pelzer III became a principal. Because many people would never consider educating incarcerated students or even working in a correctional setting, Pelzer’s compelling story and courageous actions will inspire educators to embrace their potential to affect positive change in their educational organizations, districts, schools, and classrooms, and to overcome the daunting array of challenges in education.

    This keynote presentation will explore the experience, the indispensable mental perspective, and the impact of leading a school that cultivated a strong educational culture across Philadelphia’s six major jails. The lessons learned by Pelzer about the challenges facing correctional educators and their students are invaluable to school leaders. He shows school leaders how to foster strategic leadership practices that leverages the organization’s key resources in its quest to transform teaching and learning for their students.

  • Juvenile Justice, Education Policy and Reform, Strategic Leadership, Teamwork and Team-building, and Disruptive Thinking

    Juvenile Justice Education: Would you consider a school that looks and feels like a prison to be a model of success?

    How do you reform and improve education for incarcerated youth? According to a report from the United States Departments of Education and Justice, "Providing high-quality education in juvenile justice secure care settings presents unique challenges for administrators, teachers, and staff who are responsible for the education, rehabilitation, and welfare of youths committed to their care". Most would agree that providing high-quality education in juvenile justice secure care settings is a worthy if daunting objective for juvenile justice practitioners and correctional educators. Unfortunately, false assumptions about school capacity in secured settings is preventing significant progress. To provide high-quality education for incarcerated youth in Philadelphia’s jails, Hilderbrand Pelzer III created the research-grounded Juvenile Focused Correctional Education School Model, which overcame a number of legal, logistical, and educational challenges.

    This keynote presentation will walk through the model’s framework, emphasizing the evidence-based practices that have made the model successful and that align to the guiding principles that underpin this approach. He recommends features of the model and strategies that can be replicated in other secured and correctional settings (and schools facing educational challenges).

  • Literacy, Youth, Social Justice, and Juvenile Justice: Cutting Off the Pipeline to Prison: Incarcerated youth illustrate the needed improvements in schools

    When Hilderbrand Pelzer III was the principal of a Philadelphia public school inside Philadelphia’s six major jails, he often witnessed a sad occurrence that he had seen play out repeatedly throughout his career as an educator: students who could not read. Illiteracy was the single common weakness among his incarcerated students. While there is no hard evidence of prison officials having used reading scores to predict the number of prison beds they would need, there is an undeniable connection between literacy skills and incarceration.

    This keynote presentation will expand the conversation to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline theory by steering focus away from school discipline policies to the teaching of reading, which must be fixed, and the many teachers who struggle with teaching reading. Additionally, the presentation will elicit feelings about the school-to-prison pipeline; confront actions and practices that daily fail to reach, teach and engage thousands of students; explore ways to transform relationships with students who face difficulties and who start at an academic disadvantage; and share real-life insights on the incarcerated side of the school-to-prison pipeline.

  • Youth, Juvenile Justice, and Inspirational: Criminalizing Black School Boys

    What seeing former students end up in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility taught me about failing to meet the needs of black male students.

    The cost of failing to meet the needs of black male students hit Hilderbrand Pelzer III years ago, when he was principal of a Philadelphia public school that served Philadelphia’s six major jails. One day, Pelzer met a former student from a public high school that he had led several years earlier. He remembered that he had repeatedly suspended the young man from school for skipping class as he learned that his former student had never graduated from high school and was now an inmate. Pelzer felt his actions as a principal had contributed to the young man’s circumstance. Black boys’ educations are often hampered by stereotypes that they are "dumb, deprived, dangerous, deviant, and disturbed". Thus, black boys are more often identified for special education and referred for behavioral health services while their behaviors may be criminalized.

    This keynote presentation will explore examples of adult actions that cause black boys to become victims of the low expectations of teachers and school leaders, who fear young people’s behavior that dares adults to teach them; focus on the development of teachers’ knowledge about black boys’ behaviors; and explore positive ways to transform educators’ relationships with black boys in a way that will lead to success and achievement.

Hilderbrand Pelzer III Videos

  • What incarcerated youth can teach teachers | Pelzer III | TEDx DeerPark
    What if new teacher preparation and ongoing professional development programs used incarcerated youth as “thought partners” to help overcome the...

Hilderbrand Pelzer III Books

  • Unlocking Potential: Organizing a School Inside a Prison
    Unlocking Potential: Organizing a School Inside a Prison

Speaker Lists Featuring Hilderbrand Pelzer III

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Hilderbrand Pelzer III is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as Education Motivation and Teacher Motivation: Teacher Perseverance: Encouraging teachers to persevere in the face of challenges, Education Policy and Reform, Strategic Leadership, Teamwork and Team-building, and Disruptive Thinking, Juvenile Justice, Education Policy and Reform, Strategic Leadership, Teamwork and Team-building, and Disruptive Thinking , Literacy, Youth, Social Justice, and Juvenile Justice: Cutting Off the Pipeline to Prison: Incarcerated youth illustrate the needed improvements in schools and Youth, Juvenile Justice, and Inspirational: Criminalizing Black School Boys. The estimated speaking fee range to book Hilderbrand Pelzer III for your event is $5,000 - $10,000. Hilderbrand Pelzer III generally travels from Philadelphia, PA, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Al Duncan, Matt Bennett, Peter Kahn, S. Lee Merritt and Keith L. Brown. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Hilderbrand Pelzer III for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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