Lessons on Teaching—and Learning from—Students

By Naihobe Gonzalez

One of the more self-interested reasons our team was interested in creating the Student Consultancy Program was that we wanted to experience teaching first hand, even if only in a limited form. Our six-week after-school program seemed like a great way to dip our toes into the teaching waters.

Students discussing their survey design

Each of us took leadership over one of the workshops described by Angela  based on our areas of expertise. I was excited to lead the students on a “Research and Analysis” workshop in their third week. As a non-educator, here’s what I learned that week about teaching—and learning from—students:

Plan, plan, plan!

It took me about six hours of planning time to develop a two-hour workshop on survey design and data analysis—not including the time I spent while driving or taking a shower thinking about the sorts of activities that would be most effective with our students, the hour our team spent collaborating on the lesson plan, or the time I spent running through it with my boyfriend for practice.

Keep an eye on the clock.

Despite my best efforts at planning, once in the classroom, it was very difficult to manage time—and I had the help of my three team members! Because each activity took longer than I had planned (due to our students having so many ideas to share!), I was not able to get to the last item on my lesson plan, an important activity on data analysis. We ended up asking students to stay an additional 15 minutes past the scheduled end time to cover announcements.

Cater to students’ different learning styles.

I have experience teaching undergraduate and MBA students, where lectures are the primary teaching method, but younger students have many different learning styles and keeping everyone engaged is not easy. Class discussions, team activities, lectures, think-pair-shares, physical movement, and hands-on technology are some of the methods we have tried so far. In my workshop, students responded best to team time on laptops where they created their own market research surveys on Google Forms.

Learn from classroom practice.

It turns out teaching, like almost every other endeavor, benefits from learning by doing. As a do-now to start the class, I developed an activity I called “The Worst Survey Ever.” Students were presented with a series of poorly designed survey questions and asked to discuss what was wrong with the question and how to improve it. As I led the activity, it began to feel a little long. Although 72% of students rated the activity as “very effective,” their written survey responses suggested they felt the same way as I did. Next time, I would make it shorter.

Ask students directly for feedback.

Students providing us feedback!

The reason I know what went well and what didn’t is that we directly ask students in our weekly surveys. I thought one way to get the students to think critically about survey design would be to ask them to critique the surveys they had been taking for the program. The suggestions they developed in class were so thoughtful that we implemented every single one! Giving students a say in their own learning experience has been a motivating factor for them. And thanks to their feedback, we were able to collect better data.

As a result of this week’s workshop, students learned best practices of survey design and developed their own market research surveys to help them answer their capstone question. As team leaders, we also received something—little nuggets of affirmation from our students. In our survey’s catch-all comment box, students wrote:

I am really excited for this!

I think everything is actually going great!

Loving this program! 

This week we also learned what keeps teachers going: the students.

The Secret to Surpassing Your Fundraising Target: 8 Easy Steps

By Stephanie Nguyen

After we had our plan in place for the Student Consultancy Program, we quickly realized that we needed a way to finance our program. We needed to raise money to cover the costs of instructional materials, a final reception after the students’ final presentation, and prizes and gifts to the students and judges for their participation in the program. Based on our individual networks, we decided that social media and crowd funding was the best way for us to fundraise.

Over the course of 10 weeks, the Student Consultancy Program raised 150% of our fundraising target. In an age where crowdfunding is on the rise and the list of initiatives to support keeps getting longer, how did we manage to make our cause stand out? Below are eight steps that drove our fundraising success. With a generous budget and growing momentum, our SCP team is ready to execute a fantastic program for 20 students at KIPP KING!

1) BELIEVE IN YOUR CAUSE - Really believe in what you are building and sharing. Reaching out and raising money for SCP was easy for our team because we are invested in the program and deeply care about the students we serve. We want to see big impact and know that a fully funded budget will allow us to make that happen. Whenever we talked about the program with our friends and colleagues, we continuously emphasized that the program would provide the critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills that would help our students succeed in college and in life. The passion and enthusiasm we had for our program was apparent and contagious to the individuals with whom we talked. We kicked off our campaign by engaging our respective online networks on Facebook and Linkedin. Later we reached out to family, friends, colleagues, and Education Pioneers.

2) PRIORITIZE FUNDING STRATEGIES – Our team first created a program budget that included all the expenses that we would incur from the program and final reception. This process informed our initial funding goals. From this we developed a multi-pronged fundraising strategy that involved both partnerships and grassroots efforts. We prioritized our grassroots efforts and using social media since we believed this would provide us with the majority of our funding. In order to ensure that our goals would be met, we also planned a happy hour fundraising event.

3) INSPIRE YOUR PEERS - If someone else believes in what you are doing, you are halfway there. Make your cause attractive by sharing your views about why the cause matters and approach funders with a solid plan. If they buy into your mission and are confident in your ability to execute, they are more inspired to contribute. After $140 in cash donations from a birthday fundraiser, our SCP team set up a GoGetFunding.com page. We quickly received a generous donation from an unexpected supporter. This enabled us to reach our initial fundraising goal and assured us that our work was truly resonating with our peers.

4) CHALLENGE YOUR FUNDING & PROGRAM GOALS – Mid-campaign we decided to raise the bar on our fundraising goal and added program enhancements such as job shadowing and networking events for our students. A generous grant from Education Pioneers prompted this shift in our initial plan. With their support, we feel encouraged that there may be potential to grow the program in the future.

5) MAKE THE IDEA SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE - Ask for help! After building some initial momentum, we shared our idea with colleagues and friends to create a movement. We empowered them to help identify other prospective funders, partner organizations and companies that might host our students during job shadowing opportunities. Within weeks, our entire Education Pioneers network was on board with our mission. Our partner organizations, KIPP Bay Area Schools and KIPP Foundation, also became champions of our cause.

6) MAKE IT FUN - Put the FUN in FUNDRAISER! We learned that Tonic in Russian Hill offered guest bartending fundraisers and decided to host a happy hour! We circulated the event on Eventbrite and Facebook. Our team may have had more fun making drinks than our guests did

socializing. In three hours we surpassed our $300 goal two-and-a-half times, thanks to friends, colleagues and the March Madness community that donated its tips to “the kids!” 

7) ENGAGE DONORS WITH THE PROGRAM - In our planning phase, we solicited advice from Education Pioneers Analyst Fellows and local staff to help brainstorm financial strategies for the program. Engaging them in this initial conversation immediately generated interest (and future donations) within the group. As funding started to roll in, we extended invitations to every donor to the final presentation, thus offering them an opportunity to see their contributions come to life. 

8) EXPRESS GRATITUDE - After each donation, we sent a personal thank you to the donor. We also listed each donor on our online fundraising website in an effort to further thank them for their efforts. It’s important to recognize generosity, particularly amongst friends, colleagues and family.

Turning Vision to Reality

By Angela Le

When asked by Education Pioneers to think of a project that would give back to the community, I considered my own dreams and experiences. As a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, one of my most prominent dreams from childhood was to attend college. Fortunately for me, I was able to turn my dream into a definitive vision and, finally, into reality.

Drawing from my college experiences, I thought about the way I was able to complete my college education. At first it was tough. I had very little experience writing research papers, thinking critically, or analyzing information. I also found it difficult to navigate careers and prepare for job interviews since I knew very few individuals who had gone through the process. I was lucky that I was able to find a support system that helped me through college. However, I realize that many first generation college students do not.

For our community project, I wanted to help students who grew up in similar circumstances as I did. I wanted to provide a program that would help develop the critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills that are vital to success in a global economy. This simple vision was the basis for the creation of the Student Consultancy Program. I felt the best way to help students cultivate these skills was through the case study method. I envisioned a series of workshops that would introduce students to the case study method and have them present an answer to an issue that was relevant to the local community. I wanted the students to work in teams to think through solutions to the issue and then present their solutions to judges who would be business and academic leaders from the local community.

Working session in Berkeley

My Analyst Fellowship colleagues Naihobe Gonzalez, Stephanie Nguyen, and Lindsay Waldron agreed with the importance of a Student Consultancy Program. Naihobe has years of experience mentoring with Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and KIPP Through College and wanted a chance to again positively impact underserved students. Stephanie was Executive Director at Massachusetts Youth Leadership Foundation and saw an opportunity to contribute her years of experience leading a non-profit organization. Lindsey taught middle school students in Boston through Citizens Schools and wanted to apply her expertise in curriculum development and teaching to this team. Our joint experience and passion has proven invaluable to turning this vision to reality.

After many meetings and late night calls, we decided to focus our workshops on the following areas:

• Introduction to the Case Study Method and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) Analysis
• Research and Analysis
• Marketing and Branding
• Presenting to Audiences
• Capstone Final Presentation

After our presentation to KIPP King sophomores and juniors!

We felt that each of these focus areas would provide our students with the framework they needed to answer the question “How can Gap win back the teen market?”. The next steps were to create a curriculum for each of these workshops, which we will cover in future blog posts. But first we had to figure out how we would finance our program. Our next blog post will be on how we developed a successful fundraising strategy that enabled us to turn our vision for the Student Consultancy Program into a reality!