Lewis Thomas III, MA, EdD candidate

An architect for social change with an innate ability to both influence and inspire, Thomas is one of today’s most gifted young leaders in both the political and educational worlds. Lewis’s powerful reputation as a political organizer has caused many to take notice and rise to the call for social change and community development in Philadelphia, Washington, DC, New York City and abroad.

Lewis earned his Bachelor of Science degree in History/Secondary Education at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. Although Lewis enjoyed politics, he took a break from that world and returned to the classroom, eventually taking up a post as a vice principal at the lowest-performing high school in Washington, D.C There he created the Parent Power Center, which focused on the needs of the whole family. Lewis has also served as a principal at one public school and two successful Charter Schools, where he had well-noted successes, including a 95 percent college attendance rate.

When Lewis returned to Philadelphia, he immediately began organizing the community around the issues of violence and the lack of educational opportunities in poor and working-class communities. Lewis approaches his life and work with a worldview that encompasses compassion and dedication to the hopeless and dispossessed.

Courses

For full course descriptions and details please visit our Course Descriptions page.

To audit a course below, please visit our audit page.

  • In this course, we will explore the meanings that African people give to knowledge (education for a living) and wisdom (education for life). We shall have the opportunity to see the world through the lens of African Wisdom: a holistic worldview that sees all of life and ALL that is as Interconnected and Interdependent.

    Participants who take this course will have the opportunity to deepen their experiential knowledge of life as holistic and interconnected. All indigenous cultures have always understood life and all that is as such, so this will be a unique opportunity for each participant in the class to remember and reclaim this life-enhancing and the cosmic-sustaining dimension of life.

    Throughout the course the facilitator and participants will dig into this African indigenous well of knowledge and wisdom so that, armed with new findings and insights, they may deepen their experience of life as harmonious, intricately interconnected, and holistic. In the final analysis, the course will sharpen each participant’s abilities to: analyze new findings and insights from a global perspective; and appreciate the power of stories, proverbs, riddles, music, dance, art, and rituals in the transmission of culture and values; and assist participants to translate these timely and timeless emerging values into your spiritual development in turn transforming the collective for which you are a member

TLF faculty conversations between Lewis Thomas III and Elaine Decker.

TLF faculty conversations between Lewis Thomas III and Barbarah Nicoll.