Week 12 (9/30-10/4):The Importance of Young People

This week marked my first involvement with a particular initiative within Redwood City 2020: the Ready Schools Initiative. This group of individuals is comprised of teachers,  educators, and others, dedicated to making sure that children as young as preschoolers are ready for the transitions to kindergarten and later to elementary school. I attended the monthly meeting and immediately jumped in to one of the work groups. I was happy to be able to help so quickly: the group I joined wanted to find research supporting the idea that small class sizes make for better outcomes down the line. My ears, almost reflexively at this point, perked up at the mention of “research,” so I volunteered to try to find such a study. 

When I asked for Manuelito’s guidance later in the week, he directed me toward the Tennessee STAR experiment, which seemed perfect, as it seemed to support small class sizes. However, he brought up the point that this experiment was done in a specific population, at a particular time. Additionally, the effects seem to wear off after about 3rd grade. This got me thinking about how any experiment can truly be replicated, or how people can use research as evidence for informing policy, which I had never really considered before. I’m hoping that I can find a similar study that focused on a population more similar to Redwood City’s, but, if not, I hope to convey both the information as well as any qualms I have about the study to the work group next month. I’m learning that one can use research to support just about any stance, so it’s important to think critically about any piece of research and the motivations behind it. 

On Thursday, Manuelito and I met with Jana over the phone to prepare for our meeting with the Shinnyo-en Foundation that would take place the next Tuesday. We prepared an agenda for the meeting and documented all the talking points that we wanted to highlight. Overall, a very efficient meeting! Additionally, at the staff meeting, we viewed “Uncommon American,” a movie about John Gardner’s life and influence. Before the video, I had no idea what a big deal he was, so I was incredibly pleased to learn about him, and proud to work at the institution that bears his name. 

The theme for this week was “The Importance of Young People,” mostly because of my work this week with the Ready Schools Initiative. The work that they do definitely highlights the importance of serving young people, as we want them to have the best outcomes as possible. Young people have this habit of eventually becoming adults (I’m still working on this myself), so I think it’s incredibly important that we give them everything that we can in order to help them succeed. I’m very happy that I have this opportunity, and hope to make the best of it.

Week 11 (9/23-9/27): Stepping Stones

Like weeks past, I spent this week preparing for future weeks. This week, though, I got to inch ever closer to making this link between data and action. I spent Monday putting the final edits on my work plan, using the goals set out in the original grant agreement from the Shinnyo-en Foundation as well as the action items that Jana and I had come up with at Redwood City 2020. With this work plan, we nailed down concrete goals and projects and timeframes within which to complete these goals and projects. These goals included heading up a project about preschools in the area, putting together a series of youth development resources, and, of course, keeping up with this blog. I'm sure new projects will continue to pop up, so this work plan is intentionally pretty flexible, but it's still nice to have a general guideline off of which to work. And I’m incredibly excited to have more on my plate. I’ve always felt that I perform better with more responsibilities, so I hope to be efficient and effective as my role continues to grow. 

Besides more meetings (YDA and staff meetings at the Gardner Center), I didn’t do much out of the ordinary this week. I started becoming familiar with Prezi, a more dynamic way of giving presentations, for my presentation at the Gardner Center on October 10. Thus far, I’m finding that you have to think very differently from planning out a presentation for PowerPoint. Things are zooming in and out, and there’s so much more possibility for artistic freedom, which I like a lot; I feel like a director making a movie about circles and arrows. Check out my practice Prezi here; it’s not about anything, I was just playing around with the frames and colors. But it was a lot of fun (Don’t click through too fast, you might get motion sick)!

“Stepping Stones” refers to these baby steps that I’m making toward translating this data I’ve been compiling into action. I started out doing lots of reading, and now I’m getting more and more opportunities to use what I’ve read to make a tangible difference. Please continue to follow me on this journey!