Guidebook: Healthy Teen Scholars

2012

Working with the wonderful community of Academies at Anacostia!

By: Tanya Abraham, Katherine Boretsky, Shari Boyce, Nikita Desai, Odera Ekwunife,Rachel Glassford, Ahimsa Govender, Dolores Prudent, and Anna Yakovleva

Section 1 Introduction

Hello! We are so excited to share all of our experiences at Academies at Anacostia with you,

because we truly had an amazing time working with, mentoring, and, perhaps most importantly, learning from all the wonderful individuals who make up the Academies at Anacostia. Our own GW team included graduate students from probably every track at the SPHHS and we had the privilege of working with three incredibly supportive and encouraging mentors, one of whom was also a teacher at the Academies at Anacostia and became an invaluable liaison between our team and the students. Unfortunately, it took us a little longer than we had hoped to get started; conflicting schedules, paperwork requirements, and some level of uncertainty became obstacles that we had not anticipated. However, our mistakes will hopefully work to solidify the foundation for this next team. So, don’t be afraid to get started ASAP and do not let little kinks that will pop up prevent you from engaging with the wonderful community of Academies at Anacostia to the fullest.

Our goal was to set up two career fairs at the Academies at Anacostia, which we hoped would provide a valuable learning opportunity for its students to interact with healthcare professionals, to ask them questions, and to really grasp the opportunities for career development that are available in that field. This was a very ambitious goal and we were able to deliver one career fair; we spent the spring semester focusing on developing less formal events that made it possible for us to interact with the students more closely and to bond through just hanging out. As you look through this guidebook, pay attention to what worked for us and what didn’t. We hope that in describing the challenges we had experienced in putting together the massive career fair event, we will make it possible for you to avoid some of those obstacles. Also, take notes of the really great moments that developed when we came together to interact with the students. Try to get to know them even better than we did – they are really wonderful, driven young people with insights that may surprise you. Get in touch with them and involve them in helping you plan your projects; they enjoy participating and having responsibilities in shaping the activities that they will have to participate in. Do not forget about Ms. Dooley, the outstanding teacher at the Academies at Anacostia, who went above and beyond to ensure that our team remained productive and that our experiences this year were spectacular.

So dive right in! We hope that your year is even more productive, fun, and educational than ours was!

Guidebook Section 2

Focus of the Trip (Service Project Process Details) - Consider the following question: "With whom and on what of the following did your service focus?" Click on each cell and select from the drop-down menu provided. Please note: The first row serves as an example. You may have multiple rows per service event

depending on the diversity of people who participated and topics addressed .

Our service project focused on increasing/improving…

The Following Topics…

Among which ages?

Among people who partially or fully identify as which races/ ethnicities?

Among people who identify with which immigratio n status?

Among people operating with what English proficiency?

Among people who identify with which gender(s)?

Knowledge/ Awareness about…

College Planning, Communicatin g with Healthcare Providers

Older Adolescents (Ages 16 – 18)

Black or African American

3rd+ generation immigrants

People who read between a 5th and 8th grade reading level

Female

Attitudes/ Beliefs/ Perceptions/ Values about…

Community Belonging, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse

Male

Behaviors/ Skills related to…

College Planning

Among people who financially live…

Among people who fulfill the following family role…

Among youth in…

Among people living with

Among a community partner site's…

Among Other People not listed here (Optional Comments)

People living between 0% - 200% above the poverty line ($23,051 - $46,100 for a family of 4)

N/A

N/A

N/A

Consumers/ Clients/ Patients/ Residents

Guidebook Section 3 1. Describe how your service team first unpackaged and began using you Starter Project. This is a “do this when you get the Starter Project” part of the Guidebook.

Upon receiving our starter project, we wanted to ensure that we as a group were on the same page in regards to what we had just been handed. It was important to review the starter project packet and take advantage of the prior experiences of our coaches. The Learning Community Planning Lunch provided a great opportunity for us to meet our coaches and begin the conversation of the ISCOPES experience and impact. We were presented with three different components that we could potentially work with as a starter project; a career night, GW Day, and a service event component. Through communication with coaches, we decided to pursue a career fair for our starter project.

We took advantage of the initial activities, in particular the Teach-back exercise and the Team

Responsibilities exercise. The Teach-back exercise allowed us to work out any concerns or questions that we had leading up to our starter project. It provided a way to examine the areas, which we needed to improve upon. We established our team responsibilities with the use of the worksheet provided to us during our group sessions. However, we found that actually following through with what we had decided was difficult. As a result, we re-adjusted tasks and thought about our individual skills, assets, and resources. We thought about tasks that required physical appearance versus tasks that could be done if someone was not able to be physically present. For instance those who could not attend the event, could do other activities such as internet research, phone calls, etc.

In establishing a partnership with our site, we wanted to ensure that we defined our roles as

well as the students’ roles. We met with members of the Red Cross Club (RCC) to answer some of these questions and to ensure that we established a partnership early on in the semester. It was key to approach this process by keeping in mind the importance of including teachable moments for the students. For example, we held a phone banking and poster making session to teach the students professional skills. In this process, we also took advantage of the resources listed in the starter guideline from the ISCOPES resources and the Himmelfarb library.

With the initial steps of our starter project, it was critical to establish a partnership with people

at our site, communicate with our coaches, define our goals, and define our roles and the role of those at our site. In our teams’ initial steps with the starter project we would have incorporated better time management skills. It would’ve been beneficial if we had a developed a solid timeline with realistic deadlines, holding people accountable for various responsibilities. With the effort to get all the administrative paperwork completed, we didn’t jump into working on our project as early as we should have.

2. Describe how your service team adapted your Starter Project. As requested by the teacher/coordinator of the RCC, our Starter Project was a Health Career Fair. After introductions and establishing a relationship with the RCC, we conducted an informal needs assessment to determine what the coordinator and students would like to accomplish and what knowledge they would like to gain from this career fair. One important thing that was a result of our assessment and conversations with RCC was the need to not only showcase typical health careers (i.e. doctors and dentists) but also have health-related careers that students were not as familiar with such as a dieticians, veterinarians, physical therapists, or health engineers. With regards to logistics, it was important to set a date and time that would be suitable for most students to ensure participation.

In planning for the career fair, rather than resorting to the list of predetermined roles, ISCOPES members volunteered for responsibilities or tasks that they were interested in or where they could offer their resources and knowledge. Once the date and time for the event were determined, we used our personal connections and resources to recruit professionals to speak about their careers. To further involve the students, we hosted a campus visit so they could make courtesy calls and send emails, formally inviting the professionals, as well as take a tour around the GW campus. This was a great opportunity for students to practice their communications skills as we provided them with a script and guidance in how to conduct the conversations. ISCOPES members also assisted students in creating posters to advertise the career fair to their classmates and preparing announcements to be made over the loud speakers for further promotion.

As a team, we also determined what would be at the event such as activities, incentives, prizes, give-a- ways, and any other additional items like “thank you” gifts for professionals/speakers. ISCOPES members took on such tasks and also identified his or her availability on the day of the event to help throughout the event.

To prepare professionals, we provided them with a detailed email that included information on logistics, parking/directions, and an overview of the event. We also gave them talking points and encouraged them to bring any handouts or items that they could display. We prepared for each career answers to typical questions that the students would ask such as salary and required education. To encourage participation and communication with most if not all the professionals, students were tasked with a “passport” game, challenging them to ask questions and complete all of them correctly in order for a chance to win a prize, receive a goody bag and food. Prizes and incentives included tickets to a GW Men’s basketball game, goody bags with health related items (purchased and provided from the resource library), and donated food from Chipotle.

During the event, team members took on multiple roles such as recruiting students to attend and participate, registration, manning the ISCOPES table, and directing students to different career tables. We oversaw the entire event and did our best to quickly handle any unsuspected challenges we encountered.

3. Describe how your service team assessed participant satisfaction with your Starter Project (i.e. what coaches, consumers, others at site like and disliked about your service project(s))? There were no formal or structured means of assessment to measure participant satisfaction other than observation and informally talking with our coaches and the students at the event. We all agreed that despite challenges, the career fair was an overall success. We had a number of different careers showcased, and students eagerly participated in the “passport” game and appeared to be engaged especially with careers that really interested them. In our debriefing sessions with the RCC teacher/coordinator and coaches, we openly discussed our achievements as well improvements to make future career fair events or any event/activity more successful. Our assessment is limited as we need not use any formal means to measure satisfaction of students and get their candid opinions. A confidential survey post-event should definitely be considered.

4. Describe how your service team assessed team satisfaction with your Starter Project (i.e. how did you know what each of you liked and disliked about your service project(s)? This is like describing how you asked friends/family on the trip with you if they were having a good time, what they were enjoying, etc. This also relaters to how you checked in with yourself along the trip!

Our main tool in assessing team satisfaction with our starter project was simply talking about it. We used the beginning of the meeting following the event to discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and to discuss if our goals were met. The key points of these debriefing sessions were recorded in our meeting minutes for those who could not make it. We didn’t use any formal methods to obtain feedback on the starter project, such as surveys. There however were comments relating to our starter project in the mid-year quality improvement exercise. We could have more completely assessed our service team’s satisfaction through formal and objective methods that would’ve allowed people to express their opinions in a more anonymous manner.

Guidebook Section 4 Key Recommendations

The ISCOPES Program has been rewarding and our group has accomplished much with the Red Cross Club from Academies at Anacostia, but we do have some recommendations for future Health Teen

Scholars to ensure continued success in this community.

1. Be clear about expectations: It is very important for all team members to be honest about what they want out of the program, what kind of commitment they are prepared for, and what duties they are best suited for. This will save a lot of time in meetings and make delegating tasks much simpler. For example, our group recognized that certain people were better at being leaders, so these individuals would take turns heading up projects. Each person has something they are good at, and communicating this allows the team to better serve the community. In addition, have a set day each week when the team meets to check in with each other. There are always updates to discuss and it helps keep track of who is still involved in the team.

2. Reach out to the greater community: One thing we considered but were unable to implement was an event that would bring together kids from Anacostia High School and Ballou, the other high school in the area and our school’s main basketball rival. This is a good idea because it allows the Healthy Teen Scholars team to make deeper connections in the community and provide services to more young adults. Also, don’t be afraid to work in the community outside of the set projects. Engage with the community by going to basketball games and other events held at the school. It is very important to spend time with the students and get to know them, which can be hard within the constraints of a rigid plan.

3. Listen to the students: Building off of spending time with the students, it is paramount that the team follows what the students want to do since we are working with them in their best interest. They may need guidance and motivation (since they are teenagers after all), but it is ideal to let them propose ideas for projects. One event that had an incredible, direct impact on the community was our “Feed the Homeless” event, the idea for which came from the students. The students in the Red Cross Club are smart, interesting young adults with good ideas and oftentimes, a clear view of what they would like out of our partnership. The Health Teen Scholars team is there for students first and foremost. The students are more likely to be enthusiastic and work hard on projects they care about; the team can also be more effective since energy will be spent on projects the students actually care about, instead of projects the team thinks the students might care about.

4. When in doubt, ask Ms. Dooley: Ms. Dooley is the best resource a person could have; she is a dedicated, hardworking teacher who knows a lot and cares very much about her students. If the team ever has any questions or needs advice, it is highly advisable to ask Ms. Dooley’s perspective on the matter. She is good at providing direction as well as constructive feedback that allows the Healthy Teen Scholars team members to provide better service to the community.

5. Be focused: It’s easy to get distracted and think of a hundred different ideas for projects or events, but it wastes time and effort if the team doesn’t concentrate on a few, manageable tasks. Team members should be organized and decide on no more than two or three projects per semester with achievable results or concrete goals. That way the team will be able to properly manage its resources and there will be an increased chance of the Anacostia students reaping some benefit from the team’s work with them.

Section 5 Service Project Outcomes

1. To be honest, we did not construct goals and objectives for each module of the starter project as the starter project manual suggested. We did not follow the exact schedule set forth by the starter project manual, and once we deviated from the manual we did not have the convenient worksheets to write down our goals and objectives anymore. We did always have an agenda from each planning session that included a recap of the meeting’s events and an action plan that listed what needed to occur before the next session, but we did not set forth the detailed goals and objectives that the project manual suggested. I would recommend writing down goals and objectives, though, because it is a good way to make sure that each planning session is fulfilling its intended purpose.

2. For each of our service projects, we generally assessed success based on the feedback we received from the Red Cross Club members. In our learning community, we were not teaching ideas and concepts in the traditional classroom style, but rather trying to get the members of the Red Cross Club engaged in activities that might familiarize them with the world of health careers. Since this was our style, it did not make sense to have post-project questionnaires to determine what they learned. We did not have formal surveys either, but we did speak with the members of the Red Cross Club after each activity to see what they had learned and if they thought the activity as a valuable use of their time. In our opinion, this served us better than written surveys because it allowed the members of the learning community to better explain their thoughts and give us suggestions.

We found that the members of the learning community were gaining a lot of valuable information from our activities. When speaking to the members of the community after the health career fair, the consensus was that they had been exposed to new careers that they had not previously considered as options, and that they were also more familiar with the process of pursuing the careers that they were interested in. These were our primary objectives for the career fair, so we deemed it a success. For our project of setting up the nursing simulation lab, it was easier to measure success since our major goal was a material one: simply to set up the lab so that it could be inspected and cleared for use. Along with members of the Red Cross Club, we unpacked the equipment, took an inventory of the items, and set up the simulation lab, so we qualified it as successful. Our last project was an overwhelming success based on feedback from the learning community. We served lunch at a church on Capitol Hill and spoke to members of the homeless community about the challenges they faced. In our debriefing session, some of the members of the learning community opened up to their own personal challenges as well, and many people were moved to the point of tears. This level of honesty gave us so much valuable feedback about our learning community that we would encourage the next team to get to know the members of the Red Cross Club earlier on in the year so that you are more aware of the people you are working with. Overall, our informal discussions served us well in gauging the success of our projects and gave us suggestions for improvement for the rest of the year and for next year as well.