Stakeholder Analysis Assignment
Our group has reached out to a variety of stakeholders in the education space. We were looking for people who have a vested interested in improving the quality of K-12 education as well as those with experiences that could provide insight for our Systems Map.
Ms. Shwety Goswami, 6th Grade Teacher
We chose Ms. Goswami as a stakeholder because as a middle school teacher, she is directly involved with students and has knowledge regarding their needs. Additionally, she knows how students’ lives have changed due to virtual learning.
Key Takeaways
From our interview with Ms. Goswami, a middle school teacher, we learned that students with difficult home lives have nobody to talk to intimately because school was their safe place. This issue applies especially to those who are poor because they even struggle to communicate with others through technology because of their lack of access to it.
Janice Kershaw, President of Brevard Schools Foundation
Our research focused on low income students and Janice Kershaw works with then daily. She is directly involved with improving the lives of students that are low income by being the main supporter and head for the Take Stock in Children program. This scholarship takes specific students and tutors them throughout high school in order to improve their overall education and hopefully send them to college.
Key Takeaways
From the interview, we learned that low income students had much greater barriers with technology and internet access. One thing that was apparent when the pandemic started was that families who had unpaid bills for cable or whatever they used to get internet access were being denied, unless their bills were brought up to date. Also, if students didn’t have an adult at home that could help with navigating remote learning, they might not be accessing education at all.
Radhika Chatterjee, 10th Grade HS Student
Students are our key target, and hearing from a K-12 student experiencing COVID’s effect on school helped us understand how school systems reacted to COVID via the policies they enacted as well as the reaction of the students to these policies. We are able to see a real life of example of how satisfied a student is with their current learning environment, and as an added benefit, they are aware of some of the opinions of teachers and how well they are managing their work load. Students can also comment on how COVID has affected communication with other students and teachers.
Key Takeaways
Her teachers are struggling to manage hybrid formats — managing a virtual and in-person agenda. They also are becoming overwhelmed by the number of emails. Because of their teaching struggles, the quality of the work they assign has gone down — much less live instruction and more reading and writing assignments meaning that students have less of an ability to practice their skills. Also, interpersonal communication has proven very difficult for her; for one class, lack of ability to access and efficiently work with members led the teacher to break group work into individual work. Students are not able to gain the conflict-resolution and problem-solving skills of working with a group not only through a virtual format but even a hybrid format.
Renuka Chatterjee, Executive Director at MISO
The perspective of an employer is crucial in this problem space when you consider the cyclical effect of poverty that we are trying to break. By understanding the skills that employers are looking for when hiring, we can make better informed decisions when it comes time to choose a point of intervention. She was also able to provide a perspective on the relationship between parents and their children, as many of her employees have children. This unique perspective allows us to find trends in how COVID has affected not only work life of different types of employees but also their home life with their children.
Key Takeaways
Employees who have kids tended to send their children to school because they couldn’t leave them alone at home and were worried that children would be spending too much time on screens through a virtual format. Parents and close family members have also acted as substitute teachers — helping their children get connected to the internet and tutoring children as 1-on-1 time with children’s teachers these days is hard to come by.
As a manager of many employees, her job involves bettering her and her employee’s communication in the workplace. We confirmed that those with a college education are more likely to have good communication skills and do well in the company. She claimed that one the most important communication skills are ability to give presentations, facilitation of meetings, and listening/comprehension skills. Her number one complaint about employees is lack of listening/comprehension skills. One unique thing she misses is the hallway interactions as they are unplanned interactions where projet updates occur that a virtual environment misses.
MISO like many companies has a combination of higher income employees (corporate workers and engineers) and low income employees (assistants and control room operators). Low income employees tend to not have a college degree and be very task oriented with poorer communication skills in comparison to their higher income peers. They also may see their children less as they’ll be more motivated to work overtime and on holidays to make more money.
Sarah Lewis, Assistant Director of the Proskuneo School of the Arts
Proskuneo works specifically to help children from lower income families and seeks to provide them a sense of community and desire to learn through the use of music. This organization’s goal directly overlaps with our goal to aid children in lower income families, so gaining their insight into the communication development of the children they work with is a valuable resource.
Key Takeaways
Language barriers are a large hinderance on communication development
The most effective way they have increased the communication skills in the children they work with is by listening to them and showing care for them.
We are actively trying to meet with the following stakeholders:
- Mary Lamon, Pastor and Community Counselor for at-risk K-12 students.
- Lizanne DeStefano, Gatech Educational Psychologist
- Cassy McInnis, Emory Developmental Psychologist
- Jay Vahle, 4th/5th grade Gifted and Talented Teacher
- Mike Alba, Director of Professional Learning and Development
- Students from various age groups
