Evaluating Job and Benefits Offers

I had planned on going to the workshop this afternoon about "Evaluating Job and Benefit Offers" at teh post office at Downtown Campus, however the event was canceled. I was able to get the handouts, and it turns out a couple other students had done the same thing as I had. Maybe some of them are fellow Public Affairs interns!?

Anyway, the information I gathered told me a lot of similar information that I had previously learned in interview workshops. Things like:
-prepare a list of answers to expected questions in advance
-practice negotiating, and have good reason for the things you ask for
-have confidence
-let them make the initial bid
-have an idea in mind of what you should be expecting.

What is most interesting though, is trying to quantify how much I am worth as an employee. If I were to try and put a dollar amount on how much I am worth, I think I would have a hard time doing so. It is hard to do when taking into consideration past experience, education, connections, basic skills, ability to work with others, etc.  Maybe I should evaluate myself compared to my peers and see what they are making? But maybe the economic recession will affect my possibility to earn a good wage? I know it has certainly minimized the number of jobs available.

I recently applied for a job with the City of Chandler and am waiting to hear back about the interview process. Originally I was planning on pitching myself in the interview as a "bargain" employee. Young (so cheap), but still experienced and willing to work hard to prove myself. I'm the most "bang for your buck". But maybe this comes off as desperate and would be looked down upon as being unprofessional.

But to be honest...  maybe I am desperate! hahaha

I sure wish that workshop hadn't have been canceled.

New Dog, Old Tricks

One of the things my internship has recently shown me, is that I have more skills than I had previously recognized. I haven't written in html code since I was in middle school, taking computer classes, but recently I've had to relearn this tool.

Our website is designed by a company called Parsus, and they use the Wordpress software. They are typically involved with creating mobile sites for restaurants, for example when you are able to order Chipotle from your phone. But for us they made an exception since we have personal contacts between the two organizations.

Since we have been having a ton of media hits for the recent announcement that our founder will be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it has been my job to update all of the news stories to our website. This has meant writing in html code. So sure enough I'm relearning the code and the tricks and hints that go along with it. I'm actually surprised at how quickly it came back to me, and I've been enjoying relearning how it works. I might even keep studying it a little over break and see if I can become proficient enough to be able to put that on my resume as a skill.

School of One

One of my cousins works with a nonprofit education company in New York called School of One that recently won a Robin Hood Heroes award. A Robin Hood Heroes award is given to a few groups or individuals in New York who "have overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and shown us the resiliency of the human spirit." I thought it was particularly interesting as it relates to my internship because it focuses on a lot of the other education themes I have been posting this semester.

The concept is relatively simple- technological diversification of learning. Instead of trying to teach students in a classroom full of other students their age group, they are able to work independently through a variety of mediums to ensure they are meeting standards as they go along. 150 children are put into one room with 5 teachers, 3 student teachers, and access to private tutors around the country via the internet. An algorithm evaluates the progress of students, both what they are learning, how they are learning, and ways to improve the learning trends that help them learn best. Students rotate around in stations working with teachers in a traditional classroom setting, independently on laptops with the ability to contact a personal tutor via the internet, work in collaborative groups, or have one on one sessions with teachers face to face. At the end of each session they are given a 5 question test where they are immediately evaluated, and the algorithm is able to understand if the student is ready to move on, or if they need to change the medium by which they are trying to learn a concept. In essence is it individualized, hence the name, "School of One".

There are a few questions I have though. How will this compare in the long run, compared to just the short 5 question tests given every day, will standardized tests show improvement as well? How can we afford to hire all of these private instructors and afford to supply all of this technological equipment, especially with continuous budget cuts to education? How might this education format translate to other classes where there may not always be a "right" answer, and evaluation must be more nuanced than a daily 5 question quiz? Can an algorithm really be trusted 100% of the time, or are there ways of analyzing the progress of the algorithm to ensure that it is doing its job?

At CC we are trying to implement a completely online curriculum in the near future. This way teachers and students can access all aspects of our curriculum online, keeping our personal costs down, and allowing for the ability to gather specific data about the ways that our program works in the classroom itself. Certainly we wouldn't need to have a mathematical algorithm to encourage daily growth from students in our curriculum, but technology is a rising trend in education. ASU even has an entire program for studying the technological advancements in education, and students may earn a masters or doctorate in this area specifically. But this was developed back in the 1960's. So why has it taken so long to adapt technology to the classroom, and why does it seem that even when we do diversify schools, the large majority of public institutions are slow to follow?

2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom

Today they announced the Founder of Citizenship Counts, Gerda Weissmann Klein, as one of the 15 recipients of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Here is the full list of recipients:


Former President George H. W. Bush
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis
Co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council, John H. Adams
Author and poet Maya Angelou­­
Investor, Industrialist and Philanthropist, Warren Buffett
Artist Jasper Johns
Holocaust survivor, author and founder of Citizenship Counts, Gerda Weissmann Klein
Optometrist, Dr. Tom Little
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma
Civil Rights Activist Sylvia Mendez
Hall of Fame first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, Stan “the Man” Musial
Former Boston Celtics’ Captain, Bill Russell
Founder of VSA—The International Organization on Arts and Disability, Jean Kennedy Smith .
Former President of the ALF-CIO, John J. Sweeney

To have our founder be included in such an incredible list of amazing people really legitimizes the work we do at Citizenship Counts. I hope that this not only gives CC a lot more opportunity to expand our programs, but also allows us to make some powerful connections with these other strong leaders who have given "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Unfortunately by the time Obama holds the awards ceremony, my internship will already be complete with Citizenship Counts, but I'm very excited for what this means for CC in the future!

Changing Education Paradigms

I recently watched a video of a lecture from Education Reformer, Sir Ken Robinson speculating that the education system has been created in order to mimic the modes of production. We educate students in an assembly line that separates them by date of birth, socio-economic status, and only educates them so they serve the purpose of contributing to the capitalist system in which we live.

I honestly think this may be a bit far-fetched. The system is also created so it becomes easy to identify childrens' difficulties and then correct them so they meet agreed-upon standards in an efficient manner. Many of Sir Robinson's suggestions for reform do indeed seem to incentivize more creative personalities, what he calls "divergent thinking". This seems to focus on a different kind of intelligence that our current system is unable to nurture. However the kind of management we would need to control a system like this, the costs involved and even the means by which we make the shift, go ignored. Thats not to say there aren't solutions to these objections that may make it perfectly feasible to adopt his reforms, but he certainly does not offer them within this lecture.

Education is difficult because the ends are not always clear. Is the purpose to let the individual develop into whomever they would like to be, so they feel enlightened and useful? Is the point to create the precise number of workers to fill the job market on all levels? Is it even possible to achieve both of these at the same time? And with increasing cuts to education due to the economic collapse, are any changes like this even feasible at all?

Jury Duty

I finally got called for Jury Duty! It may sound strange but I was actually very excited about this in my life. Next to voting its one of the few moments in your life when you really get to participate in the process as a a civilian. And as CC promotes staying active and involved this was something I was very excited about. Unfortunately the morning of I called the special hotline that tells me my assignment and which courthouse to go to, only to find out I was released. Most people would have been excited, but I was a little disappointed, I almost wanted to show up anyway in case there was something I could do anyway. Oh well, that's the life of a nerd, huh? Maybe next time I will actually get to serve on a jury and get some first-hand experience with the court system as a participant and not just an observant scholar.

Menial Tasks

Sometimes I really enjoy the kind of work interns do. Putting together promotional packets, making copies, running errands- all of these rarely take much concentration or critical thinking. Every day in my other jobs, and in class, I'm always being pushed to think critically, look at the big picture and analyze the way my life interacts with others and creates a larger relationship to the world. But as an intern I don't always have to do this.

My life consists of 3 part-time jobs in order to pay the bills, an unpaid internship to get some good experience and build my resume so I'm competitive after I get my degree, classwork so I can earn my Masters and get a good job in the long run. And then on top of that, I attempt (and often fail) at having a social life, maintaining a relationship and struggling to enjoy myself at times. 

So my internship is actually a nice break from the hectic side of life. I could make copies blindfolded and not be stressed at all. Now all I have to figure out is a way to make work, school, future/experience building and fun all be the same activity, and I'll be set. I can't wait to get a career...

ACSS Conference

For one of the first times in my life I felt like a grown-up. Driving halfway across the valley for a conference of Social Studies educators, I arrived at ASU West on Friday morning with no idea what to expect. After registration, and some free coffee, I was able to hear Barnaby V. Lewis, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Gila River Indian Community, tell a story in his native language about culture and tradition. Although he would give some commentary in English about what was going on, his narrative character was enough to understand the story and how meaningful it was to him and his culture.

The sessions themselves were a mixture of good and bad. Since I am not an educator, I was not the intended audience for most of the workshops, and they were mainly marketed for teachers to sign up for a longer weekend-long workshop with more specialized organizations. I attended a session on "Global Climate Change in the Southwest" as it pertains to a great deal of graduate work I am doing right now. Although the number of participants were small, we had some good conversation about the state of our environment as it pertains to Arizona specifically. I then attended a workshop from the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education, who actually train teachers in a porogram that really affected me when I was in High School, the We the People program. This specific workshop focused on the implications of the 4th amendment as it related to students’ rights to privacy while on campus.

The award ceremony luncheon was interesting but overall hard for me to feel invested in. I couldn’t necessarily relate to the awards being given and felt detached from the ceremony as a whole. But then I really enjoyed a session concerning “Arizona’s First Civics Camp” and tried to figure out a way to incorporate our program with theirs the next time it comes around.

I also had the opportunity to do quite a bit of networking. I met a number of educators who seemed mildly interested in our program, although it took some persuading to let them know that the workload was completely manageable, and well worth it at that. I also came in contact with the Joe Foss Institute, an organization who runs a similar program to ours, only focusing on getting volunteer veterans to speak in the classroom about civic engagement, instead of the naturalization side that we focus on.

Exhausted from a long day, with my bag filled with pamphlets and swag I left the conference having mixed feelings. It certainly was worth it for me to attend. But I think next year we need to be one of the recruiters holding sessions, as much of the other aspects of the conference are geared towards educators themselves.