Keeping Up With Shawn (NGS)
In our group interview with Shawn, the Director of Academics and Admissions at Next Generation Scholars (NGS) located in Downtown San Rafael, we were able to all keep in touch and stay updated amidst the COVID-19 shelter-in-place. In my piece, I will be formatting my findings in a questions-answer format.
- Do you still keep in touch with former NGS students? How?
While answering this question, Shawn lit up as he began describing how the relationship at NGS with their students is similar to a large family, keeping in contact with students who are currently in graduate school or are pursuing their phd degree. The type of community that NGS creates among their staff and students is beyond just being a counselor, a teacher, or a tutor, but truly family. When Shawn mentioned this, I caught myself unconsciously nodding my head and smiling, showing signs of admiration. The relationship among the staff and students attending NGS was something I quickly grasped onto during my first tour at their center as when I was lost trying to find Shawn’s office, another staff welcomed me into their space and community and walked me to his office. In each week that I had the opportunity of tutoring students, I noticed myself feeling a part of their family as at the beginning and end of each day at NGS, I found myself starting a weekly routine of peeking my head into the staff’s office and greeting them as well as catching up with the students that were taking a break or waiting for class to begin.
2. What is the most inspiring student story you have heard when you first started this job or as you have been working here?
When Shawn began at NGS as a tutor three spring semesters ago, he met Sterling who was his tutee. While helping Sterling prep for his AP physics exam, he discussed with Shawn that he wanted to pursue his college education in engineering. Although Shawn was supportive of Sterling’s decision, but his teacher showed otherwise. Sterling explained how his teacher believed he would not go any further in life than service work such as in the gas station, which was condescending, but Sterling was determined to accomplish his dreams. After applying to various colleges, Sterling got word back from his top college that he not only was accepted, but received a full-ride scholarship. This story not only made Shawn shed tears, but remind himself of the importance of NGS fostering a supportive environment for their students.
3. How did Shawn find this position? What made him interested in working at NGS?
Shawn’s story on how he found NGS is quite unique as he originally graduated from high school with the intention of studying while on the pre-med track, in plans of becoming an OB GYN or pediatrician. However, when he was studying for the MCAT, he was bored and realized that he lost his passion in medicine. Instead, he decided to pursue a phd and became a physics and research professor for nine years because he excelled on the AP physics exam. Shawn then received the opportunity to become a physics teacher at Marin Academy where he discovered that he did not enjoy being in the classroom full time. This is when NGS asked if he wanted to teach their students and ended up becoming the new director of academics and admissions as the previous director left to pursue her phd.
3. What are some services that NGS provides for their students beyond tutoring and hot meals?
In house, NGS performs psychological evaluations done by using small scale interventions with families and students and was used to support a students whose grades had slipped in his second semester of senior year. Some services that NGS does not provide in house (at their center) includes legal services or social services, immigration law, and marriage and couple counseling.
4. Are there any services that you would like to expand?
Shawn does not have any additional services in mind and believes that what NGS provides currently is great and intentional.
5. How does NGS promote or include critical consciousness into the programs?
Although critical consciousness was a term that Shawn had never heard of, he was able to answer the question in great detail. Shawn believes in educational equity, how life affects education and how education affects life, as well as reframing the academic curriculum to be more intentional. Instead of using the term critical consciousness, Shawn uses context clues and being critically aware of their environment. With the students at NGS who may be learning English as their second language, they may not be sure how to even structure a sentence or thesis statement. Because of this, he takes everything into account, especially the idea of intersectionality which is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender when applied to a group or individual, creating systems based on discrimination or disadvantage. Shawn and the other staff at NGS not only provides students with tools to understand that larger structure of society, but to question and challenge structural injustices and transform them. I found it interesting how Shawn brings awareness to how the educational system is a system of conforming — molding students into certain conditions. In order to break the margins and out of the conforming systems, we need to think for ourselves and gravitate toward resources that are needed to get away from those margins.
6. What are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced in trying to provide the students with resources that are needed, during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place?
Many of the staff take turns going into the center to work or retrieve their belongings, with no more than 2–3 staff at a time. The difficulty of transitioning their classes onto Zoom include some students having poor internet connection as their signal is divided among their parents and siblings who are also working from home. With the shelter-in-place, many students have to remain at home where they may not know when their next meal is because they could easily receive a hot meal at NGS or some are unable to follow the social distancing rules. Some students are having to spend all of their time at home, as opposed to being able to go to school or NGS, where they may not have the best relationship with family, feel isolated, and is not able to converse with their peers in person. For their academic summer program, they are reprogramming it so that instead of being in-person, it will be held virtually and instead of having a class or eight students, they have expanded the class size to eighteen students.
7. What does advocacy and change look like to Shawn and NGS? What steps are necessary toward advocacy and get change?
Shawn believes that the primary aspect behind advocacy is self-motivation to affect change not only for yourself, but others around. In order to begin advocating, we have to be open to being exposed and being empathetic, sympathetic, and action oriented. Advocacy at NGS is through education and formatting their classrooms and curriculums to expose the students to social change and activism pieces. With aligning the students experiences and the pieces that are read, they are able to develop a mindset of advocating their needs and understanding the need to act. Shawn believes that advocacy begins within the individual and being invested in creating change before linking with others. Because each student has different takeaways, each student has their own path and reasons of advocating; this causes a rippling effect of the change that one student can create to creating systemic and global change.
The community partner interview not only was informative, but was heartwarming to hear how passionate Shawn is with NGS and the students.
