Collab Lab 21: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs October 18, 2018December 17, 2018Computer Science

Building Computer Science Talent

Over the summer we met with Ryan Bennett from SafeNet Consulting and Ryan Osterberg from Brookfield Central to talk about the CS internship program they put together for high school students. That program leads teams of high school students to develop custom applications for other local non-profits. Over the past 2 years, they’ve developed an effective way to engage students in meaningful, high quality work. They have started a new non-profit, Code The Way, to carry on the effort and reach a broader pool of talent.

In the same way that having a real-world project helps sharpen the thinking of students, having a real-world program as a case study helped us talk through a number of the issues around developing CS talent in K-12.

We began the evening with an overview of the Code the Way program, how it is structured, and the key aspects of the approach that make it a valuable experience for students. Our initial set of small group discussions focused on the aspects of the approach participants found most compelling. Those key aspects fell into the following categories

Collaboration

Building a pathway from high school to college

Pedagogy

Context matters (real-world projects)
Encourages failing forward
Changes the role of teachers/shifts traditional learning models
Facilitated Learning

Curriculum

Teachers don’t feel confident in teaching computer science and those trained gain confidence and leave
Preparing students for future careers involves all students learning fundamentals of programming
How do we develop basic technological literacy skills across the student experience

Equity

The program/curriculum currently caters to top students. How do we reach all students?

Partnerships

Having real world applications for community organizations is critical
What other opportunities do we have available in the Milwaukee area for partnerships with corporations

We then moved on to talk through barriers for each of these areas and what we might do to move forward…

Collaboration

Key Issues:

Time available for professional development, collaboration
Lack of incentives
Institutional barriers
Lack of platform to support collaboration

Strategy:

Educational policy on CS curriculum
Data on tech job growth (to make the case for resources)
Connect with business priorities so they are invested in schools

Pedagogy

Key issues:

Time
Intimidating
Buy-in
Resources/training
Incentives to continue up-skilling
Mismatch between what’s being tested and what industry needs
CS is not integrated with curriculum priorities

Strategies

Invite community leaders to an hour of code
Help teachers know it is ok to fail
Give teachers a chance to experience the learning module or lesson before going in front of students
Recognize opportunities to integrate curriculum– saves on time and adds context
College STEM/CS ambassadors
Offer more coverage time for teachers so they can learn, explore, collaborate, etc.

Curriculum

Key issues:

Prioritization of problem solving vs content (aka CS knowledge)
If we want students to solve real problems, what content do they need to do so?

Strategy:

Build partnerships/mentors from the “real world” who can inform/provide content, software, etc. which becomes the means to how students solve problems– thus balancing problem solving & content. So… tap into TEALS & leverage new partners
Quick wins… Talk to TEALS, reach out to local business.

Equity

Key issues:

School access– courses are offered within K-12
Qualified instructors
Paid or unpaid internships vs guaranteed income for students (who can’t afford to go without a summer job)
Representation of diverse K-12 demographics
Issues related to geography & transportation

Strategy:

Centralized platform of program offerings
District level talks of scope and sequence for CS for K-12
Survey to identify CS offerings
Paid internships & provide a pipeline for college & job (stipends/apprenticeships)
Opening your doors to see what challenges you have on site. Provide opportunities for others to help/diverse help
Privide transportation or bus passes; offer courses within students’ neighborhoods

Partnerships

Key issues:

IT vs CS
Reciprocal accountability
Equity in service
Institutional silos
Lack of social responsibility
Wanting only “cream of the crop”

Strategies:

Focus on student’s stories
Engage smaller businesses
Talk up success, MPS through suburban districts
Invite partners to see what is going on
Understand the customer
Strong message
Adjust model to fit more kids
Teach that failure is an option

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Ryan Bennett — Senior Consultant, SafeNet Consulting
Dennis Brylow — Associate Professor, Computer Science, Marquette University
Karen Green — Computer Science Coach, Milwaukee Public Schools
Ryan Osterberg — Computer Science Teacher, Brookfield Central High School
Mark Zacher — Milwaukee Regional Manager, TEALS

Resouces:

You can find an overview of Code the Way here: http://learndeep.org/wp-content/uploads/Case_statement.pdf

The Milwaukee Tech Hub Education Workgroup is a team of community volunteers committed to addressing barriers that will prevent our emerging workforce from accessing opportunities that will allow them to secure and sustain employment in an era of unprecedented technological change. The group’s first deliverables were 1) a presentation to make “A Case for Change in K12”, and 2) web content that might help those charged with building a Computer Science program in schools. Please review these resources before the Collab Lab as they might help spur ideas during your small group discussions. If you have suggestions on how to improve these resources or have questions about the workgroup’s collective efforts, please email MTH.Education@gmail.com

2018-19 Collab Labs

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs September 5, 2018December 5, 2018Collab Lab

Collab Labs are back for a 3rd season

We’ve set the schedule for this year’s Collab Labs. In Collaboration with SafeNet Consulting, we’re kicking off the season on October 11th with a look at developing computer science talent. Through the continued support of The Commons, we’ll be back in Ward 4– now with street car service (well, tracks).

Here’s the schedule:

Collab Lab 20: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs May 17, 2018December 5, 2018CBLE, Internship, STEM

At the end of March, we met with a group of group of students from Reagan High School who were working in or looking for internships in STEM fields. We heard three key concerns:

Students want a chance to exercise the skills they’ve been developing
Students want the internship to be a chance to learn
Outside a few narrow fields, STEM internship opportunities for high school students are difficult to find
If students don’t get a chance to grow and learn, an internship is “just a job”, and those take a lot less effort to find.

In our May session we explored several issues around creating effective STEM internships for high school students. We began the evening with a review of what we heard from the Reagan students, and identified a few additional issues:

Internships are a new norm for K-12 schools (which have been focused on college prep)
Lack of buy-in around career readiness from industry, schools, and students
A reliance on university students for internships may be misinformed, particularly when it comes to computer programming
High level of on-going coordination required
It’s difficult for companies to identify schools with strong programs (from which to recruit)

Round 1

With this as background, we asked participants to inventory the problems to be addressed, and with the help of a couple of volunteers, sorted those responses into the following groups:

Potential Careers

Schools not doing enough to introduce the world of possibilities to students
Where do we find the resources to support students who want internships
High school students as seniors still only know basic STEM careers (doctor, nurse, engineer)

Logistics

Students need summer pay
Students do not have transportation
Companies not willing to work with MPS schools
Companies not looking to the “experts” in the schools to assist w/career experiences
Let’s not forget about the MPS HS kids not in Reagan, King, Riverside
Internship logistics– not appealing or logistically difficult for minors/teens
If internships don’t work, what are other options?
Companies moving out of the city
Resources & funding both in education & industry
Legal barriers– minors, health care specifically
Transportation needs
Business & school partnership
Business support
How do we educate employers on the importance of internships
How to develop a mutually beneficial work relationship between employer and student
AP Java or AP anything can’t be the gatekeeper to these opportunities
Not having a dedicated person (100%) at each school focusing on career readiness
One day field trips/job shadows get kids excited but are disconnected or not continued
Students lose STEM engagement
Helping our community understand the world of work has changed

Exposure

Exposure to different career fields
Exposure to local companies/orgs
How can we expose students to career based learning experiences so they know what they want to do/don’t waste time & $ post-secondary?
Career based learning experiences in building
Off-site experiences
Job shadows
High schoolers need a way to explore future options
Students liking “engineering” but not wanting to further pursue as a career
Kids go to college not knowing what they to study/do for a living
Convincing students/parents to look at the bigger picture– experience vs test scores
Expose kids to advanced topics earlier
Internships/work experiences that offer meaningful ways to engage students in school
How to increase significant student exposure to careers
We want to grow MKE as tech hub but students have little to no tech exposure
Real world work experience for teens

Equity/Support

Equity– females & underrepresented minorities in IT
Kids need significant role models
Generate a community culture of learning and support
Family involvement (for support & buy-in)
Increase talent pipeline
Frequent, immediate, continuous check-in and support
How do we monitor long-term investment and impact on interns
Viewing high schoolers as capable of doing meaningful work
To build a common system that supports students and industries
Funding to allow access for every kid who wants to experience

Teaching Skills

Develop human skills — robot-proof education
Teachers not always equipped to assist w/career readiness
Pre-employment skills building
Shape curriculum to better match the real world
Social-emotional skill building
Students need employability skills
Application of skills vs content knowledge
Kids don’t have the soft skills employers seek
Ensuring school coursework is relevant– tied to industry competencies
Communicating K-12 → post-secondary →industry and adjusting as skills adaptively grow
Stop treating tech like a science and more like an art
Health care based research projects
Project based internship programs– what does this look like in health care?
Career readiness after leaving the academic environment

Round 2

We chose three areas to focus on for the remainder of the session, and split into groups to explore each topic. Here’s what we came up with:

Teaching Skills

Problem:

Conflicting priorities of K-12 educators, industry, and curriculum

Driving factors/barriers:

Lack of regional coordination
Lack of frequent and effective collaboration
Culture of STEM education
Educators are at capacity

Models:

TEALS (Microsoft program to tap industry professionals to launch computer science programs in schools.
SafeNet’s high school internship program (company treats program as a donation, students work on tech projects for non-profits)

Parties Involved:

Students
Educators
Industry
Parents

Exposure

Problem:

Students lack exposure to career based learning experiences

Driving factors/barriers:

Lack of staff buy-in
- Curriculum incorporation
- Knowledge of industry
Lack of clear District/Industry connections

Models:

Staff PD
- Industry
- Curriculum support
Look at successful districts/schools

Parties Involved:

Top down involvement (administration to teachers)
Industry
Post secondary educators/administration

Equity/Support

Problem:

Lack of equitable & accessible resources allocated to students in need of most support

Barriers:

[Lack of] Social & emotional support
[Lack of] School based career support
[Lack of] Student to student support
[Lack of] Transportation
No social capital
[Lack of] Role models (who look like them)
Achievement gap

Solution:

Positive feedback loop of near-peer mentors
Partner with corporations and communities
Change perception of what is professional

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space, Brian King for facilitating, and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Tamera Coleman– Internship Coordinator, Milwaukee Public Schools
Matthew Hunt– College & Career Readiness Specialist, New Berlin High School
Ariana Radowicz– University Relations, Rockwell Automation
Molly Schuld– Science Teacher, Ronald Reagan High School
Laura Schmidt, Strategic Advisor to the Superintendent – School District of New Berlin

Collab Lab 19: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs April 28, 2018December 5, 2018Community Engagement

Collab Lab 19 Our April Collab Lab focused on the opportunities we can create for students by engaging partners in the neighborhoods which surround a school. The goal was to explore how we might: engage students in real-world projects with organizations, businesses, and community members in the neighborhoods which surround a school; leverage then enthusiasm and energy of students working on problems they care about; foster relationships that allow for sustainable engagement over the long term.

We led attendees through a process that started by listing the kinds of things we hoped students would gain though community engagement. We then pulled a couple of volunteers to sort through and categorize the ideas attendees had captured on Post-it notes. That gave us the following broad areas:

Towards a Better World

A broader sense of what is possible
Exposure to something bigger than themselves
Passion for social justice
An appreciation for society’s complexity
Augmented horizon of how to imagine the future

Self Worth

A sense of pride of ownership
Confidence in themselves
A sense of belonging
Enable kids to feel like members of the community
Deeper self-awareness
Empathy
Empower kids to speak their voice

Skills

Access to people/institutions/jobs that need their skills
Exposure to job opportunities and skills
Practical skills
Transferable skills

Assets/Broadened Perspectives

Acceptance of people different from themselves
Broad understanding of neighborhood assets
Help break down racial divisions
Awareness of the ASSETS of their communities, not just the deficits
Awareness of what’s outside of their school/neighborhood
Broader perspectives of the world around them

Relationships

Role models
Connections to their city & community
Mentors
Help kids help others of all backgrounds
Seeing corporations and professionals who care
Recreation activity connections
Connections to mentors/role models
Comfort with community leaders, stakeholders
Students gain trust that agencies really have their bests interests at heart
A sense of community
Students can feel connected to their school/community
Finding a mentor outside the building
A sense of commitment to the community
Broader cultural awareness
Connect to local community-based resources for them & their family (financial education, home ownership, arts, food assistance, play)
Students gain confidence that adults across agencies want to work together, collaborate more than compete
Relationships with people who work in the community

Authentic Learning

Students can feel worthy of doing quality work
Quality tutoring
Time for activities they are passionate about
Authentic transfer of educational outcomes/real-world application of learning
Exposure to high interest books
Employment
Work Experience
Confidence to access civic processes
A new challenge that requires determination
Real world application of learning
Projects with a purpose beyond a grade
Access opportunity (jobs, resources, etc.)
Connections to local businesses & corporations (career modeling, job shadow, potential mentors, part-time jobs)
Creative problem solving skills

We identified three areas to dig into a bit deeper– Relationships, Authentic Learning, and Self Worth. Attendees split into groups to explore what a program that could provide these gains might look like. Here’s what they came up with:

Relationships

North/South Travelling Classroom

The project envisions that school student councils at multiple schools would lead a march that takes students across both sides of I-94 ending in a barbecue/potluck in the Menomonee valley.

Goals:

Break down silos
Build relationships
inter-generational teaching

Timing:

Fall semester– study/understand the neighborhoods
January to June– (student led) planning for event

Potential partners:

Artists Working in Education
Adam Carr
Reggie Jackson
Story Corps
ExFabula

Authentic Learning

Student Led High Interest Fair

Open-ended, cross-curricular. student-driven assignment
All students
Goals:
- Students will identify their own role/responsibility
- Students network/indetify community participants
- Students create their own content
- Students share content w/audience
Takes place at school or community center in the evening
Partners:
- Industry experts
- Community members (invited by students)

Self Worth

Authentic learning experiential mentors
Re-orientation to community engaged learning
Two way experiences
- Participation “youth experts”
- Opportunities to (authentically) lead with adults
- Students see results (even when it is long term)
- Community based, e.g. park, garden, sport, youth council, school bank, server meals, seniors
- Problem solving– “How would you…?”
Beyond Service Projects
- Long-term engagement/commitment by adults
- Demonstrate how their participation impacts projects
Reinforcement
- Positive phone calls
- 1st day high fives
- Children’s saving accounts

Assumptions

Occurs through school (as a conduit) because school may be one of the more stable institutions in students’ lives (school can be the catalyst)
Any age– schools & organizations that are willing
Need vehicle to match project ideas with partners

Thanks again to DevCodeCamp for providing the space, and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Dr. Dan Bergen – Executive Director, Marquette Office of Community Engagement

Fr. Bill Johnson, SJ – Vice President of Strategic Growth, Cristo Rey Jesuit Milwaukee

Thomas Kiely – Director of Institute for Catholic Leadership, Marquette University

Katie Sparks – Director of Development, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee

Scaling Meaningful Discourse – Recap

Pete Reynolds Collab Labs, Embedding Discourse, Workshops March 28, 2018December 5, 2018Middle School Math, Milwaukee Succeeds, Systems Thinking

Our workshop at this year’s System Thinking Institute focused on how to increase the adoption of meaningful discourse within math lessons. As we noted in our last post, recognizing that a practice is effective is not enough. If we want to see widespread and sustainable adoption, the practice must be part of a larger solution that solves a real problem for teachers.

To understand how we might do that, we teamed up with Danielle Robinson, the Math Interventionist from Brown Street Academy. Danielle lead the group through an exploration of their hopes and fears around introducing meaningful discourse into the classroom. In the afternoon, we used that to guide a discussion of the factors that drive the decisions teachers make as they plan their lessons.

After the first day’s session ended, we sifted through everything we heard to construct a profile, written from a teacher’s perspective, that summarizes how they think about meaningful discourse, and what that means for their planning. Day 2 began with a discussion of this profile. You can view the complete profile here.

Moving Towards a Solution

With our profile in hand, Danielle led us through a look at factors that drive or hinder quality math discourse in the classroom. That set the stage for us to identify four key problems teachers face as they seek to introduce discourse or Number Talks in their classrooms:

Number talks are new to me and I’m not comfortable trying them out on my students
I don’t know how I will assess how my students are doing when I use a number talk as part of a lesson
I worry about being to reach all students in my class
I don’t have the resources (tools, time, support) to do number talks well/get good at doing so quickly

Using a version of the Lean Startup Canvas we’ve adapted for looking at programs within schools, we had the group sketch out what a solution might look like. You can see the canvas we put together here.

The approach we arrived at equips classroom teachers with tools, resources, and support to drive quality discourse in a way that allows it to take root, and commit to seeing that it does. Here’s what that looks like:

Tools

Set of common terms/behaviours to be used by teachers working on meaningful discourse
List of sentence starters teachers can use to guide students
Quick Checklist for Number Talk lessons, that identifies strategies students might use in the exercise as well common misunderstandings. The checklist should provide an easy way for the teacher to make note of the strategies and/or misunderstandings of individual students. It should also indicate how the lesson relates to standards (MTAP?)
Best practice anchor charts for Number Talks
Use Reflection Journals to have students reflect on their own learning/approaches
List of ideas for math challenges teachers can use to check understanding

Resources

In-building math specialist who is available for in-classroom modeling of meaningful discourse and ongoing support/mentoring as teachers develop their skills in leading math discourse.
In-building cohort of teachers working to integrate meaningful discourse into their lessons, and support each other in doing so.
Cross school network of teachers working to expand the use meaningful discourse in their schools.
Peer-based professional development that respects the voice of teachers.
Schedule changes that would allow teachers to observe/provide feedback to each other.

Support

Overt support from building leadership for teachers who elect to integrate meaningful discourse into their math lessons.
Permission from district administration for teachers to deviate from the pacing guide based on their students’ needs.

Next Steps

We treat everything on the canvas as a hypothesis to be tested. The key assumption to validate first is that the problems we identified are issues for teachers beyond those in our session. There is no point investing time and money in a solution if we aren’t focused on the right problem.

We had a number of Danielle’s colleagues from Brown Street in our session, but as a first step, we’ll look to review the list of problems we came up with to confirm that these are important to a wider group of teachers at her school. Assuming these teachers see the same set of issues, the group identified a series of actions we could take both before the end of this school year as well as over the summer to lay the groundwork for a strong start in the fall.

Converting a CAB to a number talk
(continue to) Provide intervention to students that need extra instruction
Practice Number Talk procedures
Establish a common language for Number Talks (“turn and talk” vs “shoulder partners”)
Create prototypes for tools– sentence stems, anchor charts, checklist

We’ll review were we landed at the next meeting of our Middle School Math workgroup. We don’t want to lose momentum coming out of the workshop, so we’ll continue to work with Milwaukee Succeeds and Danielle and her colleagues from Brown Street Academy to move this forward.

Collab Lab 17: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs February 13, 2018December 5, 2018Collab Lab, Healthcare

Healthy Food Passport — Connecting Students to Food & Culture

Collab Lab 17 was a chance to further develop an idea that came out of our December session. One of the three projects proposed would engage students in real world issues around obesity and nutrition– the Healthy Food Passport. Participants in our December Lab noted that the specifics of the program would vary by age group, but the goal is to have students research a culture or cuisine and then craft a healthy version of the selected dish. Even better would be to have the students grow the ingredients. Inspired by the notion that “Food is how culture talks”, the team envisions a food fair where families are invited to sample the dishes, and stories about the dish may be shared.

Through the project, the team aims for students to gain an understanding the food production process (e.g. where food comes from), help build family connections to the school and increase exposure to different fruits and vegetables.

At this session, we used a version of the Lean Startup Canvas to guide our thinking and capture our assumptions about the goals for the project, and how it might be structured. We started the process with a discussion of the problems we are trying to address through the project, and then stepped through the remaining sections of the canvas. We closed with a discussion around the importance of starting with validation of the key assumption– that the problems we identified matter to the students engaged in the project. The end result is available here:

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space, and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Shelley Jurewicz, Executive Director of FaB (Food and Beverage) Wisconsin

Marisa Wall Riepenhoff, Vice President of Education SHARP Literacy

For an overview of the Learn Startup Canvas, visit https://medium.com/@steve_mullen/an-introduction-to-lean-canvas-5c17c469d3e0

Collab Lab 16: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Up-Cycling January 16, 2018December 5, 2018Collab Lab, makerspace

First, a bit of background…

In our conversations around makerspaces over the past year and half, we’ve heard several concerns around the cost of materials for student projects, and the effort involved to secure material donations.

Schools need material for student projects but:

They have limited budgets
It’s time consuming to track down potential donors
They can’t always find donors for what they need

There are a parallel set of concerns on the industry side. Companies are willing to donate material for use in schools but:

They don’t know always know what is useful
They don’t know who needs it
They don’t have a simple means to do so

We started exploring a model for getting excess material from industry available for use in area schools last January when we partnered with Betty Brinn to sponsor a challenge through The Commons. That work continued over the summer and fall as we experimented with pulling equipment from Gooodwill’s E-Cycling stream for tear down events to recover useful parts.

The challenge of getting excess materials to educators has been addressed in the Bay Area through a non-profit called the Resources Area For Teaching (RAFT). While they do a great job at pulling material in and packaging it up, the relationships that develop with donor companies are with RAFT. Given all the efforts we see to help schools develop relationships with area firms and career based learning experiences (CBLEs), we see that as the wrong model for Milwaukee.

We’d like to see schools use up-cycling as another point of engagement with the companies around them. The idea is to develop a network exchange model, where participants have access to materials their counterparts are able to pull in. That network could include not just K12 schools, but libraries, museums, and other organizations who can provide or use up-cycled materials for student projects.

In a network model, we need a way to create a view of inventory that is spread across nodes. It turns out that a couple of the leading thinkers on network resource planning live in western Wisconsin. They have developed an open source platform that facilitates the kind of network we envision. We’ve paired them up with a team of MSOE students who are working to tailor the application to see how it would work for us. We’re starting with the simple stuff– let me see who is in the network, and what is available.

The model we proposed looks like this:

Non-Profit consortium
Supported by membership fees
Members issued credits used to purchase material
Members set pricing (in credits) for material/services they offer
Consortium sets membership fees/credit pricing
Supported by open source NRP platform

And now, the recap…

Up-cycling discussion at Collab Lab 16 During Collab Lab 16, we walked participants through our model and had them beat up the idea in both small group discussions and a sharing out of key points to all participants.

Participants listed the following as key questions/concerns for each player in the model:

Donors

Liability for downstream use
Transportation/Logisticcs
Visibility of need — how do we know who needs what?
Impact on student learning

Aggregators/Distributors of Donated Material

Liabilty
Compensation
Sustainable model
Space limitations within schools

Recipients

Getting the right stuff
Equitable cost structure
Ensuring equal access
Growing the network/community collaboration (share recipes)

We then prompted the discussion groups to think through experiments that could help validate potential solutions to these concerns. That generated:

A commitment from Digital Bridges to provide laptops for a tear down event at one of the schools participating, and to document the lessons learned from the process.
Involve students in understanding how to acquire donated material by having them explore potential relationships with area firms.
Start the network, learn and grow:
- Start with a simple catalog
- Let participants work out transportation of materials
- Skip the distributor role for now
- 4 column spreadsheet for catalog
- Promotion to potential network nodes
- Communicate to actual users.
- Next Steps

Quick & Dirty Has/Wants Directory

We like the idea of prototyping with a shared spreadsheet that can serve as a directory of folks at schools and other organizations that have material or skills that may be useful to others, or have something they are looking for and could use help finding it. Here it is: https://tinyurl.com/y7uas8h3

Feel free to add/edit/share. We added attendees from schools as editors, but the link is set to view only for everyone else. If you’d like access, let us know.

School/Donor Interviews

We also want a better understanding of how schools work with companies who make material donations on an ongoing basis. If you have a such a relationship, we’d like to sit down with you and your contact at the company to walk through your current process, talk through what works, and what gets in the way, and what would help make the process better. If you’d like to bring along a student who is, or would like to be involved in the process, we’d more than welcome that. We have time to schedule six of these discussions between now and the first week of March. If you’d like to be included, let us know.

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space, and to everyone who joined us for the insight they brought to the discussion. We had several folks from outside of K12 join us (thank you). For those who asked how you could find them, here you go:

Rachel Arbit — Senior Director of Programs, SHARP Literacy

Ben Dembroski — Open Lab Manager, MIAD

Kelly Ellis — CEO, Einstein Project

Jeff Hanson — Executive Director, Digital Bridge

Lisa Perkins — Re-Creation Station

Owen Raisch — Associate Director, Student Run Business Program, Marquette University

Collab Lab 15: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops December 17, 2017December 5, 2018Collab Lab, Healthcare

How can we provide K12 students with opportunities to explore real world healthcare issues that have meaning for them?

We thought we’d try and find some. Last night we pulled educators from across the area together with healthcare researchers and professionals. We asked Brian King, a Collab Lab regular and former Director of Innovation for the Milwaukee Jewish Day School to facilitate. Brian’s work with students to develop and launch student run projects with a social purpose help make him the right person to guide the group through what we wanted to accomplish. In short, to generate ideas for projects that:

are meaningful to students;
allow for the participation of students from multiple schools/districts;
allow teachers and students build connections to the broader community.

The thinking here is to get beyond programs that may link a single school or small group of students to a single organization. Those connections can still happen through any of the project ideas that came out of the process. We see a better chance to scale up the number of these connections with more open-ended projects that can grow and evolve as schools find their own ways to participate based on the interests of students, drawing in new community partners at the same time.

Participants started the evening with some Post-It Note brainstorming on the top five health related issues faced by school-age children. Three volunteers grouped these by topic. We talked through each cluster, did a bit of rearranging and pulled out our blue dots for a vote on which topics were most important.

The result was three topics that would become the focus for the next stage of our work:

Stress/Mental Health
Physical Health
Obesity/Nutrition

Photo of Brian facilitating Collab Lab 15 — Brian at work facilitating

Brian split the workshop participants into three groups to sketch out what a prototype program around each issue might look like. The groups talked through our threshold considerations:

What aspects of your group’s issue would be most engaging for kids to explore?
Which aspects of this issue could kids realistically research or effect change?

And then addressed our guiding questions for their prototype:

Who are the students you would involve?
What goal(s) do you have for them?
What would they do?
Where/when would this happen?
Who are the partners you’d need to bring your project to life?

Here’s what we came up with…

Stress/Mental Health

Challenge: Screen Free for 24 hours

Recognizing that the use of social media can amplify the stress of school, this project challenges both students and staff to go screen free for 24 hours. In preparation for the challenge, students/staff would lay down the ground rules for what counts as a screen, and develop plans to address tasks they currently use a screen to complete– how will we report attendance, how will students let their parents know they are ready to be picked up?

Both students and staff would document how they expect to react to a screen free day, the choices they made during the day when they otherwise may have used a screen, and a post challenge assessment of what it felt like. The project will require the cooperation and support of student’s families. Media coverage could help spur participants to live up to the challenge and encourage other schools to participate.

Physical Health

Design & Build an Adventure Playground

This project would partner high school students with those in elementary grades to design and build playground that will encourage positive risk taking and problem solving. Perhaps guided by a community planning organization, the high school students would work with a group of younger students to determine what the younger students would find engaging.

To complete the work, the project envisions connecting students to mentors who can help them with selecting a location, design, engineering, construction, marketing, and considerations for students with special needs. The team also envisioned connecting the group to mentors who could help tie the project to curriculum goals and understand the impact of design decisions on the level and type of physical activity users of the playground were likely to engage in.

Obesity/Nutrition

Healthy Food Passport

The specifics of the program would vary by age group. but the goal is to have students research a culture or cuisine and then craft a healthy version of the selected dish. Bonus points if the students grow the ingredients. Inspired by the notion that “Food is how culture talks”, the team envisions a food fair where families are invited to sample the dishes, and stories about the dish may be shared.

Interested in helping move one of these projects forward?

If you’d like to get together with others to flesh out one of these projects in greater detail let us know.

Thanks again to Brian King for facilitating, The Commons for providing the space, and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Christopher J Simenz, PhD, NSCA CSCS*D- Clinical Professor,
Department of Physical Therapy- Programs in Exercise Science, Marquette University

Jennifer Tarcin – Menomonee Falls High School Healthcare Academy Coordinator; Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Community Memorial Hospital Healthcare Career Academy Faculty Liaison

Jonathan Wertz — Director of Clinical Risk Management, Medical College of Wisconsin

Kristina Kaljo, PhD — Assistant Professor and Co-Director for the Third-Year Obstetrics and Gynecology Medical Student Clerkship, Medical College of Wisconsin

Collab Lab 14: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs November 27, 2017December 5, 2018CBLE, Collab Lab, M7

We put together our November session with help from Susan Koen and Stacey Duchrow from Milwaukee 7’s Regional Talent Partnership. In their work to help develop the talent pipeline for industry in southeastern Wisconsin, they see a number of systemic issues that get in the way of effective career based learning experiences for students. We set up the session with the aim of mapping out factors which contribute to successful CBLE’s and identifying the key places where collaborative efforts might make a difference.

For this session, we split the attendees across 5 tables, where each participant shared their thoughts on key goals, and came together as a team to share those the felt were most important with the entire group. These included:

Help students find their passion
Students/Mentors develop relationships that allow them to know each other as a person
Students Stay in School
Students are able to build 21st Century skills
Teachers are prepared and energized

We followed this with a second round of where participants shared their thoughts on key factors which help reach those goals or stand in the way. Again, each table came to a consensus on on the key factors to share out with the larger group. These include:

Students are prepared for CBLEs
Students have a voice in their learning
Students have access to a number of diverse experiences
Students have the resources (transportation, etc,) to accept CBLE opportuntities
An organization wide culture within schools supports CBLEs (as opposed to a focus on college preparedness)
Teachers have the resources they need to deliver on their end of CBLEs
Policies (state & district) support CBLEs
Leadership embraces 21st Century skills
The level of collective will (in support of CBLEs)
CBLE is part of general conciousness
Employers recognize the benefit of CBLEs
Teachers’s ability to connect curriculum to CBLEs
Schools/industry have a common understanding of what a partnership requires
All stakeholders have an equal voice
Employers have program in place to support CBLE
Teachers are prepared to be coaches
Schools/partners have dedicated resources to make CBLEs work

As we talked through each of these factors in turn, we built up a map that gave us a first draft how these factors influence each other, and thereby, the goals we have for CBLEs. We ended the session by having the participants identify, by placing dot stickers on our map, the factors they felt were most important. The key items for the group as a whole:

An organization wide culture within schools supports CBLEs (as opposed to a focus on college preparedness)
Schools/partners have dedicated resources to make CBLEs work
Schools/industry have a common understanding of what a partnership requires

Next Steps

We’ll be working with Milwaukee 7 to pull together follow on sessions to drill into each of the top three factors and from that, identify where collaborative efforts could make a difference. Interested in participating in one of these sessions? Let us know:

Collab Lab 13: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs October 24, 2017December 5, 2018Collab Lab, Problem Finding

Problem Finding

Bring King joined us for Collab Lab 13 to walk us through an exercise to identify problems worth solving at attendees’ schools. The idea was to give participants the feel for a process they could use with their students to identify challenges students could take on as authentic learning experiences. Thanks also go out to David Howell (MSOE/Epiphany Consulting) who, with Brian, helped us pull together the process (below).

Our participants look to take the process back to their schools to see what their students might come up with. We’re scheduling a follow up meeting at the beginning of December to re-group and share feedback from the process, see what problems students are willing to take on and, and share ideas about how to help the students dive into a problem solving exercise. If you are interested in joining in, let us know:

The Process:

Step 1: Rapid Fire Problem Finding

Break into teams of 4 to 8 participants
On their own, each participant writes as many “problems at your school” as they can think of on note cards– one note card per problem
Collect all the note cards and put them into the bag o’ problems

Step 2: Mix and Redistribute the Cards

Shuffle the cards and distribute them equally between the teams
Each team categorizes and notes duplicates
Each team prepares a categorized list of problems to share with the entire group on a white board or large Post-it sheet.

Mixing the cards ensures that members are exposed to ideas from outside of their own team

Step 3: Large Group Sharing

Each team reports on the problems on their list
Teams share anything noteworthy about their process
The team may refine the categorization and list based on feedback from the group

Step 3a: Optional — Identify More Problems.

If the teams had a hard time coming up with an initial set of problems, prompt for additional ones to consider by asking

Are there categories of problems that are missing?
Are we missing the problems of any groups at the school (teachers, staff, administration, parents, students, neighbors) or subgroups of those (new students, minorities, impoverished students, etc.)?

Step 4: Drilling Down

In teams, but remaining all together in the room, consider the following questions:

Are there any problems on the wall that are actually dilemmas?
Are there any problems on the wall that aren’t actually problems?
Are there any problems on the wall that would benefit from re-articulation?
How might we “triage” these problems?
Is it realistic for you/your group to actually solve the problem?
Are there new problems to articulate based on your reading of all the problems?

Each team then drafts a revised list:

Based on the drill down questions, narrow to 3-4 issues and write them on a white board or large Post-it note.
Put a circled D or circled P next to each issue to identify it as a problem or dilemma
Record any problems/dilemmas that need further clarification before decision/asking
Each group shares their revised list