The Value Add of Coaches as Educators

I love going to conferences. It’s easy to feel bogged down in work or stuck on what to write / how to write, but then I go to a conference and it’s simply rejuvenating. 

As I head into day 2, what’s really sticking with me from yesterday is the morning keynote. It might have not been as interactive or imaginative as say the workshop on designing the future of education while role playing as a civilization on Mars in 2096, but the message really resonated with me because the speaker wasn’t originally in the education space at all, she started as a soccer coach. 

Luma Mufleh is the founder of Fugees Family, a non profit advancing educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth. Her journey in this space started when she joined a group of refugee kids playing soccer in the community. After a few weeks playing with the kids she helped them start an official team. Then that team continued to grow and as she learned about their stories and challenges in an education system that was failing them, she decided to open up a school. 

This is just a summarized snippet of Luma’s story, but my take away was how she talked about her journey from coach to educator. She talked about how people didn’t always trust or respect her because she didn’t have a teaching background. Yet as a coach she had an incredible understanding of the importance of teamwork, belonging, overcoming challenges, and pushing past limits.

I’ve been coaching gymnastics since I was 10 years old and still am now almost 15 years later. Yet when I talk about my experience in the education space, my work as a gymnastics coach usually only comes up as an after thought or a fun fact. Hearing Luma talk about her work as a coach was a reminder to me that my experience as a coach is so much more than just a fun fact. 

I practice curriculum building when I create my warm ups and assignment charts and personalize them to meet the different needs of each athlete. I am a mentor and guidance councilor when I notice a kid is having an off day and take them aside to discover they’ve been getting bullied at school and don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I assess and give feedback daily when seeing gymnasts perform routines at practice and prepare them for their competitions. I practice learner-centered pedagogy when I organize moments for gymnasts to practice goal setting and opportunities for providing input on things like their summer training schedule and brainstorming floor music. I even help kids with their basic reading and math skills when we have kids who haven’t learned to read that are trying to sound out the words on the assignment board for the day or kids who haven’t learned about decimals trying to add up their all around score at a competition. 

Coaches might not be traditional teachers, but they are educators. And coaches have more autonomy than the average teacher, so they have been able to prototype and pilot ideas for creating competency based, personalized, open walled learning for decades; this could be a game changing added value perspective to any team working to transform education. 

I’m excited for a world where we think more in the mindset of ecosystems of learning and coaches can be brought into the educator space as equally valued partners in the process of developing youth. 

Leading with Vulnerability

First work trip as a full time staff member of Education Reimagined has taken me to Minneapolis for the first annual Bridgemakers National Conference. This conference has been specifically created to organize youth leaders 18-25 in order to amplify the voices and mentor the leadership of under-served youth to bridge America’s toughest gaps. In short, “Nothing about us, without us.”

Today was the first full day of programing and what I’ve found myself really taking away was the emphasis on leading with vulnerability. Part of why the idea of leading with vulnerability struck me is because this is now the second time this concept has come up so explicitly in an education context for me, and the other time was only earlier this year. While attending a session at SXSW Edu back in March 2022, I hear Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizar propose the notion, “When we’re most vulnerable is when learning takes place.”

If I’ve learned anything from my years of schooling it’s that when a concept comes up twice, you better highlight it and put a gold star next to the title because it’s sure to be important and come up again.

I found it particularly cool that we didn’t just talk about the importance of leading with vulnerability, but we actually got a chance to start practicing this action as we began crafting our “public narrative.”

Your public narrative lets everyone know where you come from and how your personal values shape the issue you are talking about. Specifically, the youth facilitator broke down a public narrative into 3 steps:

1. Story of Self
2. Story of Us
3. Story of Now

You start by sharing who you are and how your past challenges and opportunities shaped what you value. Then you connect those values to the values of the community as you consider what brought the group together. Finally you connect the community’s challenges and opportunities to the world as you consider the global context that your community is responding to.

As we worked in partners and small groups throughout the day, it was humbling to see everyone sharing so authentically and unapologetically with a room essentially full of strangers. To give an idea of the scope of what was shared: there were stories of youth serving as family breadwinners, surviving childhood abuse, being homeless, and almost going to jail. These same youth are now winning law suits against the state for youth unemployment rights, running non-profits to fight social injustice, influencing millions on social media, and organizing national movements.

No one likes to be defined by their past, but it also shouldn’t be hidden. Our past experiences are unique and valid and influential in shaping who we are today, and that is worth sharing because your context can totally re-frame a situation.

There is often a perception that leaders have to be closed off and can’t afford to be vulnerable, but in reality, vulnerability fosters connection which can be key to mobilizing change.

Student Presence

Day 3 SXSW! I went back to the hotel a bit early today because officially got to that point where I was starting to have a cognitive load overdrive and needed a break. So much great content happening in such a short amount of time it really is fantastic!

Something that I found striking today, which I often find myself thinking about at every conference I attend, is the extreme lack of young learners present. Edu conferences tend to have extreme discounts for students to attend these events, but hardly any organizations / schools seem to take advantage of these policies by trying to get these stakeholders To attend. I know these conferences may be designed for teachers, admin, etc. but everyone here will spend all day talking about how, ”we must include student voice,” yet where is the action where it matters? Where are the students?!?!

There are a few other young learners present other than me and my sister, however, even these learners seem to just be around for their one session they’re presenting at and then disappear. To be fair, perhaps they could have just been at sessions I wasn’t at, or my sister, but I haven’t seen anyone yet in any session or the hall which makes this feel unlikely.

Furthermore, within the 2 sessions where I have seen students involved, the students were primarily asked to talk about their past experiences. Then, as is consistent with other conferences I’ve been to, the last question is something to the extent of, ”If you had a magic wand” or ”If you could trade places with x” then ”what would you change about school?”

Even in the keynote presentation for today, students were involved, which is a great first step that I don’t want to undermine, and some great things were said during the conversation from learners of all ages. I quoted many in my Tweets today. However, that said, these students were primarily brought in to talk about their experience learning during COVID… The reason this bothered me is because COVID shut school down 2 years ago; if we are only just now asking students about their experience on something that was such a huge radical issue, then we are too late.

Additionally, beyond wishing that more young learners were involved in education conferences, I wish the students that were involved were asked more questions about their current observations and more about their thoughts on the future. Students have way more thoughts and ideas than just those relevant to their past experiences in education. I know educators know this because it gets talked about in every single session in almost every single conversation.

Now the question is who will start taking the next steps to not just include students in conversations within the safety of their own learning environments but on a larger scale, bringing young learners beyond their own learning environments into the conversations of the nation’s education system?

Teaching Social Media

Day one of SXSW was great! Loved meeting new people and re-connecting with those I haven’t seen in several years, and had so many great conversations already about the future of edu. One conversation that really resonated with me was the session lead by Emily Glankler called ”Going Beyond the Textbook to Create Life-Long Learners.”

The session focused on the idea that if we want to create life-long learners, then we need to teach kids ways to learn beyond textbooks, because when does any adult actually choose a textbook as their first source of information? Close to never. Let’s be real, we Google it. Then we look at Wikipedia then maybe we research a bit more, maybe find a news site, maybe text a friend, watch a YouTube video, look at Twitter updates for a live event, etc. The point is, we have a lot of sources of information available to us now a days, and why not integrate these methods that we as adults actually use, into our classrooms?

This topic particularly stuck with me because just last week I wrote a journal entry for my Ethics of Business class that also focused on the ethics of social media. First I want to share what I wrote last week after class, then I will share how the conference session today further made me think of this topic:

It is pretty much impossible for any social media (SM) company to fact check all posts. There are millions a day and the time it would take to properly categorize, sort, find an appropriate number of resources, etc. would make for a process not efficient enough to function. Not to mention, posts are often biased to a point where it is hard to determine fake news because sometimes it might just be facts presented from a skewed perspective. Thus, we can’t possibly expect SM companies to be entirely responsible for stopping the spreading of false information / fake news. 

However, I do think SM companies and society as a whole benefit from SM companies caring about trying to stop the spreading of false info and fake news despite their inability to entirely solve the problem. In class we brainstormed a few ideas that might at least help the problem, and I do think SM companies have a responsibility to at least consider options such as these and make their best attempt to minimize this issue. 

At a minimum, SM companies could be more transparent about their opinions on fake news and what they are doing if anything to mitigate the issue and perhaps publishing some extent about how their algorithms work so there could be a level of accountability about trying to at least be accountable for news that gets heavier traffic (vs being responsible for everything). One way to help this could be by adding a way for users to request a fact check, like if there was a “question mark” option in addition to a like, so if a post got enough question marks then it would alert the company to help provide a fact check. Perhaps even other users could even help by providing resources to help the fact checking process if they see question marks. 

Some might also argue that current SM shouldn’t have anything to do with news anyway. In that case, what if there was an entirely different platform that was specifically for news and that way fact checking and providing multiple resources could be just a part of the platform vs feeling in the way of the more traditional SM posts like memes and life updates. What if in addition to Twitter, there was a spin off platform called “Twitter News” or something, so you could separate those very different types of content and perhaps better manage the fake news since you wouldn’t have to first sort through what even needs to be fact checked. 

In regard to the other issues with SM, I think SM companies definitely have a social responsibility to concerns around mental health especially with younger users. SM was designed to connect people, and it is great at that; keeping in touch with old friends, networking with potential business partners, exploring different cultural norms, these are all great benefits of social media. However, most of these benefits aren’t really achieved until you’re 18; younger than that, there are far more cons then pros. For most minors, your friends probably go to school with you or you see on a regular basis at an activity and there aren’t likely too many outside of one of those categories and if there are, there is nothing stopping you from texting or calling them. When teens go on SM they often just compare themselves to others which can lead to social anxiety, eating disorders, self-loathing, etc. and/or at a minimum they likely get sucked into hours of screen time which is bad for physical health. There is ample data showing that SM can be harmful, and I truly think these risks make it something that should not be used by minors the same way we don’t want minors drinking alcohol. Truthfully, I imagine for minors there are almost as many if not more cases of serious harm caused by SM than alcohol. 

I know for some people SM can be great for feeling like you are a part of a community, but I think for the mass majority it does the opposite and more often makes you feel discluded vs included. Thus I propose that there are other alternatives for solving for the issue of making minors feel included despite their differences other than SM. 

This also somewhat could depend on your definition of SM; perhaps there are virtual support groups that could be more well known or maybe a “Facebook for kids” kind of thing that somehow is more structured around groups vs just being individual’s posting whatever. I’m sure there are scientists that could come up with something more developmentally appropriate because right now everything is designed based on the business of making clicks vs the business of connecting people.

After today’s session, I was also reminded of another part to our class conversation that I didn’t discuss in my journal. Yes there is a part of me that wonders if SM should be restricted to 18+, but the other option is that educators / schools could just take a greater responsibility over effectively teaching kids about how to use SM in a beneficial way. The conference session today helped further suggest that this truly is necessary. Social media isn’t really going anywhere, and there is no way companies would actually add an age restriction and no way teens will stop using these platforms even if they had to lie about their age. So if we know students are using these platforms, we might as well teach them how to use them properly to actually gain information and increase learning.

Emily offered a great list of some starting places for informational SM accounts that educators could look into and potentially use clicks in their class. She also suggested incorporating project based learning that utilized less traditional media sources, such as making an instagram story or a podcast episode.

Learning to Walk Again

It’s been two weeks since school started live and in person again. It’s been a crazy two weeks…

And it wasn’t crazy in the way most people have asked. Adults keep asking me, “Oh is it weird returning to a new normal? Are things crazy different then how you remembered? Is it strange to see people again?”

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding no. One of the crazy things is in fact that things feel so normal / familiar. I’m shocked by how many people are not wearing masks – students and professors. I’m shocked that there aren’t any procedures in place to maintain social distancing. I’m shocked that so many classes went right back to mandatory attendance policies.

The crazy thing about school has not been that everything is different or that we’re experiencing a new normal – the crazy thing is that some people are still trying to revert back to a normal that simply can’t keep existing.

Another reason this week has been crazy is because I’m having to re-learn the concept / pattern / habit (whatever you want to call it) of walking to different classes in a short amount of time.

It seems so silly, but I’ve talked to so many other students since school started who have all said the same thing: the hardest adjustment was learning how to walk again.

The process of school is so much more involved then I had ever thought about before: Remembering how to manage your time to account for different distances. Weighing the pros and cons of walking or waiting for a bus. The discomfort of getting to class out of breath, because even when you have plenty of time, you’re so much more paranoid about being late.

Which brings me to the third reason school has been crazy so far: anxiety.

I have no specific research to back up this claim — I could probably find one if I looked — but from my experience and observational data, I would argue general levels of anxiety have gone up exponentially since the pandemic.

I know in my own experience, I’ve definitely found myself incredibly more anxious in the past year.

I had a minor panic attack after going tubbing from being overwhelmed by not really knowing my surroundings and getting confused with directions to get food but then meet in a different location and how that whole process was working while the other adults went to park the cars. (Important to note though that I hate tubbing, but decided to do anyway with family, but had an even more awful time then expected because on top of not liking tubbing normally, my tube was slowly deflating as we went down the river, so I was getting stuck and beat up by rocks on the bottom far more than you should — all that to say, I was already not in a great mental state).

I also found myself having a hard time getting to sleep the first few nights in my apartment because I was having ptsd to being alone in New Zealand, despite knowing my family lives 20 minutes away from my apartment now.

Even little things like making it to class on time, making sure I’m understanding when all of my assignments are due, and feeling behind on making decisions for the year like what gymnastics meets we should attend have all been stressing me out more than normal. And this stress and anxiety also inhibits creativity and brain processing which has been super evident as I’ve struggled more than any prior year to develop gymnastics routines for this season.

And I’ve noticed this increase in anxiety not just from me, but from students of all ages. As a gymnastics coach I work with kids 3-16 for at least 12 hours a week and I’ve noticed we’ve had a lot more concerns about “having time to do homework,” questions upon questions clarifying event assignments, nerves about coming into practice, asking to leave practice because of “not feeling well” which after discussion is found to be anxiety driven. These amongst other observable traits all lead me to believe there has been a wide spread increase in anxiety. And our gym practices haven’t changed, so I don’t think it’s because of anything we’re doing differently.

At this point I feel like I need a disclaimer that I am currently doing fine and am very good at knowing myself and managing my anxiety. I write these examples not as some cry for help, but to give tangible evidence to support my hypothesis.

So what do we do with this? We observe increased rates of anxiety, which is honestly somewhat expected after living through one of the most uncertain and volatile years of our life, but what are we going to do about it?

As I said at the beginning of this post, from a students perspective, school feels to me like it’s trying to “go back to normal” and this simply won’t cut it.

For example, some of my professors have made it abundantly clear about how, “This is an in person class, so attendance is mandatory and will be tracked and contribute to your grade.” I truly think it’s ridiculous that after the year we just had we are going right back to required attendance. If you want students to show up in person don’t require attendance, make being present the more desirable option.

This past year we have proven that online lectures are very doable and in some ways more desirable; if you are just going to listen to a lecture, it’s a lot less stressful to just roll out of bed a bit later, stay in PJs, and listen in from the comfort of your bedroom rather than everything involved with going to an in person lecture. If I’m going to a class that is just going to involve being lectured at, there is 0 benefit to being in person vs online. I can send questions in the chat.

Now I understand from a teacher perspective that it’s really awkward to present to a ghost audience (when you can’t see anyone or hear little laughs). But rather than require attendance to make sure people show up, why not just design your class in a way that students actually want to show up…?

The classes that I don’t mind putting up with the extra stress of going in person are the ones that I know with have in class group work; games, challenges, projects, whatever it might be, actual human interaction is worth coming to class for, but just listening to someone talk for an hour really isn’t. I’d rather watch a video lecture at 2x speed then use that time for more meetings, completing work, or just doing something fun and creative.

After these first two weeks of crazy, I think I’m starting to get back into a flow with my schedule, but I’m deeply curious about what other realizations will come about this semester as we transition into this new future of education brought about by the pandemic. We are at a pivotal point where we must choose if we are going to move back to the familiar or more forward to the unknown. COVID times have been hard to say the least, but perhaps not all of the changes to education were so bad. While initially schools changed out of necessity, I hope schools now chose to take time to reflect on what changes could be worth keeping around.

Trailblazers 2021 – New Partners & New Application

2020 has been a whirlwind of disruption and new norms, and the same goes for Trailblazers, the student driven magazine about transformative education that I co-founded four and a half years ago.

While disruption can be messy and frustrating at times, it also comes new opportunities for growth and development. With this in mind I am excited to announce that Trailblazers has officially partnered with the Vermont based education non-profit UP for Learning to enhance the sustainability and continued advancement of our organization.

Over the years we have been very successful with Trailblazers, having published 7 issues now and gaining global attention for our work. However, with Abigail and I now close to graduating college, we believe we are getting to a point wherein the next year or so it would no longer make sense for us to be running the magazine. Despite this, we also recognize that Trailblazers has proven to be a valuable resource for amplifying student voices in education and we don’t want to see it die. Thus, we decided to seek out a non-profit interested in partnering with Trailblazers to help ensure the sustainability of the magazine after we move into more of a “senior consultant” role rather than our current managerial roles.

UP for Learning’s mission is to empower youth and adults to reimagine and transform education together. They believe educational equity is a basic human right and every youth and adult partner should be known, valued, and respected as co-creators of change and impact. These concepts resonated deeply with the Trailblazers team and based on my personal interactions with UP for Learning members, recommendations from the education community, and additional research we decided this would be a mutually beneficial partnership that we are excited to explore and develop.

With this new strategic direction, we are now looking nationally for young learners interested in joining our production team as an UP for Learning intern to bring this world renown magazine to life twice a year. 

We are looking for responsible, creative learners who are strong communicators and have an interest in forwarding the Education Transformation Movement. As a team member you would be expected to attend monthly Zoom meetings, communicate progress bi-weekly via text or email,  and fulfill your specific responsibilities required to publish each issue of the magazine.   

The roles we seek to fill are: Managing Editor, Outreach Associate, Communications Associate, Lead Graphic Designer, and Director of Media. Attached is the official job description and application form, please share with any young learners that you think would be a good fit!

Feel free to also contact trailblazersedmagazine@gmail.com with any questions.

Looking forward to this next chapter of our Trailblazers story!

Actionable Advice on Changing Majors

Why are there not more facilitated opportunities to learn about different majors? In high school we have advisors that help with deciding on a college and in college we have advisors within majors to help select classes and career options, but there doesn’t ever seem to be advising on selecting a major. And sometimes our high school experiences easily lend towards an obvious major, but more often then not this doesn’t happen so obviously. I’ve met so many adults that say “Oh if I would’ve known x degree existed back when I was an undergrad, I totally would’ve done that instead.”

I personally entered as an undecided engineering major and found myself just thrown in with all of the mechanical engineers for advising purposes I guess because it is assumed that’s the major most undecided engineers will eventually switch into. However, this advisor was not really able to help me learn about the other potential majors – she specialized in mechanical engineering so that’s what she knew and could advise on…

I had an old friend post this week about realizing she wasn’t enjoying her classes and thought maybe she should change her major, so she wanted advice on how to decide on her new major. The majority of the comments on this post say something along the lines of “Don’t worry, it’s okay to not have it figured out! I changed my career path x times!” etc…

This seems to be a fairly common response anytime someone asks about selecting a major and I’ve realized recently that it really bothers me because this response doesn’t given actionable advice.

I feel like everyone kind of knows that it’s okay to change paths and have periods of time in your life when you don’t have things figured out – our society has long since moved on from the idea of people just having one career their entire life, and now the norm is for change. So while perhaps it provides a smidge of reassurance to be told “It’s okay to not know,” it can also just be irrelevant entirely; just because someone asks for help about selecting a new path doesn’t necessarily imply that they are particularly concerned about their current status paused on a path. By the time you ask for advice you’ve already accepted that you don’t know what’s next, and often times have made piece with that knowing it’s a normal position to find yourself in, what you are asking for is advice on how to decide which direction to move next.

This seems like a totally reasonable thing to ask and yet so often no one really has a helpful answer…

So here was my answer which I wanted to blog about because it seems like such a commonly asked question that gets unsatisfactory responses:

When you are unsure about the future, look to the past. What experiences have you had that you really enjoyed and what did you really not enjoy? Consider an experience anything that might fit into a category on a resume: paid work, volunteer work, projects, learning a new technical or communication skill, unique study opportunities (such as abroad or participation in a special program), and/or leadership. At first don’t analyze the experiences too hard, just on gut reaction if you enjoyed it, title it and put it in the enjoyed list or visa versa for disliked. (Knowing what you don’t like is super helpful so don’t disregard that list because it will help narrow options often faster than the like list.)

After you’ve listed out experiences you liked and dislike (or just didn’t particularly enjoy), then start thinking through what you did in those experiences. Use verb phrases to keep it short and focused. For example maybe you enjoyed volunteering at a animal shelter, so some verb phrases might be: played with dogs, organized pantries, emailed partners and customers.

Look for patterns in terms of skills needed for the experiences, content, styles of work (individual/collaborative/virtual, etc), roles played, any sort of pattern, then try to line up these patterns with a few majors that might lead towards similar experiences. Then go talk to as many people as you can related to those different majors, both students and advisors to get a feel for the differences between majors and look at courses you’d take to see what sounds interesting.

I had entered as engineering because I knew I liked problem solving and project based work and I was good at math and science so everyone suggested engineering. However, once I started to think more about past projects I enjoyed and the roles I played on those teams, I realized that I never particularly cared for the CAD or 3D printing work, and another peer was the one the go to person for engineering type work. Meanwhile, I more often ended up in a management esk role and would lead tasks involving planning, communicating, and presenting, thus I switched to major in business because the courses seemed to be in line with those roles and skills – the actual topics/content material of those projects wasn’t the most important part in decision making even though it seems that’s the part people usually think about when deciding majors.

So maybe this advice will be helpful to someone, or maybe not, but the bigger reason this conversation is interesting to me is because I feel there is gap and a need here. Choosing a major is a big part of college, and while it’s totally okay to switch majors, wouldn’t it be nicer for everyone if less people needed to switch? Just because something has been normalized doesn’t make it not an issue…

It can sometimes be really expensive to switch majors if this then means you have to take more classes and maybe stay in school longer. Plus, some colleges are better suited for different majors, so if you had a better sense of your potential major in high school, then you would be able to look at schools with better resources for your interests.

I hypothesis that so many students switch majors because of two primary reasons 1) they don’t have the best understanding of their options and/or 2) they don’t have the best understanding of themselves. Additionally, I believe working to gain this understanding only after coming to college is too late for meaningful impact on the challenge of switching majors. If high school could do a better job helping learners with both of these issues before learners need to choose majors, I think this would lead to less people switching majors which would ultimately save a lot of money and time for hundreds of people.

How might they do this? Well since I always like to include at least a quick brainstorm when I propose challenges, here are some initial thoughts of mine not too fleshed out (and some of which probably already happen just not wide spread):

• being more intentional about noting connections between class work and their relation to majors/careers
• do the same activity I propose above which also could be tied in with learning about resume writing
• hold major fairs where high school students can talk to people about different majors
• when assigning team projects, don’t just create teams, but create roles on the team as well (whether the students create the roles or they are predesigned, having conversations about roles and responsibilities is important to thinking about future majors and careers)

A Critical Consideration of Project Work

As always, I’m so excited to say we have published yet another issue of Trailblazers!!!! But if I’m being honest, Issue 7 was the probably the most challenging production process yet and I’m mainly writing this post because I just really needed to reflect on it.

I’m a big supporter of transparency, so with that in mind, I’d like to point out that the Trailblazers team actually started this semester intending to take a short hiatus from publishing and spend that time re-examining our business structure in order to be a more sustainable organization in the long run. Having published our magazine for three years, we felt it was time to revisit our organizational foundation, direction, and strategy. With most of our high school team graduating, my co-founder transferring universities, and me being half way around the world, this felt like the right time to take a step back in order to remember why we started this magazine and figure out how we could do our work more efficiently.

I had just finished writing a whole article about this decision, defining “organizational foundation, direction, and strategy,” outlining the questions we would be analyzing, and describing our next steps. (Part of me almost wants to publish it despite it’s out datedness because I was kind of proud of how it turned out “business writing” wise.) My co-founder and I had agreed we would wait until after the high schoolers were back from their school trips and spring break to tell them our decision. Coincidentally though, one of the seniors reached out about needing to take a step back and the other (my sister) had already said as much, so we went ahead and spoke with them during the break and decided we’d make the news public when everyone got back.

And then, by the end of break COVID19 hit… so we didn’t “get back.”

This pandemic has affected every aspects of life, but one of the greatest impacts has been schools moving to distance learning. This rapidly changed the essence of “school” and brought into question foundational principles many have taken for granted like the very idea that school requires coming into a communal building and sitting at a desk and the role of parents in education.

The Trailblazer’s team knew we already weren’t in the best position to publish an issue this semester, and we knew the pandemic would bring it’s own challenges, but we also knew this was a time vitally important for young learner’s voices to be heard and we wanted to do our part to amplify a few of those voices.

So we got started late – not until almost the begining of May – and with no writers in the works and basically a team of only two (myself and my co-founder, though my sister did some feedback work and connected us to one of the young learners so we acknowledged her help as well in this issue), yet somehow, we pulled it off. We might’ve been behind on our intended schedule, and there are things we would’ve liked to have done slightly differently, but honestly I’m just proud that we made it happen and before the end of summer.

I’m grateful to all the learners we worked with that contributed their time while juggling so many other changing parts of life. I’m thankful for my partner in crime who worked with me while we were both taking full course loads this entire summer (also a Trailblazers first) and hosting virtual design thinking workshops, plus she got sick for a week and had her computer break down and still made things happen. And I’m hopeful that these stories give more insight into how young learners can tackle big challenges with resilience and grace.

I honestly don’t know what the future has in store for Trailblazers. After I graduated, the intent was for the founders to slowly become less involved in the process and just serve as mentors; however, we have struggled to make this a reality. I don’t think we will be able to do another publication with just our team of two and as a business student, I frequently question if our work is creating a great enough impact to counter the time and stress costs to keep this organization running- thus, how the original conversation of taking a hiatus to revisit our purpose and goals came about. We considered finding a teacher to partner with that wanted to make Trailblazers a part of their classwork, this way we could keep the magazine alive but also have a more consistent source of new production team members, but that plan kind of fell through. And since publishing Issue 7 we’ve not yet revisited these big questions.

Personally I don’t want Trailblazers to die, but I also know things can’t go on the way they’ve been operating, and I’m also aware that sometimes projects need to come to an end for a new one to start and I’ve never been good at making that call, so I’m at a cross roads. I wonder if my desire to keep Trailblazers alive is selfishly motivated and if maybe my efforts could better be spent elsewhere. But I also would like to believe there are at least some readers out there who appreciate our work and that the Trailblazers production team and spotlight learners have made a positive contribution to the conversations around the role young learners should play in the movement to transform education. The questions remain, if we stopped publishing would anyone care, would there be a loss of value, and even if so does that really imply we should continue, or have we made our point and is it time to say “good job, what’s next?”

I guess that’s all I can say about Trailblazers future for now until further conversations with the team. This was a crazy production process that involved a heavy and quick work load on top of a lot of other external and internal obstacles, but I’m glad we decided to move forward with the creation of Issue 7 and am open minded about whatever comes next on this journey.

 

Trying to Be Better

” …we don’t match, but we don’t need to match to be a family and love each other” – Lauren Jordan

People are speaking up. Black lives matter. Human rights matter. Injustice can not be tolerated.

I haven’t blogged or otherwise posted on social media recently not because I’m trying to ignore the events currently happening in the US, but simply because I haven’t known what to say. I respect, appreciate, and support everyone calling for change, but at the same time in some ways it’s felt better to just take the time to listen rather than try and say something and accidentally say the wrong thing by mistake.

Even with the “#BlackOutTuesday” campaign where theoretically you would think, “You don’t have to come up with anything to say, just post; it’s so simple to show support.” But again at the same time I read a lot of posts talking about negative side effects of this trend for how it was unintentionally blocking the distribution of a lot of resources, so even that seemed controversial. I also fear for many it was a hollow post and I didn’t want to post out of fear it would be a hollow post myself and also for not being convinced any message I share will reach anyone new.

As one of my friends put it: “I think what’s so frustrating to me as a white person it that I’m sharing information and resources and expressing my own support for BLM but I’m screaming into an echo chamber. I have no followers or friends who don’t support BLM (that I know of) so who am I helping by sharing? I want to help, but don’t know the best way to do it.”

So instead of posting, I spent the past day trying to better educate myself. My work on this journey is not comprehensive nor is it complete, but it’s a start, and it’s an action. To me actions often speak louder than words, so I don’t have any reflection or takeaways to share – I’m still processing and some of that requires internal thinking-  but I wanted to say that I know where I stand and want to do something about it, so here’s what I’ve done thus far as I try to personally be better so we can make a better future together:

Watched “13th” on Netflix

Read and signed 10 petitions.

Read the following articles:

END THE WAR ON BLACK PEOPLE

First, Listen. Then, Learn: Anti-Racism Resources For White People

“MOM, WHY DID GOD CREATE MATCHING?” A mom’s conversation with her adopted 6 year old about racially mixed families.

100 RACE-CONSCIOUS THINGS YOU CAN SAY TO YOUR CHILD TO ADVANCE RACIAL JUSTICE FOR OUR WHITE FRIENDS DESIRING TO BE ALLIES

FOR OUR WHITE FRIENDS DESIRING TO BE ALLIES

Responding to Racism Anti-racism tips from the NZ Human Rights Commission.

Discourse and Debate: Is performative activism inherently bad?

This Is What Black Burnout Feels Like

A Stormy Day

I only took one semester off from classes, and yet somehow I managed to forget just how awful midterms are. There is a reason GT students call it “hell week.”

Eating dinner at 11pm because you lost track of time working on a report all day. Getting way less sleep than you should because you wake up early in order to start working and then can’t go to bed with all the thought of what you still have to prepare for tomorrow. Making one-page study versions of your notes with writing so small that your hand cramps for hours. Watching Crash Course while making dinner and cleaning dishes because you realize how little your professor actually taught you. And the stress! The overhanging cloud of darkness containing all lists to be completed, deadlines to meet, and tests with timers in the corner of your screen counting down the seconds till mass destruction. And knowing that due to the pandemic and the syllabus changes, pretty much every midterm, be it a test or essay, is worth between 35-50% of my overall grade so that’s a bit daunting in it of itself.

It’s a rough time, to say the least… In high school, we would refer to these kinds of moments as “the dark night of the soul.”

Then to make things harder, there was an earthquake this morning that caused the power to go out on different parts of campus, and thus the wifi shut down for almost 4 hours in the middle of the day. But school is all online…

Literally, if it wasn’t for Google Drive having an “offline” function, there would have been nothing I could get done this afternoon. I missed my lecture on Zoom, my textbooks are all e-books, my assignments are all either test on our school website or typed assignments that require research which most of us get from the web.

I was honestly baffled by the lack I could get done. I had accepted school being online, but somehow I don’t think I realized how dependent this made me to the internet. Especially since I don’t have cell reception in New Zealand either (I could get a sim card, but I’ve been surviving this long with just wifi that it seems silly to complicate things with figuring out that whole situation) so I also couldn’t communicate with anyone or even see the announcement about why the internet went down which also included the estimated time it would be back. I debated leaving the building to try and find a cafe with wifi, but it was also raining today and I had no way to search what was open or where has wifi and the other times the wifi has gone down it usually came back pretty quickly so I didn’t want to leave in the rain if it was just going to be for a little. Especially since I was able to be a little productive at least with Google Docs offline.

And I did end up most completing the draft of my giant report for marketing since I had already done the majority of my research and outlined on paper/whiteboards, but I had to leave holes throughout the draft of research, citations, and visuals I couldn’t add without the internet. Also this made my weekly plans all sorts of turned around.

Then I made pasta for dinner and accidentally poured boiling water all over my hand while trying to drain the noodles. Now my hand is burnt and I’ve had an ice bag nearby, stopping throughout writing this post to rest my hand. A weirdly appropriate end to this stormy day.

And that’s what it’s like to be a student during midterms. I remember now.