Our Story
In December 2020, Corey Winchester founded House of Winchester Learning Designs (HOWLD) as a consultancy supporting efforts to create, sustain, and transform learning environments in ways where individuals and communities can thrive.
Inspired by over 10+ years of stewardship as a nationally recognized high school history teacher and his own journey to live in his truth as a Queer Black man, House of Winchester Learning Designs exists in the spirit of Ballroom culture, paying homage to the houses created by Black and Brown Queer folx in the early 1970s.
Those houses existed as spaces of freedom dreaming, resistance, liberation, and joy, inviting participants and supporters alike to engage in and build worlds divorced from the dehumanization that often prohibited individuals and communities from experiencing their full humanity. Those houses also existed as families, providing an intergenerational community of support, love, and opportunity, as they sought to move from survival towards thriving.
HOWLD’s work is grounded in that same energy, engaging in an iterative and generative process for changemaking and worldbuilding rooted in relationally just practices.
“Corey Winchester stewarded seeds of ideas from myriad stakeholders (facilitators, administrators and young adults) to create 9,000 minutes (150 hours) of an inspiring learning experience. Equally remarkable was the care and intentionality Corey devoted to the journey. His approach fostered curriculum sustainability (via tools, principles and practices) even as it elevated opportunities for continuous improvement.
Above all, his work consistently centered people in a way that invited heart-full engagement and courageous commitment from a whole person, both gifts and points for growth. Corey Winchester is an educator, facilitator and curriculum architect; he is a chef and shepherd whose soulful caretaking curates structure, beauty and nourishment within liberatory work.”
Tawanna Brown, Senior Manager of Knowledge and Learning,
Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship