Voyage of Discovery

I had mixed emotions going into Discovery Night. These community-based events, which involve Spark students and their families, their mentors, and their school communities, are the culmination of a ten-week long apprenticeship. They have traditionally been held at each partner school, although Spark has been experimenting with larger affairs, joining programs at multiple schools. Most recently, we had students from seven of our partner schools all assemble at Dodger Stadium for the largest Discovery Night we’ve ever produced. 

Whatever the scale, the feel is a science fair/career fair mash up of sorts. Students stand astride visual displays of their projects, greeting gatherers and running through a summary of what their projects are and what they accomplished with their mentor. There are also some speakers and some awards handed out. So, the event is part celebration and part “teach back.” It’s an important part of the Spark model to recognize students for their efforts and to give them opportunities to speak publicly.

Isiah missed our apprenticeship session last week, so we didn’t have opportunity to practice at all. I intended to do a few dry runs with him so he was ready to present the project in a polished way. I assured myself that one of his innate talents is for communication, so he would likely do just fine. In the end, we took a few minutes before the event began to have a couple tries.

I was also feeling a bit anxious that this was our last official time together. I wanted to send him off in a proper way, to make sure he knew I would be here for him even after the apprenticeship if he needed. Spark’s volunteer experience is a structured, ten-week commitment, which in many ways makes it more feasible and manageable for someone to make the time to do it. But, I think like a lot of mentors I was feeling I needed to do more for this young man, that our work wasn’t done, somehow. 

On the flip side, we had a terrific time together and I was excited to experience an afternoon of recognition for him. My wife and two young boys came by to meet Isiah, this young man they had heard and read about so much. I stood by Isiah as he rather adeptly reviewed the project with eager attendees, which included a few of his classroom teachers, whom I was happy to see. He told them the story of his experience at Spark, and with me, how we conceived of the project, put together a project plan (whereby his language arts teacher interjected that it would help if he used the same approach for his term paper), did research, designed the web page, and collaborated with Rachelle to build it out. 

I was also feeling gratified that we accomplished what we set out to do. Not just in terms of the project, although that was fun. But, also that we connected in a meaningful way. We both genuinely enjoyed our time together. We got to know each other. We worked on some very tangible success skills. We experienced and learned new things – like Thai food and superhero powers. We had some good chit-chats on the way to and from the train about the weekly goings-on – his school and home life, my work and family. 

There are all kinds of mentoring and volunteer experiences – structured or unstructured, a short time or a long one, in or out of an educational context. Now having gone through it myself, I think Spark has a very solid opportunity for someone to volunteer for a convenient amount of time, with a lot of support, and make a noticeable impact. 

I highly encourage anyone who has followed along with me on this voyage to find out how you can become a mentor through Spark. We’re signing people up now for our Spring session across all four of our regions. Meanwhile, I want to thank my fellow mentors who worked with Isiah’s peers at Gregory Academy. Spark is new to Gregory this year, so it was critical that we got off to a good start. And by all accounts, we did.

I’m also grateful to those of you who made a contribution to Spark in support of Isiah and my apprenticeship. It has been a real privilege to raise some resources for our great program team in Chicago who provided terrific training and support throughout this volunteer experience. And it’s not too late to support the effort if you haven’t already done so and are looking for some opportunities for year-end giving. All monies go directly to support the learning experience.

Spark is really on to something. The period of young adolescence, of students in the middle grades, has been under-addressed for far too long. Students of any background can easily go off track at this age. Young people in more advantaged communities have an array of supports and opportunities to help them navigate this awkward inflection point. Together, we can close the opportunity gap by making sure all young people at this period of their development have access to real-world, hands-on, project-based learning experiences outside the classroom with engaging adults in exciting workplaces. This approach is tailor made for them. Making it part and parcel of education will go a long way to ensure all students are engaged, on-track, and ready for success in high school and beyond. 

Guest Blog Post: Speaking the Same Language

By Rachelle Damminger, Director of Communications for Spark

Last fall I mentored Shanyyah, a quiet and thoughtful student in the Spark Philadelphia program.  One of the most challenging aspects of the apprenticeship was figuring out, as an adult, how to connect with a "tween."  Everything from the words I used to the activities I suggested seemed to require additional thought, at least in the beginning.  This self-inflicted stressor quickly dissipated as both Shanayyah and I relaxed and discovered some shared interests, including blogs, video production and photography. 

A year later, I was pleased to help Spark CEO Jason Cascarino and his Chicago-based mentee Isiah create a webpage as part of their Spark project (as mentioned in a previous post). In my first Google video conversation with Isiah, the same heightened awareness around language and connection quickly returned. With each topic we covered, I tried to carefully select my words and adapt my conversation speed so as not to breeze over terms like “content management system,” “CMS” and “thumbnails.”  By our second call, Isiah was in the swing of things with his own login credentials and images to resize and upload! 

Learning about a website content management system is probably not as exciting as a soccer game or a fashion show or a music video to a seventh or eighth grader, but it is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how something we use daily – websites - work.  For me, this is part of the magic of both mentoring and communication.  The shared discovery process can instill a growing curiosity that may extend to mobile apps, video production, web design or the creative process.

I’ll never forget my first college advertising course when I learned about everything that goes into producing a television commercial.  Ever since that time I have been deconstructing public service announcements, print ads and more; thinking about the origins of a product’s brand; considering how a campaign concept was conceived; or trying to figure out which demographic prompted the need for a new app.  

I may be a little biased due to my profession, but in the end, so much of what we do and how we do it boils down to communication - including mentoring.

A recent study of mentoring relationships found that poor communication can lead to a failed mentorship while active listening, mutual respect and shared values are among the characteristics of successful mentoring relationships.

Luckily for mentors like me who may over think their initial approach with students, Spark pairs mentees and mentors based on common interests and preferences to create a solid foundation for successful mentoring relationships from the beginning.

This was evident for me as I worked with Shanyyah a year ago to create a video and blog, and it’s evident now as I work with Jason and Isiah.  I can’t wait to see their final project and hear how Isiah describes the process of creating a webpage!

Adolescent Foodie

Isiah is a total foodie. At our first session, while talking about his family, he mentioned the fact that he cooked breakfast for his younger siblings – scrambled eggs, pancakes and hotdogs. I don’t know what impressed me more – that he was responsible enough to be in charge of his siblings' morning meal or that he knew, at thirteen, how to cook scrambled eggs, pancakes and hotdogs.

The subject came up again when the Thai food was delivered. As promised, the selections we made last week came, and we emptied the bag to put out the spread on the table in my office. And it was awesome. First, it was great fun to introduce Isiah to each dish one by one, talking a little bit about it and having him take some first tastes. The edamame – “Steamed soy beans with salt. You pop the beans out and suck on the pod.” The satay – “Skewered grilled chicken with a peanut-based dipping sauce.” The fried tofu – “Soybeans again, if you can believe it. Not much taste by itself, but it absorbs the flavor of whatever dish it’s in or sauce you dip it in.” The spicy noodle dish – “Wide noodles made from rice flour. Look out for the chiles and jalapeños.” The duck curry – “The duck breast is roasted with the skin and then tossed in a coconut curry sauce with some vegetables.”

I think this was my favorite apprenticeship session with Isiah for two reasons. First, Isiah was genuinely blown away by the experience of the Thai food. He must have said “This is so good!” fifty times, practically after each bite, most of which were completely new foods or flavors to him. Second, I was genuinely blown away by Isiah’s articulation of the experience. At one point he lifted a small plastic cup of dipping sauce for the fried tofu to his nose and gave it a couple sniffs. “This has got peanuts in it, and some chiles, and something sweet.” As he took in the duck curry: “The duck is so juicy and mixes well with the sweet pineapple and spiciness of the sauce.” This went on dish after dish. The kid has a refined palette. More impressively, he has a knack for talking about what he’s tasting and experiencing that most food personalities on television would envy. Being the cook in my family and a lover of lots of different kinds of food, I felt especially fond of this experience. I told Isiah he should think about doing a culinary apprenticeship next semester. He has a great affinity, a natural born talent perhaps, for food.

While the Thai dinner became the centerpiece of this particular session, we did accomplish some real work. We need to move our project along, after all.

Isiah and I actually spent the first part of our session video chatting with Rachelle Damminger, Spark’s Director of Communications. Rachelle is based in our Philadelphia office and, among many other responsibilities, handles all of Spark’s website updates. Since Isiah is building a special page on the Spark website dedicated to students, and because he’s big into networking and collaboration, I wanted him to connect with Rachelle to learn the mechanics behind getting the content he’s developing onto the actual website.

You can always tell when people are really engaged – whether an adult or a young person. There is that telltale sign of leaning in, eyes intently focused on the subject. Isiah’s attention was fixed on the screen as Rachelle gave him first an overview of her job and the important role she plays at Spark and then a peak at the “back end” of the Spark website. It was the first time Isiah was exposed to the inner workings of a website, namely the content management system that makes a site work. Rachelle was able to share her screen and walk him through an example of an update, which turned out to be an awkwardly large headshot of me placed smack dab in the middle of a page about Spark alumni. She promptly took it down, after we had a chuckle.

In addition to engaging with Rachelle, which Isiah liked a lot, and learning about the technology behind website maintenance, he got a taste for how professionals at an organization like Spark interact. Like many companies and nonprofits, Spark operates in multiple locations, with teams of people in each that must interact with one another from a distance virtually. It can be quite challenging at times. But, it’s an important practice to master in the professional world. I’m glad Isiah got a little taste of it.

Later on, Sahrish Saleem from the Spark Chicago program team popped in to spend some time with us as we worked on finishing up some of the content for the web page. Sahrish is new to Spark this year and serves as a Volunteer Coordinator, responsible for supporting mentors from five of our ten partner schools in Chicago this year and making sure the students are getting out of the program what we intend. Sahrish and her peers at Spark across our sites are in many respects the lifeblood of our program. They are the ones who make the magic happen among the students, schools, mentors and company partners. And, as in this instance, they are an important check on program quality.

I felt a little bad that Sahrish came in when she did. Not because she was disruptive in any way, just that she missed the best parts of the session! Namely the video chat with Rachelle and the Thai food. Nevertheless, as a mentor, I valued her presence and had a good check-in with her the next day to get some feedback. I have been reassured by the personal support I have been getting from our team. As I mentioned earlier, there is a weight of responsibility working with a young person, wanting to do right by them and make an impact. The attentive and personalized supports make the whole experience more manageable.

I don’t know how we’re going to top this one. But, we’re past the halfway mark now and zeroing in on our culminating project and Discovery Night. I wouldn’t be surprised if food sneaks its way into the final presentation somehow.

Go with the Flow

As a Spark mentor, you’re never quite sure what state of mind your student is going to be in when he or she shows up for the apprenticeship session. Just as we have many distractions as working professionals, young people have similarly dynamic lives. You might catch them on a day when their adrenaline is really flowing and they are super focused. Or you might encounter a student who would really rather be someplace else at the time, for whatever reason. It’s totally understandable and normal.

Isiah has always been pretty focused and eager when he shows up at Spark. And this week was really no different. We had our normal chitchat as we walked from the L stop to the office, which in large measure serves as our “opening ritual.” The practice of an opening ritual is an important one. Spark mentors are encouraged and trained to make room for this exercise at the beginning of each apprenticeship session as an aid to the student and the mentor to settle in and get focused. Isiah and I spend the time talking about his week, which invariably touches upon tales of him with his friends or siblings.

My contribution to the exchange is to talk about my kids and what they’re up to. It’s fun when Isiah picks up on the interests and activities of my boys and articulates how he relates to them. This week I was explaining how my youngest boy, aged three-and-a-half, was in a superhero phase – big time. Isiah took that and riffed for the duration of our walk on various superhero movies and television shows he’s watched and the lesser-known powers of many of them. Did you know that the Green Latern has more than just one green ring? Apparently, there are many colored rings with corresponding powers. I now have a better appreciation for one who often is seen as a bit of a second-tier crusader.

This week was the start of building out some content for our web page. We began by sifting through a bunch of pictures in our photo library of Spark apprenticeships and events. The first section of the webpage is to showcase what students can explore, so we wanted to find some good shots of students and mentors working together. We went back and looked at some of the survey responses to recall what jobs or fields students were interested in and then tried to find pictures to match.

This wound up being a somewhat tedious and slow process. I could tell Isiah was checking out. We shifted to writing some of the content, again based on the survey. I said I would take his dictation. We went along in fits and starts. This too turned out to be a bit laboring. I sensed Isiah was tired, or just not that into it, or both.

Curiously, out of nowhere, he began talking about pilgrims. He was learning about them in his social studies class earlier that day and started teaching back some of the history. He recounted much of the story: how in England at the time you had to subscribe to one (state-sponsored) religion and that the pilgrims were of a different sect and persecuted and so set sail for America to seek refuge and a new life to practice their faith freely.

His telling of the tale was engaging. He went on for several minutes and covered a lot of ground – the trip across the Atlantic, the encounter with Native Americans, the first Thanksgiving and what food and drink were on offer at the time. Some of my Spark colleagues were with me in the office as Isiah carried on and we were all at once entertained and engrossed.

I was a history major in college, and I confess Isiah was testing the limits of my knowledge and memory. I did at one point score some good points. Isiah was talking about the class groupings among the travelers by sea, whereby the wealthier folk would have posh accommodations above deck and those less fortunate were quartered below. He was hunting for a word to describe the poorer lot, and said it started with a “c” but that was all he could remember. I blurted out: “commoner.” Isiah was taken aback. “Yeah!” he said with surprise. “How did you know that?” I thought to myself: Dr. Hueston would be proud.

This tangent began about halfway into the day’s session, and it lasted the duration. Without really acknowledging it, we paused on our project and just had a nice and very engaging conversation about history. We segued at one point into travel and again touched upon Isiah’s affinity for Thailand. Since our first session, Isiah has been talking about Thailand, wanting to go there and wanting to try the food. I had been meaning to grab some Thai food from a local place and have it ready for him at the office when he came by. So, we took the last few minutes of the session to run through a menu online and pick out some dishes he wanted to try. He was very keen on the fried tofu, having never had tofu and really wanting to try it. We also picked out a spicy noodle dish, some satay, and a curry. We’ll have our own little ethnic Thanksgiving feast next week.

It’s hard to pivot like this. In my work I tend to get very focused on a project or a task and be nose down and bang it out, avoiding distraction as best I can. So, being adaptive, picking up on Isiah’s cues, gauging where his head is, and just going with the flow are good lessons when working with a thirteen-year-old. Indeed, I guess we all could use a breather from the seeming intensity of our work and deliverables. We could all stand to pause every now and again to share our favorite studies of history, places we’re most curious to visit, or food we’ve never tried but want to. It’s times like this when roles seem reversed. I am the learner and Isiah is the one modeling, subtly or not, a new or better way to operate.

Seeing Patterns in Data

Part of Isiah’s project I was most looking forward to was examining the results from his survey of his peers. Last week, he worked on developing the survey and he was able to get ten forms back, which is a perfectly fine sample to inform the next stage of the project. The idea is to use the data from the surveys to determine what young people would like to know about Spark so we could design a page of Spark’s website geared toward students.

I was trained in analytics early in my career while working for the federal government in Washington. I worked in national security at the time. When I made the jump to education, I worked for a man who was also a transplant from that world. He had been basically a nuclear war games strategist, during the Cold War when such experts were needed and gainfully employed. When the Cold War ended, of course, so did his professional purpose. He often referred to himself as a “peace dividend,” which was a common refrain at the time as the defense and national security industry was being downsized after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Over time, my boss became my mentor, which he remains today, some 16 years later. One of the things I remember him telling me was the idea of applying skills developed in one industry to another. In both of our cases, it was using the rigorous analytics of the field in which he and I started in and applying it to education. It’s something I’ve done throughout my career.

I told Isiah that analysis is basically looking for patterns in data, figuring out what they mean and, perhaps most importantly, what to do about them. We spent a bit of time entering the data into a spreadsheet and then started looking. Interestingly, five of the surveys were completed by students who are in Spark and five were filled out by non-participants, which is a good (albeit unintentional) sample!

We fixated a bit on one question that had students identify what fields they’d be interested in exploring. I asked Isiah to look at which fields seemed like the most popular. Turns out computers, the medical profession, and science registered the most. We talked about what was common among these fields, and Isiah was familiar with the term STEM – science, technology, engineering and math. I mentioned that more than a third of Spark apprenticeships take place in STEM-related companies. So we agreed that since these opportunities were of such great interest we ought to have a special section of the web page on STEM.

We went through each of the survey questions and put a list together of our “findings.” We then grouped them together – I’m kind of good at “bucketizing” and have always wanted to pass that skill along – and then created the sections of our web page based on that: “What can students explore?” “What can students create?” Isiah was insistent on adding a “Sign up today!” button, which I thought showed good marketing sense.

As we finished up for the session, I felt really good that we did this part of the project. Using analytics to inform practice is a big part of what we do at Spark, and a big part of effective education. So, giving Isiah a flavor for that process offers insight into my work, which is one of the key features of the apprenticeship experience.  It’s also something I just really enjoy doing, and like any mentor, its fun to teach a young person something you just really enjoy doing.

Ironically, perhaps the most analysis I’ve been immersed in recently is about young people just like Isiah. Specifically, I’ve been looking at data from school districts in which Spark operates, where upwards of 40 percent of students do not complete high school on time. That number is sobering in and of itself. What’s more, if you examine the students who do not make it through high school, two-thirds of them either drop out in ninth grade or they are made to repeat ninth grade and eventually drop out. The ninth grade is the great choke point on the path to graduation.

This is the problem Spark is trying to solve. We’re partnering with schools to identify young people in seventh and eighth grade who are showing early warning signs that may lead to eventual drop out. We enroll them in Spark and make sure they are engaged, on-track and ready for success in high school and beyond.

The fact is students of all backgrounds tend to slide in the middle grades. Developmentally, young people start to disengage in school at this age. Gallup conducts a poll of more than 500,000 students each year to measure their level of hope, wellbeing and engagement. While hope and wellbeing remain pretty constant from fifth grade to twelfth grade, engagement drops markedly. Two-thirds of that drop occurs in the middle grades.

This happens to all young people, from every background, in every community. Students in more advantaged communities have traditionally had access to resources and opportunities that help them overcome this commonplace disengagement from school. Other students have less opportunity. Spark is trying to change that equation.

I have a tough time believing that Isiah fits the profile of a disconnected youth. There is no one I have met who seems more connected, more engaged. But, I also know that he’s at an inflection point in his life. He’s at an age where he is beginning to think about his future in more specific ways. Visualizing what he could be, and having people around him – family, peers, teachers, mentors – to encourage and guide, are big parts of the “spark” that he and all kids need to be engaged, on-track and ready.

Tele-mentoring

Like many mentors with Spark, I’m quite busy. I typically have full slates of meetings, phone calls, or “to-do’s” I need to accomplish during precious little “desk time.” I also travel a fair bit, visiting the regions where we have programming or making fundraising rounds in New York or Washington or elsewhere.

So, this week, I missed Isiah at the office. And I was really bummed about it. I was in San Francisco for a set of meetings with stakeholders, our great annual fundraiser, and a national board meeting. It’s common for mentors to miss a session or two. The Spark program staff work with mentors to forecast days missed way ahead of time, which is important so that students know in advance that they won’t be seeing their mentor that day and therefore won’t be disappointed – at least not as much. 

I told Isiah at Match Night that I would be away this week. Since all mentors have to be cleared by a background check, ordinarily we can’t just pass the student off to a colleague. We’d have to skip the apprenticeship session and make it up later (we build in make-up days into the schedule). A majority of our partner companies are now hosting five or more students, in which case fellow mentors in the same office can fill in, which makes it easier. Fortunately for Isiah, he is doing his apprenticeship at Spark, which means he can still come to the office and work with one of my colleagues, because we’ve all been cleared to work with young people.

Isiah came to the office to work with my colleague Amanda, who is as terrific with students as she is with me. I’m glad, because it was an important week. After mapping out our project last session, this week we needed to accomplish the first task, which is creating the survey for Isiah’s peers to determine what they’d like to see on a section of the Spark website for students.

After finishing up a meeting in downtown San Francisco, I walked down to the Embarcadero and got on FaceTime with Isiah for a little bit. I was able to show him some of the beautiful landscape of the city and tell him a bit about why I was there and what I was doing. We were also able to chat a bit about the survey.

He and Amanda had already made good progress on it. They had outlined some of the questions. We want to gather some basic information, of course. So, there were questions on who the respondent is, their gender, their age, what grade they were in, and the like. We then talked about how best to get at some of their interests. We decided to list out a number of ideas and ask people to tick the ones they’d like to see. Other questions were more open-ended.

Isiah’s homework is to get his peers to take the survey. Next week, we’ll work on analyzing the data and using it to start designing the elements of the web page. I was trained early on in my career as an analyst and really enjoy working with data, making sense of it and using it to solve problems. So, I’m especially eager to sit with Isiah next week and go through that process, hopefully sharing some insights into how to do analysis. I like that we’re doing the survey in this project, so we can blend some quantitative work with the more creative aspects of designing the page and promoting it. It feels like a more well rounded experience that way. We’re doing a little math as well as English.

Source: Spark student report cards &
Univ. of Chicago Consortium on School Research

This reminds me how impressed I’ve been by the strides our students make in their core course grades in school during their Spark experience. We are not an academic intervention, yet we are seeing some effect on academic performance. Spark students in Chicago enter our program markedly below the district average in GPA. When they leave the program, they have made significant gains. They start approaching the district average in their GPAs.

My hunch is that the apprenticeship approach gets students more interested in learning. Their level of engagement goes up, and therefore they do better in school. But I also think that many of our mentors do academic-focused things as part of the apprenticeship. Our students do analysis and work on spreadsheets. They are writing, doing research, making presentations. These are all things that students need to do to be successful in their coursework.

Spark is so much more than helping students do better in school. But, doing better in school is one big part of our impact. When students improve their grades, they boost their confidence, and their desire to learn more. It can be the beginning of a virtuous cycle academically. One that we hope will persist with our students for a long time.