BetterGrads Week(s) in Review #1 + Video
It’s been a big couple weeks for BetterGrads. Time for a brief update. I’ll make it snappy.
1. Connected with Community Initiatives, a well-respected fiscal sponsor / nonprofit incubator based in San Francisco. I had the pleasure of meeting with Melanie Beene and Prudy Kohler of CI during a 2+ hour meeting in the city. They offered some great ideas and suggestions for us, particularly in the areas of finance and presentation delivery. Creating a new organization from scratch during this tough economic time is hard enough; building a nonprofit that envisions seismic change in college prep spanning across a large geographic area and affecting many groups is a real challenge.
And it will be a real challenge. That is why your support is so key, so important for what we do. Whether you are a grad student at a top-notch school who contributed a great article to our site, or you have commented on a post, or you are one of the 560+ fans on Facebook – it helps. Our national team is buoyed by your encouragement. As always, we truly appreciate your feedback and support.
2. Made College 101 Presentations to over 600 students and parents at Granada High School. Thanks to Lyndsay Parkman, Meagan Colvin, Krista Rochin, and Kristin Burstedt for joining me in the two days of presentations. We presented to about 100-150 freshmen at a time through the Freshmen In Transition Program, in an assembly-style format held in the theater. We also presented to smaller groups of 25-30 students and parents during College Night. After each presentation, my thoughts focused on a primary question we are still fine-tuning: what is the right delivery mechanism and forum for College 101 presentations to be broadly replicated and reproduced via BetterGrads?
Based on our experiences with large and mid-sized audiences, I’d say that the latter is a likely route for success. The benefits of a smaller group were apparent to us in the Q&A sessions that followed our presentations. Hands shot-up after both College Night presentations (especially #2), by students and parents alike. We altered the structure between the two presentations, to what I believe was great success: #1 was more structured with less time for discussion, while #2 was less structure, with a brief overview of different “College 101″ sections and topics before opening the floor for dialogue. Based on feedback forms and our own agreement afterward, #2 was the preferred method.
The FIT presentations also went well and were received positively. However, it is difficult to continuously engage such a large audience for an entire presentation. Not only does the presentation need to be flawless (and very funny), but the presenters need to have a very strong stage presence and well-developed speaking skills. Our goal in recruiting and connecting college student peer advisors (CSPAs) to local high school students IS NOT to make the CSPAs find a long-hidden acting or performing talent. Our goal is to make the connection in the first place! Our goal is to remove barriers to knowledge and information-sharing, not create new ones through unwieldy demands on our presenters.
In short, a lot of learning and revelation as a result of these initial presentations. And perhaps even a positive impact on a high school student or two…
A great couple weeks for BetterGrads.
Check out this video which was lauded by Granada High students in their feedback forms.
What do High School Students want to know about college? Here’s a video reenacting their questions.
