Translating Empathy Into Impact

A Team of Chicago Teacher Designers Create a “College Cafe” to Improve the Post-Secondary Planning Culture in Their School

Victoria Serritella and Stephen Ngo are both educators at Steinmetz College Prep, a traditional neighborhood school in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Victoria is a member of the English Department where she currently teaches Senior Seminar and One Goal, two classes focused on post-secondary preparation and planning. Stephen is Steinmetz’s principal. For both of these educators, the joy and drive of their profession comes from the students:

“What I love about education as a profession is working with young people. To this day I maintain strong relationships with many former students. They provide me with the gratification needed to do this job. I am very thankful for every student who has entered my life.” — Stephen Ngo

“Of course, the thing I love the most about my job is helping kids.” — Victoria Serritella

Victoria and Stephen were both part of a small group of Steinmetz educators who participated in TrueSchool Studio’s 2015 Sprint Program, which enables teams of educators to build and lead student-centered, systems-change solutions from the bottom up. This is their story.

THE OPPORTUNITY — Increase Student Ownership Over the Process and Decision of Post-Secondary Planning

While Steinmetz is committed to preparing every student to graduate and be college and career ready, the team noticed that 9th grade students and their families were in need of direction on how best to navigate the post-secondary planning experience. They wanted to create a more authentic, engaging and successful post-secondary planning culture in the school, where students would own the process and have access to a rich set of resources to help them navigate this complex and often stressful process.

Victoria notes that tackling this issue was particularly important and meaningful to her:

“Historically, our students are often mismatched to post-secondary institutions due to their lack of knowledge of how to navigate post-secondary planning procedures. As a person who experienced very little support in my own post-secondary planning during my high school years, I feel particularly passionate about how much our students can achieve given the right maps. I grew up in the neighborhood where Steinmetz is located; my brothers are alumni of the school; I came from a single parent household: all these factors contribute to the affinity I feel with my students. Knowing their struggles and the potential obstacles they may face when planning for post-secondary life, I feel I can use my own experiences to help guide their life experiences.”

Through a deep exploration, during the TrueSchool experience, of their stakeholders’ needs — which included parents, teachers, administration and students — the team garnered the following key insights:

• Students are most concerned with financial obligations regarding post-secondary options.
• Students feel they need more direction with how to find and match with post-secondary options.
• Post-secondary planning interventions need to begin earlier in the students’ high school careers while they are still at the underclassman level.

THE HOW MIGHT WE

How might we ensure that all stakeholders participate in creating and sustaining a post secondary educational culture in the school?

THE SOLUTION — A Post-Secondary Lab Designed to Strengthen the College Going Culture of the School

The team’s solution was to create a post-secondary lab specifically for 9th and 10th graders named the College Cafe. At the Cafe, students will be able to explore options and learn about: financial planning; college matching; standardized test preps; and literature related to chosen topics about the high school experience and the transition to post-secondary education. The Cafe will host student, teacher and alumni led sessions around various topics such as, “Understanding the High School Grading and Credit System,” and, “How to Calculate GPA,” as well as more loosely designed sessions to encourage empathy building between students and the rest of the community. While upperclassmen receive this already, the College Cafe targets underclassmen.

The team is currently running their first mini-pilot of the College Cafe — a low-cost and low-lift way to try out their solution within the first four weeks of school. They are using an existing computer lab and in-school staff as resources. To begin, the Cafe will only be open on specific days and times, where two teachers, including Victoria, will facilitate and recruit student participation. The impact of the Cafe will be measured based on attendance, expansion of academic vocabulary, and technology based exit slips.

When asked for their reflections on the solution they designed, the team noted:

“At the start of the program, we had a very vague idea of what we wanted to accomplish. After the session and intersession work with the help of our TrueSchool mentor, we have developed a solid solution to improve the post-secondary planning culture in our school. Focusing on an area which is not necessarily addressed in the classroom where we think students struggle allows us to provide students with support in non-academic areas. We are all very motivated and excited to get our ideas off the ground. We have found ways to leverage existing assets so as not to burden our ever-shrinking school budget.”

THE INSIGHTS — Translating Empathy into Impact

“Being a teacher designer is an exciting role.”- Victoria

One key learning that the team took away from their experience going through TrueSchool’s Sprint Program was discovering the ability of the design thinking process and mindset to enable educators to translate empathy into positive change. While empathy is an integral and constant dimension of every teacher’s job, design thinking provides the tools and language necessary to translate that empathy into impactful experiences and resources for students.

“Many teachers work as designers every day when they create engaging lessons with individual student needs in mind. The component we found most interesting in the design process was the empathy building component. Because teachers usually get to know their students very well, empathy is a natural product of their familiarity. However, designing using the design thinking process takes resources and time. These are two things that teachers often find limited in Chicago Public Schools.”

Time and resources are precisely what TrueSchool focuses on providing to its teacher designer teams, which gave the Steinmetz team what it needed to translate their idea into an impactful solution.

Another critical resource that TrueSchool provided the team with was a mentor who pushed the team to grow into and own their role as teacher designers.

“Our True School mentor, Bryan, continually guided us to remember to wear our designer hats instead of our “teacher caps” when deciding on structure and composition of the Cafe and Cafe activities.

“Teacher caps” are, many times, very assessment oriented. While we will be assessing our students’ progress, we are focusing more on the mindset of the students. We want students who attend the cafe to begin a mindset shift from the goal of “just completing high school” to looking at high school as a stepping stone to college graduation.”