Reflections on Month One

I cashed my first paycheck today, suggesting to me that I am now an official staff member of the New York Center for Child Development, and that is now officially time for me to blog again. My fellowship at NYCCD got off to a somewhat slow start. I immediately felt the relatively small amount of supervision, as compared to my position at the Character Education Partnership last year, where the two fellows make up a significant part of the full time staff who are there on a daily basis. NYCCD is a much larger organization--it oversees an early intervention program for children birth to age 3 in need of therapeutic services, as well as a special needs preschool with all of the related service providers--and as such the fellow makes less of a splash when he or she arrives and is less central to the functioning of the organization. At first, this was a little bit of an adjustment for me--who would help me set up my computer, or answer all of my most basic questions, or assign me with random tasks when my workload was light?! Would I feel as valuable of a contributor to my new organization without consistent supervision and feedback--without someone always being there to affirm my work and to tell me, "job well done"?

These are still questions that I am continuing to grapple with at times, but they have certainly subsided since those first couple of days. I am now excited by the amount of freedom I have in my new position. I have already had multiple opportunities to think about my job description as Parent/Community Outreach Coordinator and brainstorm and implement my own ideas on how to better connect the families we serve to their children's education and development. Tomorrow I am going to a meeting with my supervisor and some of our psychologists on staff to discuss our developing partnership with Weill Cornell, through which I will be serving as the primary care assistant for a psychologist screening young children for emerging mental health problems. So, the nature of my work is changing every day, and I have a certain measure of control over that--pretty exciting!

Notes from the Field…Office

Greetings from Washington, D.C.  I began as a fellow at Character Education Partnership (CEP) on Monday, 16 July.  I had a week before my fellow fellow, Sweta, arrived at CEP to figure out the office environment.  In the last two weeks, either out loud or to myself, I’ve been that kid who says “at my old school we did this…” since to what else can I compare new work experience but old work experience?  Of course, I don’t make those comparisons to criticise.  Arriving at CEP and not knowing who my supervisor was and what precisely I would be doing was at once freeing and disorienting.  Not having a defined set of tasks meant I could suggest what I would like to do.  Not having someone to report to meant I could direct my own pace of work. 

As the organisation continues to change—hiring new staff, revising the vision and mission statements—what I do as a fellow will change as well.  For now, to give you an idea of what CEP is about, Character Education Partnership creates curriculum and trains teachers and administrators how to implement character education.  Character education is education that takes into account a person’s social and emotional development, promoting values of kindness, trustworthiness, and good citizenship.  The “character education” part of this is the constant, but what CEP does to promulgate it is going to change.   As “they” say, the only constant thing in the universe is change!

Why EdTech Innovation Matters!

In my previous entry, I introduced Digital Promise - my Princeton Project 55 organization. Our mission is to “to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.” Here’s another way to think about our mission: ultimately, we would like to help facilitate and develop new breakthroughs in education technology. Digital Promise’s mission – innovation in education technology and education-at-large – is an important one. The world is becoming more and more innovative everyday day and American public schools must keep pace.

How is the world becoming increasingly innovative? Here are some questions to ask yourself: When was the last time you brought an actual CD as supposed to downloading an album on Amazon or iTunes? How many Apple (iPhones, iPads, or iPods) products do you own? And finally, do you read your news in a print format or digital format such as on your computer, mobile device, or Kindle? It may be difficult to imagine, but technology is now more integrated into our lives than it was five years ago, but unfortunately education is not keeping pace. There are many reasons why schools are lagging in regards to adopting the latest technology, but one of the big reasons is that often times it takes school districts years to evaluate what really works. By the time many districts are able to assess a particular innovation that application or device is outdated.

Digital Promise, and in particular Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools, is working to help our public schools rapidly “demonstrate, evaluate, and scale” innovative technologies so that students are able to utilize them now instead of five years down the line. To this end, many of our League member school districts and local education agencies are active participants in our two working groups: The Procurement Working Group and Research Working Group. Furthermore, we are fortunate to have dynamic research partners at BYU, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington – we collaborate with researchers at each of these institutions to collect data and analyze results from “demonstration sites” ( an initial implementation of a particular application or device) among our League member districts. At the moment, we have three active demonstrations sites including an entire school district in Michigan that will introduce iPads into all of their kindergarten classes beginning in the fall.

Next fall, all of the incoming kindergarten students attending Utica Community Schools – the second largest school district in Michigan – will be using iPads in their class. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? But then again, why not? If we’re using the most sophisticated technology to entertain, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be using it to educate as well.

Next Time: Making the Transition to Educating in the Digital Age!