In Good Company: Corporate Volunteering with Data + Middle Schoolers

[TatianaS]

In Good Company - Data + Middle Schoolers

The Alteryx for Good program has offered some rewarding life moments and highlights. I've enjoyed sitting down to read Tara's AFG partnership with Luvin Arms (if you love animals, this one's for you), Nick's Journey with DataKind UK & The One Campaign,  and Quyen's AFG recap on her experiences as well as others.  I've also enjoyed being able to give back some of my time to volunteer. Last year, I went back to Chicago to use my hours in a middle school classroom and below is a bit about my experience. 

Though I may have called it “thinking through” as a kid, and “solve” when I got a little older, analyzing has its roots deep in our mental processes as we have been using it to understand ourselves and improve our choices from the first cause and effect situation we’ve experienced. Though we learn words like analyze early on, we add a layer of context and deepened understanding to glean more insight into ourselves and the world around us.

Whether I am a child sorting blocks or an adult solving a problem, I am, at the core, looking to make an impact in some way or another. And impact, like analysis, is another one of those words that has developed in complexity not with more multisyllabic words describing much of the same sentiment but instead with increased context.

Back to School

With a few years, impact and humans now closely define parts of one another. As a corps member in Teach for America, the word impact further contextualized for me when it wrapped around the education of humans. In brief, TFA is a program designed as a diverse network of leaders who confront educational inequity through teaching and work with unwavering commitment from every sector of society to create a nation free from this injustice.  In my case, I taught 7th-grade reading and writing to awkward, utterly captivating middle schoolers in a southwest neighborhood of Chicago.  As most of us can attest, middle school is an uncertain and abundantly weird space in our development. This American Life devoted an entire episode to it, and I recommend you check it out.

Data Scores, Human Scores

In the K-12 setting, the temptation to understand results based on higher test scores was, and is, real. In the classroom, we tracked academic progress. After each test, they recorded their scores from the week and matched these scores to the previous weeks in their student data trackers. Through this exercise, they approached questions around a dip in a score or an apparent rise in their crayon-colored bar graphs. This data was certainly important, but it was not the only measurement of their success.

You are Talented and Capable

Each empowered student leaving 100% sure that they were always talented and capable was equally a measure of success. A learning environment in which they could conclude just how unique and skilled they were needed to stem from their own hard work and revelation. Furthermore, reaching beyond myself as their teacher, as the signifier, to say, "you are not talented and capable because I say it is so, you are talented and capable because that is who you are" was mission critical.

Alas, the affirmation was printed and taped to the front door of our classroom, written on each test or book club menu passed out to 32 students times two, and recited as a call and response: when I say, “you are” you say “talented and capable.” When the deep work, we needed to do in the classroom as humans needed to be done, we started the conversation with “I am talented and capable.” We spoke it to each other, and at times I spoke it to myself.

 When Companies Give Back

When I left the classroom space and started my job at Alteryx, I understood that measuring business impact would be vital just as it was important to keep track and measure test scores in the classroom. However, considering the impact to people was an essential part of it too. In addition to improving customer lives in conjunction with a business impact like student lives and overall academic impact, I hoped to come back to the classroom space to volunteer, delivering the human-side of impact. Working for a company that offers corporate volunteer hours is a major benefit and quite a nice transparent crossover in one’s personal and professional life. On the website, Alteryx for Good promotes that there’s more to life than work and supports giving and doing good so that we can all make a significant impact in our communities and in the lives of others. If you have them, I’d encourage you to use them in a cause that you are passionate about. For me, it lives within the empowerment of kids and the importance of their education and their access to just opportunities.

Before leaving the classroom, I imagined championing my former students’ continued progress along the sidelines at my workplace, but I promised on the last day of school that I would be back to spend time in their classroom, see them graduate middle school, and celebrate their new chapter in high school. Using my corporate volunteer hours as part of AFG, I flew back to Chicago and returned to the familiar classroom space just in time to volunteer in their classroom during their last week of school and graduation. Sitting in a large circle, my former co-teacher and I facilitated a reflection activity with our former 7th graders having them each share a memory from his or her time in middle school. We touched on some of what they had learned and spent time reflecting their journey in middle school. At the end of the week, I kept my promise and attended their final 8th-grade graduation. My awkward 7th graders have now entered the high school arena, and in the city of Chicago, this means all very differently performing schools, yet they are nonetheless talented and capable.

On my desk sits a laminated book full of pictures and anecdotes from my students. It is a daily reminder that the work we all do matters, and to never forget the humans behind the work. It’s vital. Though my day is not filled with the voices of 64 7th graders reciting reading or the sound of their pencils scribbling their short stories, there is a focus and emphasis on the lessons learned that permeates my today. You work hard. You consider all aspects of impact. You develop a positive mental attitude, and the work is simply more enjoyable in the company and service of others.

 * Previously published on LinkedIn January 19th, 2018, updated edits included in the blog