On September 28, I became one of the first three official “Solvers” in the Learn Pillar of MIT’s Solve Initiative. What does that mean? Well, basically it means the judges think this is a good idea and worthy of further study, which is what I am going to do for the next several months. I’ll describe my plans, and make updates in another blog post. Here, I am opening it up to hear from as many people as I can. I invite you to comment here. Let me know what you think of my idea to connect mentor teachers with students around the world, to help children who have been displaced from their homes and schools to continue their education independently, so they can have an easier transition to their new life settings when they reach a more permanent place.
November 14, 2016 at 5:41 pm
Hi Gail,
This sounds like a fantastic idea and has the advantage of leveraging people’s talents from all around the globe to solve what is a global problem. I’m thinking about corporate projects that I have worked on and trying to determine what elements I think would be useful for you at this stage. Here are some things to think about. You may not find them entirely applicable but at least they may spark an idea for how to organize the project:
* How about a written charter, with defined goals and an end state?
* You have clearly articulated “early” “mid” and “long range” actions. You could consider showing these in what I would call a multigenerational plan. Think of it as steps in a staircase, with each step building on the previous phases.
* I like the way you are piloting the solution. If you have a really good assessment at the end of your pilot, you can make necessary adjustments before diving into the next, expanded phase. Assess the pilot versus the goals to see where you are succeeding and where you need more work.
* How about a working version of a “Roles and Responsibilities” chart for volunteers and students? For example, is the “Teacher” role more of an advisor, a tutor, or an instructor? Or could it vary depending on the people involved? Certainly some responsibilities would be required; would others be optional? I think most volunteers will want to see something like this before they commit. Likewise, it’s good for setting student expectations.
That’s it for now but I signed up for updates and look forward to hearing more from you.
November 20, 2016 at 8:15 pm
Lisa, thank you for taking the time to so articulately outline these steps for me! I will be working on these & will include them in a future post. I agree that they are all necessary steps and will be very helpful as I move in to platform design.
January 3, 2017 at 9:52 pm
Great ideas. Thought of a couple side-bar items for your consideration:
– Privacy and access to records may have different rules in different countries – or at least EU vs non EU countries, so you may want to keep that in mind as you research platform requirements. Also implicit to this is security of the records so they couldn’t be used to signal out refugee family locations.
– This may be secondary to your pilot program, but given constraints on teachers time outside their primary employment, could the interaction and platform perhaps offer any professional credits like continuing education? Typically they would already know the content being taught, but this method may be new, hence the education curve. May be unlikely to qualify – but wanted to put the idea out there in case it helps with volunteer recruitment or even corporate interest.
– Wondering if it may be worthwhile to network with a local Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization? I think the pattern of volunteering periodically with a focused mentor/mentee is a common thread & they have been around awhile. They may have some insight on how to handle mentor changes as well as volunteer retention.
-Sounds like you already know from experience keeping the interest of the student between check-ins is critical, best wishes during your interviews to make some key connections and gain insights for that.
January 11, 2017 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Pam! I have thought about that volunteer/time issue — I’ve already seen a huge difference in the number of teachers who tell me they are interested in participating in a pilot, and the number that actually follow through and complete the survey I send them afterward. I was going on a model of World Vision, which is a popular program pairing sponsors with children; but in some ways it’s easier to send money than to give time. To help, I’m trying to put together the beginnings of an easy-to-use resource database as part of the platform, so teachers can quickly find online resources for their student without having to spend a lot of time checking things out on the internet themselves.
January 3, 2017 at 10:34 pm
Hi again Gail
I’m still getting the hang of your site. I was reading with interest the points you made about children learning to trust as a necessary precursor to the learning process. I was thinking that children always seem to trust other children before they trust adults. Is there a way to pair children with a buddy ( virtually) to help be part of their support system throughout the learning process?
I have finally realized I wasn’t actually following you ( thought I was!) but have hopefully fixed things
January 11, 2017 at 7:24 pm
I like the thought of buddies – part of my vision in how this would all actually play out, especially for younger children, is that the volunteer teacher would “introduce” their their student to their home classroom, maybe even with a skype or other videoconference. When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher connected the class with a class in England, and the kids loved emailing each other, so there are definitely models like that out there!