Meet 6 Teams Building the Future of School — Launch Cohort 12

We’re excited to share the 6 ventures we’ve selected to join our 12th Launch Cohort. They’re working on a diversity of topics but have a two key things in common — excellent teams and bold visions about the future of school. Read on to hear about the six teams, the big problems they’re working to solve, and how they’re contributing to 4.0’s hypotheses about the future of school.

How can we train students for future STEM careers with ever-evolving technology?

3D printing examples in mainstream media have leaned toward the niche, and at times silly — Honda concept cars, prostethetic limbs, and bobble heads. But the 3D printer is poised to make a big impact, following a similar trajectory to the personal computers that were initially targeted toward children before disrupting the entire computer industry. A 2011 report predicts that the technology could lead toward new methods of designing, testing, manufacturing, and distributing products on demand. Even if we can’t predict all of the new types of jobs that will emerge from these evolutions, entrepreneurs and educators are seeking to put these tools into students’ hands to ensure they’ll know how to use them and be inspired by a future in Science and Engineering.

Teslab, led by Aditya Kumarakrishnan, aims to not only bring 3D printers, laser cutters, and other tools to schools, but to put them on wheels, in a laptop-cart sized makerspace built for the classroom with easy-to-use software that can be used by teachers across multiple classrooms.

As we’ve learned from countless technology implementations across the country that have brought Chromebooks, laptops, and tablets to the classroom, what matters isn’t just getting the technology in the classroom, but working with teachers to develop the skills to bring these into their lessons. So Teslab will train educators and provide the curriculum for teachers to incorporate these cutting edge technologies in their everyday instruction. Aditya envisions that “what used to require years of experience, entire workshops to build can now be fabricated on desktops and be built by everyone.”

Future of School Hypothesis: Technology once only available in state-of-the-art labs will come to classrooms and will inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists through hands on learning.

Does emotion at school matter?

A quick scan of headlines in the business section of a magazine stand would tell you that mood and emotion in the workplace is a hot topic. Researchers have increasingly linked the emotions we bring to work and the impact on our own productivity and the culture of our workplace.

“How happy workers feel; how motivated they are by an intrinsic interest in the work; how positively they view their organization, their management, their team, their work, and themselves — all these combine either to push them to higher levels of achievement or to drag them down.” — Harvard Business Review

The connection between emotion and productivity has fueled the creation of new tools too- there are apps, like Niko Niko (shoutout to 4.0 friend Chris Schultz!) that help managers capture these feelings across their team, and the slightly 1984-esque wearable monitors like these ones released by Hitachi earlier this year.

But what about the relationship between emotion and productive learning in school? The Emote team is bringing this concept to schools and to Launch’s Cohort 12. Armed with backgrounds in school leadership and developing technology at Google, Julian and Lei will be testing whether schools and teachers want to monitor their students’ emotions across the school day and over time, and how they will take action based on this information. The Emote team believes learning is most productive and effective when students’ emotional needs are met, and they aim to prevent behavior challenges that can be born out of unaddressed student emotional needs.

Future of School Hypothesis: Teachers, parents, and students collaboratively sharing information about emotion will make learning more responsive and personalized to a student’s needs and preferences.

How might study abroad in high school change the trajectory of students from low-income communities?

It takes one glance at your Facebook newsfeed to reinforce what the research tell us — studying and living abroad is often a transformative experience for those who have the opportunity. In multiple studies, the experience is linked to social emotional growth as well as growth in GPA, graduation, and employment opportunities (see more here).

• Over a 10-year study, the University System of Georgia found students who studied abroad had “improved academic performance upon returning to their home campus, higher graduation rates, and improved knowledge of cultural practices and context compared to students in control groups.” Not only did students’ graduation rates and GPAs increase when correlated with study abroad experiences, these effects were outsized for minority students.
• Non-cognitive skills improved too. The Institute for the International Education of Students surveyed 3400 study abroad students and found that 97% believed their study abroad had “served as a stimulant for increased maturity and 96% reported increase in self-confidence.
• Yet study abroad doesn’t usually occur until the college years, and low-income and minority students are rarely beneficiaries — 75% of college students studying abroad were white, only 5% were African American and 8% were Hispanic.

Thrival, a team led by Emma Hiza, is seeking to bring these experiences to a much more diverse set of students, early in their academic careers. Thrival Academy’s program will afford high school juniors the opportunity to live and study abroad for 5 months, as part of a year long, credit-bearing program grounded in personalized, project-based learning and immersive apprenticeships. At scale, Thrival will expand to districts across the country, but over the next few years, Thrival’s team will focus on bringing this to life in Oakland with a small pilot of 20 students in the 2016–2017 school year, and growing to serve 100 students per year.

Future of School Hypothesis: Students will benefit academically and socially from immersive experiences in countries and cultures different than their own.

How can students picture themselves in a career pathway before they have to commit?

Most of us probably didn’t imagine that our work days would look the way they do. Before you have the job, It’s hard to imagine what exactly an architect, or accountant, or sales manager is doing at 10am on a Tuesday. And there are consequences to the limits of our imagination. Only 30% of Americans are “engaged” in their work, defined as “emotionally invested in their work and focused on helping their organizations improve”. The rest are either unmotivated or truly unhappy and unproductive. The culture of the workplace and management is certainly one factor leading to employee engagement, but a misalignment between what we’re working on and our strengths and preferences is definitely another.

Bryan and Amy Lattimore identified a major barrier in solving this problem — for every 1 career counselor at a university, there are 2000 students looking for access and answers. A critical part of our school experience is understanding how your strengths and interests align with future job opportunities, yet this is a massively underresourced problem. Bryan and Amy are launching PS21, a mobile platform for college students to get answers from a diverse set of professionals, so they can really understand what work would be like in their shoes.

Bryan and Amy join a network of 4.0 alums working on this problem. Essentials alum Monica Gray’s Dreamwakers service connects diverse professionals to middle and high school classrooms, often in rural areas. Major Clarity, from Launch Cohort 9, provides high school students “test drives” of different careers via videos and online activities.

Future of School Hypothesis: Every student should be aware of their strengths and interests and how those align with future career pathway options.

How can we meet the growing need for technology leaders AND bring increasing diversity to this field?

Quick survey: what led to the job you’re currently in? Job board? Cold email? Search firm? Probably not. Odds are that you got it through your network. In multiple studies, finding roles through our networks outpaced the next closest sources by double digits, with many companies relying on referral programs to find their next hires.

Now let’s pair this phenomenon with three challenges:

• The United States has a rapidly growing need for professionals in the tech sector. In New York alone, jobs in the technology sector have grown 57% from 2007 to 2014.
• To date, diversity in the technology sector has been minimal. Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have shared that <2% employees are African American, and less than <4% are Hispanic.
• If our network and referrals are how we get our jobs, that doesn’t bode well for increasing diversity in the tech sector. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, our networks are segregated: “Among white Americans, 91 percent of people comprising their social networks are also white.”

To meet the growing need for leaders ready to serve the tech sector, we need to leverage all of our future talent, not just some. One of our Launch Cohort 12 teams, NY on Tech, is stepping up to do this. Through their program, they teach students to computer programming, expose them to both technical and non-technical professions in technology, connect them with a network of diverse mentors, and provide them with other professional experiences that put them on a pathway to a career in technology. Hopefully, this will result in more youth of color pursuing successful, supported careers in tech.

NY on Tech joins other great organizations in New York and across the country working on meeting the need for computer science training (shout out to 4.0 alum Operation Spark and 4.0 friends ScriptEd and Flatiron School). We’re particularly excited about NY on Tech’s focus on students building not just the technical expertise but the social capital needed for these future leaders to successfully pursue careers in the tech industry.

Future of School Hypothesis: Schools must develop not only students’ academic capacity, but the social capital and networks needed to thrive in future careers.

How can we set students up to thrive not just in their careers, but in their financial choices?

The combination of low financial literacy and the mounting cost of college are a double whammy for students about to enter college, particularly for students who lack the guidance they need to navigate the financial aid and fit of various schools. Unfortunately, personal finance is not usually a topic covered in schools, and only 4 states mandate a personal finance class in high school. Yet financial literacy correlates with major life outcomes like likelihood of planning for retirement and ultimate wealth accumulation. Simultaneously, students leaving college are more indebted than ever — in 2015, the average college graduate had $35,000 to pay back. For most 17 year olds, taking on these kinds of loans and planning for how to pay them off is a major life decision they have not been effectively or even adequately prepared for.

Unifi Scholars aims to put students in the driver’s seat of their financial future and teach them how to navigate these choices — beginning with how to frame their college decision as a return on investment and understanding the resources to finance their education. David and Georges, with combined experience in finance and education, respectively, will train students through a combination of online finance tools and in-person workshops to help students plan for managing their finances during the college careers and beyond. In their pilot last summer, 83% of their class scored a “literate” grade on the national financial literacy exam administered at the end of the program, outpacing the national average of 18% for 18–26 year olds more than fivefold.

Unifi is one of several 4.0 alumni working on this massive problem. Another ed tech tool, Yenko (Launch Cohort 10), helps students maintain their financial aid in college once they’ve received it. College Bridge (Launch Cohort 11), supports New Orleans students to apply for financial aid, enroll in college, and persist once they’re there.

Future of School Hypothesis: Finance how-to and self-awareness is essential to student’s success in college and beyond.

We hope you’re inspired by the visions of these founders. We definitely are. If you’d like to connect with any of the teams, please let us know HERE. If you’re nurturing your own bold vision for the future of school, please let us know here, so we can help you find the right 4.0 program — whether Startup Weekend Education, Essentials, or Launch.