Progress in Action

I haven’t posted recently for a few reasons:

1. I’ve been super busy…
2. I’ve actually been working on a lot of things recently that have had to stay under the radar… UNTIL NOW

So I am happy to finally give some big updates on lots of projects I’ve been working on for over a year through COVID and all, and we’ve been making such great progress!!

First up, school update!

School

While I did start college in 2017 (4 years ago) I am not graduating this year. My time in New Zealand plus COVID made me shift things back, so I will now be graduating in May of 2022 with a Business Administration degree and Social Psychology certificate. In the mean time, I will be spending the summer and next two semesters continuing to coach gymnastics, conduct research in team dynamics, and work for the two non-profit organizations I’ve been with for almost 5 years – Trailblazers and Wish for WASH. Additionally, I am spending the summer writing my application for a Fulbright Fellowship to study education at grad school in Finland.

Trailblazers

Last I wrote about Trailblazers, the student driven magazine about transformative education that I co-founded four and a half years ago, I was just announcing our new partnership with UP for Learning and our search for a new production team. I’m excited to say that we now officially have an awesome team of 8 learners ranging from sophomore year of high school – freshman year of college and representing several different schools and states around the country!! We had our first team meeting in April and have been slowly making progress towards Issue 8 of our magazine which we hope to have published late June 2021. I’m excited for all of the new things that will come from this new team including more efficiency and long term sustainability internally and more diversity with the stories we share and hopefully an increase in how often we share as well! Additionally, for the first time ever Trailblazers Production Team members will be getting compensated for their work on the magazine which is super cool to see the organization grow in this way after 5 years! Anyone interested in connecting with Trailblazers can reach out to trailblazersedmagazine@gmail.com and/or follow us on Instagram and Twitter @TrailblazersEd

Wish for Wash

Similarly, I have also been working with the social impact organization Wish for WASH (W4W) for going on 5 years now and am excited to say that we have also seen lots of great progress this year! First off, with COVID we started making our design thinking workshops virtual. This involved a learning curve for sure, but now with almost a dozen virtual workshops under our belt, I would say we’ve gotten into a great flow. In fact, I foresee this shift to virtual facilitation for W4W having a longer lifespan than anticipated as it has allowed us to expand our audience reach drastically and make scheduling significantly simpler allowing us to facilitate more workshops per semester. We’ve also received great feedback on our virtual design jams with participants being particularly amazed and delighted by how interactive the workshop is despite being online.

On top of changing our mode of facilitation, this past semester we also began piloting our brand new design thinking process which I’m excited to finally talk about! CLAP stands for Connect, Learn, Apply, and Pitch.

We created this process for several reasons:

1. To place connection/empathy at the beginning of the design thinking process – connecting with your team, the topic, and your user before anything else from research to brainstorming happens.
2. To create a process with young learners as the users of our design tools, meaning tools needed to be very straight forward to use and graphically engaging.
3. To enhance the level of empathy developed in a short design jam workshop (under 4 hour challenge).

The third reason to me is what makes our design tools really differentiated from other processes and guidebooks. Empathy is the core of design thinking; the definition is literally, “human-centered problem solving,” and to be human-centered, one must first empathize with their user in order to problem solve together.

However, we observed during early design jams both in person and virtual that participants often struggled with connecting their brainstorming and final ideas back to their user’s specific needs when going through the whole process at such a rapid pace, especially as a newbee to design thinking. When working on a long term design challenge, a big part of the process is identifying your user group at large then doing lots of interviews and ethnography work in order to eventually narrow down your scope to focus on one particular user or a composite user that includes generalized needs and combines insights from several users. This level of empathy work takes a lot of time though – time that doesn’t exist in a two hour design jam. Furthermore, it can often be hard to have a live user present for a short design jam, so on top of minimal time, there is also the consideration of how do you empathize without having a live interaction with a person?

These challenges lead our design team to ask:

“How might we enhance the level of empathy developed in a short design jam?”

So we went through our own design challenge starting in the fall of 2019 in tandem with on boarding new team members and introducing them to design thinking. We did lots of research on different design thinking processes to make notes on things we liked, wished, and wondered about as we began work towards creating our own process. We did this as we continued to host design jams to gain feedback from participants about what they liked, wished, and wondered about the experience.

“I felt like the group text input on the brainstorming worked out well overall but was either a little confusing or a little hard to use for some – it would be great if you could figure out an easier method/tool for this!” – Teacher participant

“I attended all three DT jams. I love that the design jams moved from least stigmatizing to most stigmatizing and in the future I wonder if our school could make this a series of mini classes where students attend all sessions and really delve into building empathy within each topic. I loved the empathy maps and story building exercises of the intended user. It was a really easy framework for the students to understand without shying away from really understanding the user experience.” – Teacher participant

“I love things like this, and I am so happy I finally got involved, but would like to do even more! I also have a product idea, not for water conservation, but something I am trying to start for a business.” – Student participant

Over time we developed the idea of “personas.” We thought, “What if we took the three how might we statements we use for our short workshops [water, sanitation, and menstrual health], but made them into long term internal design jams. If we have 2-3 people on each team interact with at least 30 people each through interviews, surveys, activities, and ethnography sessions, then we could analyze the findings and create composite users which we then use in our workshops so that these ‘made up users’ weren’t actually so made up but instead based upon real stories of real people without needing them live at our workshops.”

So that’s exactly what we did!

Fall of 2020 was all about brainstorming each team members’ Persona Research Plan. For this plan, each W4W design team member brainstormed three potential persona concepts (For example, one of our workshop topics is: “HMW de-stigmatize menstrual health?” For this topic, one member’s three persona concepts included: a middle school girl, a menstrual health and hygiene activist, and a transgender man who still experiences menstruation.) For each persona concept, designers also brainstormed 3-5 key research questions, method of interaction (interview, survey, specific activity, etc), a list of 15 people they might connect with relevant to the concept, and their next 3 steps to move forward with that concept. After developing these plans, the team worked together to give feedback and narrow so that each person went from 3 concepts to one focus concept; for some this was just picking one of their 3, for others this meant maybe merging two concepts together, and for others we came up with a totally new focus based on the discussion.

After plans were created, each designer spent 2-3 months interacting with users. Then we developed a Persona Template Tool for each designer to use as a way to analyze and connect insights to form one composite user that could be utilized in a design jam workshop.

This entire process was happening in tandem with the devolvement of our new CLAP process. So while we had a team doing user research to create these persona’s, we also had a team focused on the design and development of the process itself including questions like: “How do we visualize our process in a way that adds meaning through graphic design?” “What tools already exist in other processes that we want to build upon and what tools don’t yet exist that we want to create?” “What is our color scheme and icon character?” “How do we differentiate parts of the CLAP process and which tools should be a part of which sections?”

Starting Spring of 2021 we officially began piloting the CLAP process in our workshops with great feedback! Partners who had worked with us before and after the redesign said they loved our new look and the new tools we created. They thought it was easy to understand and really engaged their students while also doing a great job at introducing them to somewhat stigmatizing topics in a safe and open environment:

“[My daughter] talked about the period design jam for days. She (and I) had no idea about [the depth and breadth of menstrual health stigma] except for some of the ultra orthodox religions views. We are a very no nonsense household and it seems so crazy that concepts like [period-stigma] perpetuate. Hooray education and exposure!!”

By April of 2021 we were ready to start pushing the persona concepts from the research to graphics team in order to start piloting this fundamental new concept. There was a lot of back and forth about how to best present our user research to design jam participants in a way that would show depth without being overwhelming and how we would best facilitate the conversations around these personas.

In May we began our persona first test run – the template version. We realized during the process of creating these persona’s and our tools to facilitate the conversations, that perhaps a template version of these tools could also be useful if we want workshops where participants brainstorm the details of their user. Additionally, these templates could help us and others create future personas moving forward. So we tested out three new tools: Persona ID, Journey Map, and Influencing Factors. Additionally, we tested a new brainstorming tool: Digitype. And because apparently we were feeling really ambitious, we also had a new person step into the role of a workshop coach, and I personally took a stab at trying to be in the roles of both facilitator and coach during the same workshop so moving forward we can increase our max number of participants.

Despite all the new things being tested, our workshop ran on time and surprisingly smoothly and was an incredible first step towards increasing empathy and having final prototypes actually meet user needs! As a coach I noticed participants really engaging with the persona tools and starting to empathize more with their users, prototypes also started to be geared more towards user needs but I think there is still room to grow there. The teacher’s on the workshop were especially excited about the possibilities our new persona tools present:

“After each workshop we keep talking about how we love all of your graphics, and we really loved the new persona tools this time! We were actually sidebar texting during that section about how cool we thought those tools were for really working to understand a specific user as a team.”

Then this past weekend we finally were able to test out the full persona process including our composite users from those months of research and analyzing!!! We had small numbers for this workshop in partnership with the Museum of Design Atlanta, but the end results were astounding. I have been facilitating design thinking workshops for over 7 years now, and I honestly can’t remember ever seeing so many final prototypes so clearly related back to their users’ needs and problem statements. This was a huge success for us because that was always the goal of our persona project: To enhance the level of empathy developed in a short design jam workshop (under 4 hour challenge). In particular, we wanted participants to understand the idea of an “impact statement” to demonstrate how their prototype was meeting user needs and the participants in this weekend’s workshop really seemed to get it and there are few things more rewarding then watching that ah ha moment happen for young learners.

I now really can’t wait for June where we will be facilitating a design jam as part of the Atlanta Girl School Summer Institute! It will be our largest Zoom workshop yet and we will also be piloting our “DT Coaches Training” process to help others learn not only about design thinking but also how to implement design thinking concepts in their classroom.

It has been almost 2 years now since we first started ideating our own process, 3 years since we ran our first design jam, and 4 years since we first started envisioning and brainstorming on the topic of Wish for WASH running design jams. I’ve been with this team the entire time and it is truly incredible to see how far we’ve come. We are now even getting to a place where we can monetize this work, and while success to me doesn’t have much at all to do with money, it is a big benchmark to be able to demonstrate the value of the work we are doing, and that’s what makes this so exciting; we’re adding value to the community and being recognized for it in greater capacity.

It’s truly been a game changing year for Wish for WASH and I can’t wait to see where this social impact organization goes next. I feel like big things are coming and I’m excited to play a role in the process.

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

Student’s Thoughts on Online Learning

As I explored ideas posted on the OpenIDEO platform about re-imagining learning during COVID-19, I noticed that there was a lack of student voice in the conversation, and yet students are the primary users of our education system. As a student myself, I’m very aware that at this time of year, when everyone is finishing up final exams and getting ready for relaxing in summer, most students aren’t keen to go on a site like OpenIDEO to continue discussing school right after they finished the year.

So I thought I would lower the entry barrier into this conversation by texting a bunch of my friends (7th graders-college juniors) 3 simple questions to get an idea about their opinions of online learning. I also set up a Zoom chat for those that wanted to go more in-depth on the conversation where we did a more personalized interview and also a brainstorming session in response to OpenIDEO’s three areas of remote learning, equity, and community. Then I analyzed all the responses, found some themes, and now wanted to share on the behalf of those 23 students who contributed.

 

Research Questions

The three questions I asked these learners to respond to are as followed:

1. What’s your biggest frustration/what’s driving you crazy about online learning? 

2. What’s your favorite part?

3. It would be better if…

 

Trends

The three greatest trends were students being:

1. Frustrated by their own lack of work ethic/motivation/focus

2. Enjoying the flexibility in terms of space and time offered by online education.

3 Wishing assignments and syllabi, in general, were more greatly altered to better match an online learning environment.

 

Analysis

As we analyze these trends a bit more carefully, it makes me think of these “How might we” statements for looking towards the future of education:

HMW internally motivate students to show up and participate in school? Teachers currently have less power dominance over students when not physically interacting; typical modes of enforcing attendance and participation such as threats of detention, silent lunch, suspension, etc aren’t feasible in an online environment. Now that these threats don’t exist, students are finding themselves less motivated which leads me to believe that the school work itself and the prospect of learning alone are not intrinsically motivating students. Wouldn’t it be great if students actually wanted to come to school and enjoyed participating in school work? The way to encourage life-long learning is to foster intrinsic motivation to learn – that would be a pretty novel purpose for school if you ask me.

HMW provide flexible learning opportunities post-pandemic? The mid-semester shift to a different learning environment on top of all of the other social-emotional priorities that have arisen due to the pandemic has been predominately challenging; however, the unquestionable best part has been the flexibility it has allowed students with regards to their education. Students have loved being able to wake up late and feel fully rested, knock out classwork while cozy in their beds, and then “get on with the rest of my day doing all the other things I want to do.” The ability to plan personalized schedules and work in a setting of choice has been amazing for so many learners, so now that we’ve seen how much students love this flexibility, how might we continue to provide it upon returning to our schools?

HMW effectively use technology in the classroom? The design for assignments to be better adjusted to an online structure was noted as a frustration, a positive element, and a wishful opportunity. So students loved the teachers that were adaptable and used going online as a way to incorporate new elements to their class in meaningful ways, and they were bored and/or frustrated with those who did not. The difficulties some teachers have had with adjusting to a new technological mode of communication raises an important question about how we can more effectively incorporate technology into our schooling even post-pandemic. What students warn us of though, is that technology can’t just be incorporated just for the sake of saying “I used technology!” It must be incorporated intentionally and meaningfully – there must be a true purpose for why the technology is further enhancing the learning experience.

Beyond the Main Trends

In addition to the primary trends, I found three key sub-trends that emerge when looking at how some of the trends interact with each other.

1. Re-thinking assessment (Responses on test cheating, not wanting tests, wanting more collaboration, and more project work.)

2. Maintain a sense of community (Want more socialization, interaction, and meaningful conversations with peers and teachers.)

3. Use a whole-child approach to education (Frustration with expectations not changing, eyes hurting from so much screen time, new challenges such as moving and schooling with family.)

 

Read More

If you want to read student’s full responses as well as my more in-depth analysis of the sub-trends, I have added two additional documents as attachments on my OpenIDEO post.

Empathy Seeking

Online learning has been a wild ride… Personally, I’ve had moments where I’ve been frustrated, bored, and even, occasionally, pleasantly surprised by elements that come with school online. Because of this, I’ve partnered with OpenIDEO as a community coach on their current design challenge around reimagining learning during COVID-19. If you have any ideas (tested or half-baked), are looking for new ideas, or just want to express some problem points around our current learning situation I’d encourage taking a look at/contributing to the OpenIDEO site.

I’m trying to do a little of my own empathy seeking because I noticed an (unsurprising) lack of student voices shared on the platform, and yet student stories are some of the most insightful voices we need right now. So I’ve come up with these three quick questions that I’d love people (young learners especially, though I also welcome teachers, parents, parents on behalf of kids, etc) to respond to in the comment section. I’m hoping to take away some trends to be able to share with the rest of the OpenIDEO community to make sure we’re actually ideating for user needs:

1. What’s your biggest frustration/what’s driving you crazy about online learning? 

2. What’s your favorite part?

3. It would be better if…

Furthermore, if you are a student and interested in joining a virtual collaborative discussion/brainstorm session to dive deeper into this topic, I’m hosting a student gathering this Sunday night, May 17th from 7-8pm EST. Use this form to sign up so I can send out the Zoom link.

Team Bonding in the Classroom

Today was team bonding day for our gym Zoom call. I’m glad I was even able to make it, especially since I forgot to turn on the outlet that charges my phone last night so my alarm didn’t go off this morning…

I found it funny how you can be on a team with the same people for years, and yet somehow still not know basic information about them. Things like where people were born, when they started the sport, how many siblings they have, favorite x,y,z, etc.

Today’s team bonding session was all about discussing the answers to questions like this and it was really fun. I liked getting to learn more about the kids I coach from a whole-child perspective. You never know when it could come in handy to know someone’s favorite animal is a narwal and they were born in Texas having started gymnastics as soon as they could walk. The more you know about a person, the more you can empathize with them and the better you can work with them.

During the normal season, we hardly do any team bonding and it’s something we’ve always regretted, so I truly appreciate this time for allowing us to start implementing this new norm of taking time to value who we are as individuals and a team beyond just gymnastics.

It’s also made me wonder, what if classrooms considered themselves a team? I mean when you think about it, a class is a group of people working together for a year to hone their skills in order to overcome various challenges related to their discipline. That’s pretty similar to how I’d define any sports team…

And yet, in a classroom we often don’t act like a team. There isn’t typically an emphasis on group norms, bonding, and support for each other’s learning and progress. Even in gymnastics where we compete against our teammates, we still talk about the importance of working together in practice, cheering each other on during competition, and doing non-judged group activities to help encourage unification and love for the sport.

I guess it’s assumed in a class that kids already know each other because they’ve been in school together for years, but even when you’ve known people vaguely for years, each new arrangement of people creates different team dynamics.

What if classes spent more time during the year intentionally bonding as a class and thinking about how they will support each others’ growth throughout the year? The more you know about our classmates, the more we can empathize with them and the better we can work with them – and this goes for teachers too. Some teachers are great about getting to know there students, but what if this was even more intentional at a cultural level for the entire school vs just the occasional teacher that everyone knows really takes an interest in learning about all the students? For example, what if the first week of class was all about “class bonding” and setting the norms for the year and thinking about how everyone can best support each other – teacher included?

I wonder how learning might improve if we took more time to know our “teammates” as whole people outside of just the subject material.

Theater Appreciation

Happy World Theater Day!!!

I haven’t been in a theater production in about a year now – not since Mid Summer Nights Dream last spring. It’s still weird for me to think how long it’s been considering once upon a time I spent 15+ hours a week in the blackbox pretty much every day of the school year and then some.

Even though I’m not physically involved with theater now nearly as much as I used to be, it still holds a very special place in my heart due to everything I learned and the people I got to learn with. So I thought I’d share just a few of my favorite things I’ve learned from my involvement with theater and, to drive the point home, some evidence of how I learned it:

• Confidence – It takes immense emotional vulnerability to do both the comedic and dramatic aspects that come with performance arts.
• Empathy – Every time you take on a new character you have to get in their head to understand what it would be like to really be that person and then show others what that looks like.
• Collaboration – A cast without a team mentality is a horrible show to witness.
• Critical thinking – Building sets: where do we need to drill this hole in order to create the angle needed to support this shelf?
• Creative thinking – How are we going to make vines fall from the sky on cue?
• Quick decision making / Improvising – The certain just broke mid-show but we can’t stop the show, so how are we going to work around it?
• Verbal communication – Try memorizing 50 pages of lines verbatim…
• Non-verbal communication – Great acting often happens in the moments of silence.
• Active listening – Don’t just wait for it to be your turn to say a line, it has to feel like a real conversation where each player gives and takes off of the other.
• Fail up – After messing up tragically, getting back up because the show must go on.
• Trust – Know your scene partners will be there to do their part in making the show great, from helping if someone forgets a line to insuring the props they’re in charge of get to where they need to be, and let them trust you to do the same.
• Presence – Rocking back and forth or twiddling your hair while speaking are all distracting gestures during any presentation; theater teaches you to stand firm and make intentional physical choices to emphasize your points.
• Acceptance – Theater people are different. It’s a fairly known fact, and I love this about theater people. Everyone is welcome period.
• Managing emotions – Even on the last night of senior year, tears are for later because there’s still a show to put on.

 

I’m sure I’m missing items from this list, but for now, this is a good start to explaining all the things I learned that make me love theater so much. Not to mention it’s just so much fun! I’m glad that in the midst of schools going online and everything closing down, arts programs are still finding ways to connect and learn these lessons even if we can’t be physically connected in space.

I miss my theater fam new and old and all the theater nerds out there enjoy this day.

Be Humble, Curious, and Ask Questions

The anticipation of knowing your life is about to change is incomparable. 

I am a rising third-year business major concentrating in Leading and Managing Human Capital while also getting a certificate in social psychology. I hope to go into the field of transformative education which is why I wanted to participate in the Leadership for Social Good Study Abroad Program because I believe social entrepreneurship is the key to re-imagining our education system. 

It’s been one week since the program began and I’ve already had my expectations surpassed beyond what I could have imagined. And we haven’t even gone abroad yet!

We’ve spent this week on the Georgia Tech campus as sort of a prolonged orientation and introduction to social entrepreneurship, and I’m actually really grateful that we’ve had this time pre-traveling to Eastern Europe. This past week we have gotten a chance to discover more about what social entrepreneurship really means and have some heavy discussions around the social sector, nonprofits vs for profits, and what to expect while living in Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary for 8 weeks to study and then intern with a nonprofit in Budapest. This past week has also been a great opportunity for us to meet our cohort and start getting to know each other and work together some before dealing with all the craziness of actually being in a different country. 

At this point in the program, we have already had multiple guest speakers, been on a site visit (with another coming up on our last day in Atlanta), watched numerous TED Talks (by Dan Pallotta, Melinda French Gates, Hans Rosling, Ernesto Sirolli, Michael Porter, Robert Redford, Jessica Jackley, and others), had numerous stimulating conversations and debates, completed a few group activities, and explored a dozen or so articles and websites to further enrich our learning about the social sector. Honestly, as a student and someone passionate about transformative education, I could not have asked for a more engaging week. I’ve been extremely satisfied with how the three classes we are taking have been facilitated thus far and I’ve especially loved how all of the classes tie into each other seamlessly to create an overarching experience tying together business fundamentals of social enterprises, innovation and leadership, and nonprofit internship work. And the lessons we’ve been learning I truly believe should be fundamental to everyone’s education experience. 

Some of the key principles we’ve talked about include: 

• humility is key: never assume you are the smartest in the room or you will always be wrong

• be curious: seek out new information and explore connections to make new discoveries

• ask questions and then more questions: really get to know the community you’re working with so that you can work together to maximize assets and change the status quo of deficits 

These aren’t just business principles, these are life principles that everyone should be exposed to during their education experience. I was fortunate to have been exposed to these ideas in high school and now get the joy of diving deeper into them, but as I witness all of the ah-ha moments happening daily for my peers, I have realized how few other learners can say the same thing. I can only imagine how many students have and will graduate college without ever thinking about the importance of humility, curiosity, and questioning – the work that happens before brainstorming “the next big thing” – and this seems unacceptable. Every project needs team members to embrace these principles and it should be necessary for the education system to teach this lesson to all learners, not just those (primarily business majors) who self-select to take time to study social impact once in college. 

Requiring all learners to think about their social impact could also help de-stigmatize ideas around working in the social sector – which absolutely needs to happen. 

First off, a big misconception is that nonprofit workers don’t make money, which is not accurate. The nonprofit sector brings in over 2 trillion dollars in revenue annually, and employees can still live very comfortable lives even in the nonprofit industry. Several of our guest speakers have made it very clear that even though they could probably make more money working in a for-profit business, they are by no means struggling and actually higher up employees are making within the upper 5% of all Americans. 

Furthermore, you don’t have to go into the nonprofit industry to create social impact. There are for-profits with corporate social responsibility platforms, and socially responsible corporations, and social enterprises. It’s become more and more popular for businesses to take an interest in supporting societal issues and in some ways having a for-profit model can sometimes be more helpful in creating sustainable change, as we discussed with the case study of Toms shoes because for-profits typically have more consistent income.       

So far I think what has been most striking to me is just acknowledging that even nonprofits are a business. They still need to market, manage, and create an income just like for-profit businesses in order to be sustainable as an organization. The big difference is just that no one person owns a nonprofit, the community does, and income gets circulated back into the business in order to continue to support the social impact mission. However, despite the fact that nonprofits are also businesses, the public tends to think differently about how a nonprofit should function. 

We’ve in-depth discussed how donators will often place restrictions on how their money can be used, and this restricted money hardly ever goes towards paying the staff members or managing overhead cost like marketing. There is this idea that these kind of expenses are not “worthy” and for some reason “aren’t contributing to the cause.” On our site visit to Global Growers, the co-founder told us that as a nonprofit, getting told funds are restricted is one of the most challenging things. Even if you had millions of dollars to support a new project, you still need money to support the manpower required to actually make the project happen or else the money won’t help anyone. 

Perhaps the biggest misconception though is how we envision “in need communities.” So often we focus on problems and what needs to be “fixed.” Jessica Jackley, the founder of Kiva, mentioned in her TED talk how we are taught as children through school and religion to help the poor, and that there will always be poor people, and we should feel guilty for not helping. So Jessica created Kiva as a way to focus not on the fact that people are poor, but the fact that there are great stories of people with great ideas who just need a little money to help support their families and make their dreams a reality. It’s a shift in perspective that requires respect and acknowledging that everyone should have the right to feel dignified in their place in life. We should be working with communities, not for communities. We have to learn about their traditions, values, and customs. Hear their stories. Embrace their assets not dwell on the deficits. 

We have to be humble, curious, and ask questions. 

I hope to do all of these things as I experience a myriad of new communities and cultures in the following weeks to come. I’m excited for the new discoveries, nervous for what I can’t expect, and encouraged by the week spent in Atlanta that I’m in a community of passionate and open-minded learners who will help me through it all. Moreover, I’m convinced that our lives are about to change and I can’t wait to see how. 

If you’d like to read more about our cohort’s journey, this is the link to our program blog where you can read from other learners on the Leadership for Social Good Study Abroad program. I’m also very thankful to have received the Munchak/Cowan-Turner Scholarship, the Mary E. and William T. Naramore International Study Abroad Scholarship, and Stamps Enrichment Funds which have allowed me to participate in this incredible program and would like to thank these families for their support in my learning journey!

 

From Fear to Greatness

Being a coach 100% makes me a better educator.

I understand the worry that comes along with the responsibility of teaching and training kids.

The wonder about if you’re good enough to be leading them. The confusion when you can’t put well to words what you want from them. The sadness that comes when you see a child that looks as if she is going to burst into tears over a comment you made when all you were doing was trying to give constructive feedback. The actual tears you see sometimes…

Then there is the ever-present challenge of keeping up with new times, new drills, and new standards of excellence. That moment when you learn a level has completely changed their expectations for an event and you get vexed beyond belief because for the past few years you’ve been leading the kids entering this level down an entirely different path. Then you try to throw in some new drills into your class and you’re thinking it’ll be great – just like how you saw it at that conference you attended!- but it never is. Instead, the kids try out your new drill and it just looks all wrong, so you try to make corrects but can’t tell if it’s even worth continuing with this new drill. Did I explain it poorly? Am I not remembering the technique right? Was it too advanced for their skill level? Did I push them too far too fast? Or do they just need to get in more repetitions? Well now we’ve used up all of our time on this event today and I don’t even know if I just wasted the last 45 minutes or am making progress in a great new area that we’ve not trained as effectively before.

Honestly, time is the worst. Do you spend a little time on every event today, or do the kids really need to focus on just one event they’re weak at? Do I even have this option? Is today’s schedule set in stone because there are too many different groups moving around or do I have flexibility with my time? How do we balance learning new skills while also practising their routines necessary for the next competition? When is there next competition anyway; are they really ready for it? Am I wasting time explaining so many directions? Should I be doing our normal warm-up for consistency and time effectiveness or mixing it up so different skills are worked? Does it take more time to set up these stations then they’re worth doing? How much time is left before we have to rotate? What happens when they come to this event with a different leader next time and the kids get confused with new directions and expectations? Are the kids progressing at a reasonable pace? Is anyone falling behind? Is anyone being held back?

So ya, I can empathize with teachers. I know all of those worries and concerns and feel them while maybe not daily, at least bi-weekly, but I’m often thinking about this work much more often than just while I’m in the gym. Half of the time I ride Marta I’m listening to potential gymnastics music or choreographing new routines based on the skills I know kids have/expect them to have come performance time.

While I understand and constantly am faced with these concerns, I also can respect the bigger picture. USA Gymnastics completely changed lower level vaulting progressions this year. It’s a pain in the butt because now we’re having to teach all of these new vaults to children and we feel less confident in how these new changes play into our personal philosophies. But at the same time, the changes are mostly good for the greater whole of trying to improve American gymnastics.

And fears of if you’re good enough to be a leader, while perhaps valid, are also in a way trivial. Whether you feel good enough or not, you’re what these kids got. So either step up or step down, either way, get out of the way because these kids are coming and have expectations of you. So make it up, make mistakes, make saves. Try something new, and give it adequate time in the experimenting phase before judging it’s worth as a drill or skill. When you’re stuck or need a second to catch your breath or even just help with setting up, let the kids lead- they’ll surprise you. Learn from those around you and don’t be afraid of a “double spot” or an extra hand to help out; we tell kids it’s okay if you need a little extra help getting a new skill, so it should be okay for us too.

Fears, nerves, and concerns can drive us to great things if we can accept their validity and then move on to push past them; sometimes it just takes time, creativity, and a little extra help every now and then.

 

Even if it’s a Game…

There’s a recentish trend in education around trying to “gamify” certain lessons to make them more engaging to students.

Personally, I’m a fan of this concept, I even use the tool myself when teaching gymnastics sometimes by making conditioning into competitions or basics on beam into a repeat after me game as I did today. I think it can definitely be a useful tool for any teacher’s toolbag.

However, I also learned today that doing a poor job at gamify-ing actually makes things worse from a user end.

As part of my psych class requirements, I participated today in a research study. If it wasn’t giving me class credit I would say that it was the biggest waste of an hour and a half I’ve ever had; it still quite possibly could be. Some part of me hopes that the researchers can benefit from my involvement in the study, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be an outlier in their study.

The study description was:

The purpose of this study is to assess how information is valued when it comes at a cost and how time pressure influences information foraging. In this experiment, you will play a medical diagnosis game where you will select information to aid in your diagnostic decision-making. 

So I come in, sign my release form, and then I was put at a desk with a computer in a small room that had a divider between me and the other participant. When I read that this study was being conducted in the form of a game I got excited thinking it was going to be a fun mental challenge with interesting rewards system; you know- game like.

Turns out this was not a fun game. The game worked by a patient “coming in” and telling you their symptoms. Then you could see the results of different tests like an MRI or Cat scan, etc. There were four symptoms, four tests each with three possible outcomes, and four potential diagnoses. Upon correctly diagnosing a patient you’d get $1000/points. Then there were different rounds that added different factors like time and hidden information which were meant to help get at what the study was trying to test.

In theory, you would have to guess at the beginning of the game and then would slowly recognize patterns to help you make informed decisions on how to diagnose each patient. The problem for me was that I never learned anything. To be honest, I got really annoyed with myself because I could not figure out the correct connections. It didn’t help that half of the test results looked the same and I didn’t realize during the instructions would be the only time they tell you the difference between the “positive, neutral, and negative” test results looked like.

What I do know though is that my feeling of “failure” to learn what I was supposed to be learning lead to exactly what you’d expect: I stopped caring to try. I just continued to guess and honestly, it made things faster and I was still having decent success in my opinion, though I have nothing to compare my game score against. At that point, I really just wanted to get out of there but knew I had to finish the study for my credit (and for feeling like a decent person purposes and helping with their study despite being bored out of my mind).

I couldn’t even tell you how many times I almost fell asleep out of boredom. This “game” turned into my clicking a mouse twice in two spots then clicking the space bar. Repeat. Over and over again. I then got to that point where I felt jumpy from sitting in one place for so long and trying not to think about going to the bathroom because I was just wondering how long I would have to keep playing the stupid game.

I’m pretty confident that there are a lot of other students out there like me in this story and even more that may have not even tried as long as I did to figure out the learning lesson. Students where if they were in the situation of feeling like they were never going to learn something, they stop trying to learn it if no one gives them a new way to approach the topic. I think people intrinsically know when a certain style of teaching is not going to work for them, so why keep trying to put the square into the circular hole when you know it will never fit?

And this goes even for exercises that seem “fun” and “game like”; they still may not work for everyone, no matter how excited you are about a new activity for teaching a topic. There always needs to be options and adjustments if we want everyone to succeed; we talk about that all the time in gymnastics. When we teach a new drill, we say it, show it, have the kids try it, and still sometimes need to give a few kids a spot through it for a little; it doesn’t matter how they get the information, but they need to be able to all safely try on their own.

It was honestly a big MoVe moment (moment of visible empathy) for me walking out of that room realizing how some students may feel fairly often at school when they just aren’t getting it and don’t know what to do about it.

Stumped on a Song

One of my summers jobs is finding and editing floor music for all of our gymnasts for the next competition season; then I go on to choreograph the routines for most of the girls and start teaching them when I get back from travelling.

One of the things I find most interesting about this job is how every gymnast has their own style. I never took music theory or anything like that, so I’m actually pretty horrible at trying to describe types/styles/genres of music, but somehow I’m able to watch a gymnast and listen to different pieces of music and connect the dots. It’s one of those weird skills you can’t really describe how you learned it but somehow over the years, you pick it up from being in the environment long enough.

I can typically predict the kind of music gymnasts will have (when they eventually get to the level where they have unique routines) by the time they reach our second lowest level. I don’t usually need to figure music out that early, so I don’t waste time thinking about it often, but occasionally we have girls we know will progress fast so I have to work fast to figure out their style to keep up. Occasionally though, I get stumped.

I spent today working on my goal for the week: editing all the music for next season. I successfully have finished all of the editing (including for one girl I learned a few hours ago is actually quitting so that was frustrating…) except for one gymnast. This girl has had me stumped for years now, in fact even when she was at our second-lowest level I was stumped with who to partner her with for their floor routine. She’s a talented gymnast and a pretty solid dancer that could honestly do a lot of different styles if she wanted to, but I always struggle every year with figuring out the best fit for her. I know what things don’t work/what she doesn’t like, but it’s hard to look for songs based just on what you know what won’t work.

It’s been a frustrating process because every time I let myself go on the hunt for a song, I find myself an hour later not really anywhere closer to figuring out my puzzle. I’ve tried using my design thinking practices of doing empathy interviews- I talked to this gymnasts and others about what they like and dislike based on their style of gymnastics, and I’ve talked with other coaches as well. These interviews didn’t really get me any closer to success and basically only solidified my assumptions based on watching their gymnastics.

So maybe I should just try experimenting. I’m thinking now (as in literally in this moment because blogging for me is really just me talking through my own thoughts in real time) I could try just playing different kinds of music and seeing if the girls can improv to different songs and see what happens. I’ve vaguely thought about this before, but my worry is the kids will shy away or get overly goofy about it because improv isn’t something gymnasts typically do. However, at this point, I guess it could be worth a try until I think of some other way to get unstumped or somehow that perfect song comes up in my constant searching.