Case Studies
Below are examples of how I work, the projects I’ve been involved with, and the impact of these projects.
Chicago Zoological Society’s NatureStart
Connecting the dots for partners to expand professional development opportunities in early childhood education
I learned about the Chicago Zoological Society’s multi-faceted NatureStart play-based educational program and learned they wanted to share the program with other organizations and professionals, in order to help more children learn about nature in their own communities.
Immediately, I thought of the Council for Professional Recognition and its Child Development Associate credential. CPR’s Child Development Associate credential is the most widely recognized credential in early childhood education. If the NatureStart program could be mapped to selected competencies of the CDA credential, it was likely to be an attractive professional development option for many early childhood teachers. Once I explained NatureStart’s programming to the Council’s partnership team, they were very interested in partnering with the Zoological Society.
My knowledge of the credential, my familiarity with NatureStart’s program, and my network, allowed me to make this connection. NatureStart has completed the Council’s partnership application process and will begin exploring how the current can be used as a profession recognition resource through the Council. The NatureStart team presented at the Council’s national conference in 2019.
Newark Museum
Seamlessly Connecting Art And Education
An amazing exhibit by Gabriel Dawe called “Colors of Light'' cried out for a children’s activity. When the Curator and Education Director of the Newark Museum called me to ask how HITN could partner with the Museum, I realized that we had the perfect beginning - Pocoyo transmedia kits including one called Colors.
The Education Director, her team and I planned a tie-in event as part of the Museum’s day-long Festival of Color and Light. It included a children’s activity with Pocoyo’s video “Learning Colors with the Color Machine” for children to learn about mixing colors. We used tablets to show the Pocoyo video,, and had coloring sheets for children , and paints, crayons and pencils in a rainbow of colors for children to experiment with color.
Children also made string art similar to the floor-to-ceiling color-filled string installations done by Gabriel Dawe for the “Colors of Light” exhibit. Well over 100 families participated in this wonderful event.
Mercer County Community College
Using Ideation and Connections to Create a Program for Youth
When the President of Mercer County Community College wanted to encourage more disadvantaged young people to consider college, she reached out to an acquaintance of mine active in Trenton. Her goal was to create a pipeline to community college by working with middle school students so they would have a vision and aspiration for themselves at an earlier age. My acquaintance knew my background in education and program development, and that I had a huge network.
My connection wanted to benefit young people in Trenton by exposing young people to coding, a new “basic skill.” Working with them, I was able to broker a multi-partner coalition to serve middle school students from Trenton. The program I helped craft using my ideation process was a Saturday coding program hosted at MCCC’s Trenton downtown campus’s Technology Center. I brought in a talented professor who would become the program instructor, who was instrumental in designing the program. Her knowledge encompassed technology as well as how to work with adolescents.
To identify the students, I brought in the Trenton Area Ministerial Alliance and the Puerto Rican Community Center, and also found people to develop the curriculum, and acquire the technology. I also helped raise $8,000 to pay for the instructor and materials. MCCC donated the space. And a local entrepreneur donated lunches each Saturday for students.
It took about 5 months to coordinate the recruitment for The Coding Class. The 5 Saturday program had 15 middle school students in it, and all of them created a final product. Through my connections and the ideation process, the program met all the initial goals, as well as establishing new beneficial relationships between MCCC and community groups in Trenton.
HITN’s Pocoyo Cinema
Inspiring Children Through Hands-on Educational Fun
An example of wrapping a hands-on experience around existing formats to expand the reach of the educational content is what I did with Pocoyo Cinema. HITN, the largest Spanish language public television station in the US, features Pocoyo, a Spanish/British educational children’s transmedia property. Pocoyo is a 4 year old boy who explores the world, sharing his findings with viewers.
As Director of Outreach for HITN, my work was to ensure that our educational programming spread as far as possible. At one point, we only had video featuring Pocoyo. Using focus groups and working with the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center in the Bronx, I facilitated the visioning of many different kinds of interactive digital and non-digital media - from videos to apps to activity pages - as well as family events using Pocoyo as a catalyst for presenting engaging, entertaining educational content in multiple communities.
Kingsbridge Heights Community Center added a Pocoyo “At the Seashore” set of activities to its “Week of the Young Child” festivities, aimed at increasing early literacy skills. We set up an area with a screen for families to watch Pocoyo videos, a table with several tablets for kids to play with the Pocoyo app, and a hands-on exploration table with seashells and other seashore items that children saw in the video and on the app. This Pocoyo family activity was hugely popular and proved the power multiple forms of media have in reaching young children with educational content in a fun, engaging way.
In Maryland, Pocoyo became part of the Hispanic Healthfest, where HITN sponsored and created the “Kids’ Space.” There, children could watch little vignettes where Pocoyo found strawberries, had to count them, and learn how they were healthy; use an app called Grow It where they could see how a seed grows into a plant both above and below the ground; and play in a Kids Space with cars and trucks on a Transportation Rug or coloring Grow It sheets of healthy foods. And of course there were healthy foods for all to try. This family activity was very popular, highly engaging, and educational; it promoted both healthy eating habits and early language and literacy.
To further extend the experience, I created take-home packets with co-branded information about health from the Children’s Health Fund. This partnership was another aspect of how connections expanded the impact of HITN’s children’s “edutainment” content.
Brooklyn District Attorney’s Bureau of Youth Initiatives and Diversion
Extending the Reach & Social Impact of Existing Technology and Programming
A member of the Brooklyn DA’s office knew me from my past work, so he approached me when they wanted to help their ADAs in the Bureau of Youth Initiatives and Diversion understand how young people think and what they experience with their peers. In particular, they wanted to focus on cyberbullying and how online violence could then spill out into real life and propel kids into encounters with the criminal justice system.
I was the right person to work with them because there were two young people from the Diversion program enrolled in an HITN program teaching middle school-aged kids about film criticism. It made sense to me to build on that program by focusing on designing a program focused on storytelling using video.
Reaching out to my network of connections, I found an app called DIYdoc that would be perfect for this program. I enlisted PAL and the Brooklyn International School to work with ADA staff and funding to create a curriculum to use DIYdoc in an afterschool program - the very time kids get in trouble. They created a 10 session program, of 1 hour a week for 15 middle school students, where groups of 5 students worked together to decide what story they wanted to tell using one of two available templates - a news video, or an opinion video.
I enlisted the Knology organization to evaluate the first pilot program in 2017, and the partners (Brooklyn DA, HITN and DIYdoc) revamped it for new sessions in 2018 and 2019. The District Attorney’s Office found the youth-generated videos extremely educational for its ADAs, and it enhanced their ability to retain kids in diversion programs.
The program had further impact when the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development invited the program to be part of their 2018 Summer Summit. In order for it to be led by youth, we involved youth from the Bronx Arts’ Tech Squad who were familiar with DIYdoc; they led a half-day workshop for other kids who made stories about climate change, the need for elevators in schools and other topics. Now there is a pop-up model for a half-day workshop.
This is an example of my using connections to generate a powerful partnership to have a great impact on a social problem.
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
Cultivating leaders through coaching and mentorship
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) needed to identify emerging leaders for its future and for the future of the profession. And the Black Caucus interest Forum was concerned about the lack of diversity in the existing leadership and the existing pipeline of leadership.
We determined that we would begin a mentorship program to cultivate new leadership among the black professionals within NAEYC. We wanted to support the development of people in the field who wanted to grow in new ways. We expected we would attract younger people. To our surprise, we received more applications for mentors from mid-career people.
Then we needed to recruit mentors. In addition to signing up to be a mentor, I recruited mentors and helped set up the mentor/mentee matching system. The Committee matched people according to ideas and areas, so mentees would have someone to bounce ideas off, and be able to take their ideas to new places.
I was matched with a mentee who had linked her early childhood education program (Maritime Odyssey Preschool) with the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, CT, because I’d done so much work with Zoos. Because she had a great program and many demands on her time, the question was how best to support her and help her grow.
The simplest suggestion ended up making a huge difference. I suggested she begin journaling about how she thought about what she was trying to accomplish as she developed her center, and what was important as she developed her center’s quality. The simple act of journaling enabled her to take power over her own thinking, and she could make better decisions about where she focused her time and the Center’s resources.
My mentee shared her experience at the NAEYC annual conference in Nashville, inspiring others to take on the same practice.