Founding Story

The Smiley Institute was not born out of ambition but out of disruption. What began as a bold plan to launch an innovative early college high school for aspiring educators soon became more profound, urgent, and personal.

In 2023, Dr. Brian Gaston set out to launch a high school aimed at diversifying the education workforce. As a former principal and social studies teacher, he had seen firsthand how too many brilliant young people, especially students of color, were never given the exposure, encouragement, or structural support to see education as a calling. The early college model was meant to change that. But when it came time to submit a charter application, he was forced to dilute his truth. The political climate required him to tone down his language about injustice, avoid naming inequities, and exclude anyone who had spoken publicly on social issues. What began as a dream of transformation felt suddenly compromised. The cost of compliance was truth.

At the same time, the country was deep in the 2024 election cycle. Misinformation and mistrust were everywhere. Dr. Gaston watched in real time as civic illiteracy shaped national conversations, and he felt a deeper crisis emerge, one not just of education policy, but of civic identity. It brought him back to his own classroom when he was asked to leave social studies to teach math. Suddenly, he had access to top-tier resources and support, things that had been missing when he taught history and civics. It was a stark reminder: social studies had long been underfunded, undervalued, and under-taught.

That was a turning point.

Dr. Gaston paused his charter school application and listened to what his soul was really saying. While he still deeply cared about diversifying the educator workforce, he realized that the greater crisis was the erosion of civic understanding, civic identity, and civic courage, especially in the South. The problem wasn’t just who was teaching; it was what students were never being taught.

In 2025, he reimagined the Smiley Institute, not as a school, but as a civic and creative leadership hub. Its mission would be to cultivate leaders who not only understand how democracy works but who feel called to heal and transform the communities they come from.

The name "Smiley" is a tribute to the now-closed high school that shaped both Dr. Gaston and his mother. Though the school no longer exists, its legacy lives on in those it formed. Naming the institute after it is an act of reclamation. A commitment to honor the brilliance that once walked its halls and to build something worthy of its memory.

Today, the Smiley Institute is a response to political erasure, educational inequity, and civic neglect. But more than that, it is a place where truth is not tempered, and where leadership begins with the soul.