The framework

I've decided to eliminate the pressure to translate my thought-burps into coherent posts, and henceforth shall document my actual notes without necessarily framing them into something that could be understood by anyone but me. That said, if these scribbles do make sense, or inspire commentary, please feel free to ask questions or hurl ridicule. Collaborative conversat-ing is the whole point.

What follows are some notes I jotted into a notebook on one of my flights to and from Miami this year.

Education.

Residential program

Student body:

• Section 8 housing
• Foster kids
• Others in the system? homeless? on probation?

Age group: middle school.

The middle school years have been targeted as a critical point in a student's personal development where an intervention may successfully redirect a student's focus while developing life-long interests.
- Teaching Success, from the Spring 2008 Dwight Hall at Yale newsletter

--> How to matrix in with other social services' agencies?

• ACS
• juvenile detention
• Youth At Risk
  
• etc.?

--> Cross-reference with institutions of higher learning

• PhDs in Education
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social work

Scaleable should not be the goal -->
"scaleable" = "thing-centered"; "scaleable" <> "person-centered" -->
must be at all times a person-centered endeavor

--> Can the Deep Springs model work for urban youth?
--> Do we want it to?

Funding sources?

Keep labor costs low; source talent a la Teach for America --> partner w/Teach for America?

Operations:
--> put together in a detailed roadmap / func spec?

Board of Advisors:

• Former U.S. Grant leaders (Gastic, King, Abbott, Morales, Falcon?)
  
• Else?

--> Find a template for the documentation of this & begin socializing
--> Mixers & teas to circulate ideas & brainstorm?
--> Who else cares about education issues?

At what point does the exercise become a burdensome, paternal imposition of values?

[What exercise is not an imposition of a moral code?]

Unsolved, earlier questions:

• How can we systematically share information across multiple touch-points in order to more effectively serve the underserved?
• How can we democratize access to "high culture" such as classical music?
  

Asset-level tracking

• I understand that out of context the phrase "asset-level tracking" seems a bit dehumanizing
• And by bit I mean entirely
• But in this regard I want you to think of a human as an asset
• And particularly, a human in need, at risk, what-have-you
• So this asset interfaces with various gov't agencies and NFPs
• And these agencies and NFPs have ostensibly similar goals
• But none of these third parties x-ref with the other third parties w/r/t said asset
• There is no master that ties activities mapping against said asset together
• And thus, policy impacts or other attempts at reaching the "ostensibly similar goals" are difficult to measure and correlate
• So, as opposed to marketing, where we have asset-level tracking and can version control and/or (assuming an appropriately designed database) calculate customer lifetime value, no such analogue exists in society
• This is a problem
• Because I say it is
• QED

Yo:

• Our world is a big big place
• Non-urban environments are not the default
• People don't talk to each other any more (doctors don't make house calls; teachers don't know the parents of their students personally)
• If social workers and teachers and ER docs and etc. etc. etc. could all share information about Ty (hypothetical asset) in order to identify problems and thus root causes in order to architect solutions ...
• Wouldn't that be cool? And more human? And better for society? And cheaper in the long run?

I have no idea what to do with all of this. Create roundtables or regular meet-ups for people who serve zip-code based constituencies? Require signing of abandonment of privacy laws for a discrete list of service providers? Bomb cities and force people to live in caves?

Classical music

I've always wished that classical music should be piped in over the loudspeakers of all public schools during passing period. Schools could designate months to particular composers, so that after several years of listening to this in the background 24 minutes a day, students would come to recognize, "Oh yeah, that sounds like Mozart." During the announcements in the morning each day, a little factoid about each artist could be read.

On top of this, when I went to enjoy a free performance of Scheherazade up at Hostos Community College in the BX, I was disappointed to see how empty the auditorium was for what ended up being a pretty darn good performance. "Why is no one marketing this?" I wondered, remembering the free Yale basketball games or gymnastic competitions I'd drag my middle school students to on Saturday afternoons.

Fast forward, I just tried to find various performance listings for classical music in the New York area. By and large, calendars of events lack standardization, are not in line with current web standards, and are entirely user-unfriendly. No wonder we cannot unlock the magic of classical and expose young'ns to its beauty. It's inaccessible.

Resolved: There needs to be a concerted effort on exposing students to classical music, but for this to happen massive reorganization and collaboration must take place. Classical music events must be treated like any other product before it can be marketed appropriately. And the ideal educational institution will have the arts weaved throughout -- as with music during passing periods -- rather than stuck in some 45 minute "music class" box that is seen as separate and useless and not integrated with the rest of one's life.

Just had a thought: classical music at lunchtime too, and why not, in the bathrooms while we're at it.

Music and education. Discuss.

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Possible plan of action for broadening exposure of classical music

I. In general

1. Create master database that compiles performances of classical music in a standardized fashion
2. Work with NFPs and public programs to "market" these opportunities
3. Replicate system for public schools in other gov't funded institutions (e.g.: prisons? subways?)
   

II. In public schools

1. Design K-12 classical musical curriculum that's flexible enough to accommodate different school types and passing periods
2. Designate certain time periods (months, trimester, etc.) and map these temporal buckets to various themes (specific composers, spotlight on instruments, seasonal / holiday themes, or whatever)
3. Figure out how to exploit 'down time' with classical music (in bathrooms, during passing periods, at lunchtime, in arts classes, etc.)
4. Prepare learning nuggets to be read at the beginning of the day that enhance the music that will be played that day, either w/r/t that exact theme and/or providing a historical context for the music of the day
5. How to create a feedback loop s.t. university / master's students at public universities can continue to improve the curriculum, thus keeping costs for this at a minimum / amortizing existing gov't expenses across a broader base?
   

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Related links:

• Culturally naked public education
• Elementary school in Alabama partners with a Symphony
• Into the Outside: Even a little bit helps
  

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Update 1 @ 3/9/2008 @ 5:07 p.m. EST

My notebook of ideas

Since 1996 I've been noodling on ideas regarding a residential middle school, a mash-up between The Ulysses S. Grant Foundation (where I was Executive Director for a year, after having been Director of the Mathematics Department and a Mathematics Instructor) and The Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, & Humanities (the high school from which I graduated).



Here's my resting spot for ideas, which I hope to activate sometime during my fourth or fifth decade.

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