I have always been passionate about education. I remember the times when I would be the first in my high school class to yell at my school’s administration about issues that ranged from food insecurity to class paralyzation. When I heard from Tufts University that I would have the opportunity to work on a brand new program to help teachers and children continue their studies and work through the COVD-19 pandemic, I had no second thoughts. Given the new aspect of the Re_action For Education program, I had no idea of what to expect from it. I wondered if it was just one more of those programs that worked well in theory, but that, in practice, did not provide any hands-on experiences to participants and did not offer support for keeping good project follow-throughs. I was wrong.
Then, the first week came in. I had high expectations, but I had many questions in mind as well. What is make_sense and what is its relationship with the Laidlaw Foundation? How am I going to connect this experience with my research project from the Laidlaw Scholars program? Who will I have to report to? What are my deliverables? I was very curious about my role in the program. I was lucky to have a lot of support from the Laidlaw Scholars administration at Tufts University. We would have many calls, where all participants representing the school would come together and share their learning journeys. I had all of my overwhelming questions answered and was ready to move on. However, before I started my job at the Re_action For Education program, I took a lot of time to build a plan for how I would spend a six-week window on my calendar.
I set three main goals in my action plan: to support at least one nonprofit organization struggling during the pandemic, to offer technical support to teachers and children, and to reach out to my hometown in Brazil and prioritize projects and organizations from my home country. In the first week of the program, I had the mission to contact teachers, parents, children, and projects to assess their needs and brainstorm solutions for them. Due to the time constraints, I only reached out to organizations I had a history with. I care about education and making sure youths have access to it, so I wanted to join nonprofits and teacher-led initiatives that were supporting students with remote learning. I figured the tight deadlines would be hard to meet if I did not have a contact inside of the organizations I was trying to help. Then, I reached out to three initiatives: The Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA), the Diocesano Tutoring Program (CEC), and the Joaquim Maurício de Azevedo Tutoring Initiative (EEJMA).
When doing my research on those nonprofits, I noticed that all of them were adapting to our new normal where everything is done remotely. I spoke to their leaders and concluded that I needed to support them based on their individual needs. But before I go into the details around their needs, I will introduce them to you. First, let me tell you about the Latin American Leadership Academy. This is a nonprofit organization that identifies young leaders from across Latin America with demonstrated leadership potential, a passion for the continent, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a track record of community service. Their main products are a seven-day and a three-month-long bootcamp, which are leadership retreats. The other two initiatives, CEC Tutoring, and EEJMA Tutoring are teacher-led projects in my hometown to help children keep learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The focus of these two tutoring projects is in preparing students to take the Brazilian National College Admissions Exam (ENEM) through which most colleges and universities in Brazil evaluate students’ academic potential.
As soon as I learned about each organization, I started to reflect on their needs and potential solutions. For the Latin American Leadership Academy, their need was very specific: they had an issue with talent attraction. They wanted to recruit the best participants for their first-ever online bootcamps, but the youths who usually applied for their programs did not feel positive about virtual leadership experiences. LALA has a reputation for having the best leadership bootcamps in Latin America, but they were all in-person events. The new reality has imposed a lot of limitations on LALA’s activities and, therefore, students were having a hard time trusting that their experience would be as amazing as the in-person retreats. On the other hand, the two tutoring programs had an engagement problem: keep students attending the meetings. The participants from these initiatives are low-income young people who have always had to choose between working and studying or have had a hard time conciliating both things. They are children who struggle to learn due to tiredness from exhausting working hours and lack of basic resources such as internet connection and books.
After that, I started brainstorming ways I could help those nonprofits fix their most pressing issues. My solution for the Latin America Leadership Academy was to build a campaign in my network based on the referral system that many companies are adepts of. I spread the word of their bootcamps on key Facebook groups where thousands of Brazilian students look for leadership development and international experiences -- LALA could offer those people both things. I also reached out to Brazilian schools where I had connections and asked them to advertise LALA’s programs to their brightest students. I was confident that by taking similar actions, I would be able to help out the other two organizations I reached out to but turns out that when it comes to tutoring there are other issues that go beyond recruiting, money, and resources. For example, poverty and social inequality, which are issues bigger than me.
However, I thought that if the tutoring programs’ staff found a way to keep participants motivated, they would stop withdrawing from the tutoring sessions. Then, my first action was to get them premium Zoom accounts so they could have interactive virtual experiences. Prior to that, they were using a free version of Google Meets that was highly limited. I figured they would find interesting features on Zoom that would help teachers keep students engaged. Nonetheless, I noticed I would not be able to keep paying the monthly subscription, which costs around BRL$100, 10% of the monthly minimum wage in Brazil. Thus, I connected my research project for the Laidlaw Foundation with my role as a Re_action For Education leader: I decided to create an ebook with info about how to design educational VR simulators for free and really fast.
Virtual Reality is proven to have positive impacts on children’s cognitive development. The use of VR technologies can help to solve some social problems found in classrooms. Shy students can be encouraged to get out of isolation with the help of more dynamic stimuli, as well as those who face difficulties with subjects like math, for example, can feel more confident when discovering new skills with technology. Also, VR games can be used to replicate field visits. Instead of taking hundreds of students to distant companies, schools can use games to simulate these companies' environment and processes. These are just a few examples of how virtual reality can be applied to education, but the advancement in technology and the growing number of applications and VR hardware - like Oculus Rift, HoloLens, Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, among others - indicates that this may just be the beginning of a very important phase for pedagogy. Some say that virtual reality has the potential to revolutionize education in the same way that reading and writing did thousands of years ago.
When week two came in, I was eager to start building my guide for developing free and fast educational games. First, I interviewed leaders from the tutoring programs described earlier to understand their experience with VR technology. The idea was that students did not need to use VR sets because, as we know, these students were not able to afford this sort of technology. The idea was that teachers would have one more free pedagogical method to demonstrate how in-class learnings could be applied in the real world. For that, I would need to create an effective guide on how to create and implement VR simulators that simulate technical visits to museums, industries, and environmental reserves with the goal of improving the remote learning experience of students in tutoring programs.
Thus, once I had shared my e-book with the two tutoring initiatives and had made the recruiting campaign for LALA, I figured it was time to collect feedback and have an understanding of my impact. I followed examples from classes I had at Tufts. Last semester, I took a class called Analysis Methods for Human Factors Engineering and had the opportunity to study measuring strategies such as establishing KPIs, OQRs, as well as other analysis tactics, including House of Quality and Decision Matrix methods. I chose to quantify my impact based on KPIs - Key Performance Indicators. Tracking key performance indicators or measures are critical during a project. Without them, it is difficult to see how you're doing in progress toward your goals. In my case, my main KPI was the satisfaction of the three organizations I helped during weeks one and two. I was looking for a way to quantify satisfaction, so I built a questionnaire and asked the leaders of the three initiatives to rate, on a scale from 0-10, how likely they were to refer my assistance to other nonprofits struggling during the pandemic. The result was positive and I got an average of 9 points, meaning they were all happy about the work I had done.
When week three started, I knew it was going to be overwhelming. As I tried to manage both collecting feedback from week two and planning week four, I thought I would need help. That is when I partnered with Ben Xu, a student at The University of Toronto, Canada to be my mobilizing buddy in week four. I chose Ben because we had had a call at the end of week one to get to know each other. I remember I reached out to him because I enjoyed how caring and attentive he was during our cohort calls. When in high school, Ben used to take part in tutoring programs that helped students from his high school apply for Canadian universities. I also wanted to meet someone outside of the United States that was smart and cared about tutoring initiatives, so Ben looked like the perfect match.
Indeed, week three got Ben and I spent a lot of time reflecting on how week four was going to work. We met and set rules, expectations, and performance indicators. My partner and I discussed facilitating strategies, a detailed schedule of calls, and our goals for our cohort. However, at the end of week three, someone sent a very confusing message in the WhatsApp chat that made me think we could choose to do something else in week four. The message said, “Hey everyone ! Hope you're doing good :) Just jumping in because we have an issue and we want to see with you how you want to move forward with this. There are not enough participants in the US/Canada for all of you to be mobilizing next week. So we have alternative options: --> you mobilize by a group of 3 people, but with small groups (4 participants) so it might be a lot --> you keep on working on your specialist area, and this means you'll have to show your university admins and the foundation exactly how you used your time, and show concrete analysis and results on the resources you're building --> you start on working on something different like for example building bridges with tech companies so that they provide computers for disadvantaged kids (which seems a good alternative in the US context). I believe the message got sent because there were not enough people to be mentored by then. On Friday of that third week, the U.S. batch had its last call before going into week four, but I had to miss it due to family issues. Participants who attended the call knew we had achieved a good headcount of mentees and that we would have to facilitate. But, I had already been led to believe I could opt out of mobilizing, so I was unsure if I wanted to keep doing that or if I wanted to keep helping the organizations I had contacted during weeks one and two. I chose the second option.
In the beginning of week four, I was participative in the WhatsApp chat of my cohort and even helped Ben plan the meetings. Unfortunately, I ended up making new plans after I read that message. For example, I decided that I would go back into building an ebook that would teach schools how to design Virtual Reality games for academic purposes. I was sure I would have a larger impact on the nonprofit organizations that help, together, around eight thousand people than on a cohort of six people. Thus, I had to step away in the last two days of the week because of time conflicts. I had a conversation with my partner and he agreed to take over the responsibility of facilitating our cohort on his own for the rest of that week.
In week five, it was time to measure our impact as mobilizers. As a member of our WhatsApp group, even after I stepped away, I was able to see the key communications between Ben and the group. Ben and I agreed at the beginning of the fourth week that we would base our evaluation of success based on the participants’ engagement in the calls, their attendance, and their level of comfort to ask questions. The participants were very engaged and, out of the six members of our cohort, only one student had to miss a meeting once or twice. I believe the mobilizing week was very successful as participants were satisfied with the mobilizing team and with their own performance. They all had inspiring stories to tell us about projects they had built, websites they had put together to help children in their home countries, and ebooks, flyers that were used to inform parents and teachers how to handle remote learning.
With all of the story, I have told you through this report, I must also share my main takeaways. I was able to improve many skills while a part of the Re_action For Education program. I sharpened my servant leadership skills by putting the needs of the nonprofits I helped in weeks one and two first. I did research and tried to understand their needs rather than assuming I knew what they were just because I had a history with them. I improved my communication skills. I learned how to be a better storyteller and sell out my story to potential partners and student recruits from the program. I shared the reasons why I picked the organizations I did and my colleagues at the program would sympathize and offer their time and assistance. I built a facilitating plan to have ice-breakers and interactive strategies during the calls with my own cohort in week four. Additionally, I was able to use my research for the Laidlaw Foundation as part of my action plan to help tutoring programs teach students using VR technology. But even more exciting than that, I was able to get to know several other students who, like me, are passionate about making sure children get the quality education they deserve. I am proud of my journey as a part of the first Re_action For Education batch in the United States and I feel like I did my best to help those who needed it the most during this global coronavirus pandemic.
If I were to have a second edition of the Re_action For Education program, I would change a few things in the way it is organized. First, I would not have daily calls in the first week. The daily calls pressured participants to follow very restrictive deadlines, which made people, I included, nervous and overwhelmed. Also, I would use a more clear language when communicating expectations and tasks. There were a few unrealistic expectations, including mentoring children in the third day of the program and expecting quick responses from busy people ahead of nonprofits organizations. Thirdly, I believe the interaction between batches in the United States and the United Kingdom could have been better articulated. For example, we could have had the first week together. I believe that would have stimulated a larger interaction between Laidlaw Scholars from schools in both countries. Finally, I would have a shorter final report. It is unnecessary to write three thousand words about the experience in the program. I could have easily said the same things I told you in this report using one-third of the minimum word count expected from participants.
Regardless of any problems I might have identified, I believe the Re_action For Education program should be maintained for next year’s Laidlaw cohort. The initiative is definitely a leadership component that has taught all participants a lot about the importance of ensuring access to education amidst a pandemic. But above all, I think the program helped me reconnect to my Latinx identity and look after the people in that continent who struggle to make ends meet financially, who do not have access to quality healthcare, and who are ashamed of their home countries’ politics. And, while I cannot enter the government and change the system immediately, I was able to use my skills and my privileged education to make sure that those around me struggling with access to quality education get the opportunity to continue their studies effectively.