lessons from failure

I interviewed a program administrator of a study abroad in China who had responsibility over the financial planning and management for the trip. The financial management was very problematic.

Problem: Essentially, she couldn’t withdraw the necessary money needed to fund housing and travel expenses for the students. Chinese banking regulations and BYU accounting rules combined to make it difficult to pay their business partners.

Solution: This manager has the same philosophy as our guest speaker. There are problems, large problems but good management can prevent complete failures. She ended up using personal money, having the traveling professor use the cash from the hosting university’s salary, both went daily to take out maximum deposits (than carried large sums of cash), woke up at 3am several days to speak with BYUs offices to get clearances for different expense procedures, ect

What I learned: I learned that double-checking information sometimes isn’t enough. They were promised they could do cash advances but they were not allowed to once they got there. Double checking is just making sure the person you are talking two understands your question and reaffirms their answer. Triple checking may be a better philosophy. To triple check, after double checking, ask the same questions to a few other employees to make sure you get the same story. This would compensate for problems of incompetence. Preparation could have avoided this problem.

A second lesson I learned is that monetary savings aren’t always the best solution. Part of their problem is they went with the cheapest business partners. They ended up having some of the most difficult financial rules. When managing traveling, convenience or insurance should get more attention and raw cost shouldn’t always be the dominant weight.

The final lesson I learned was that, while we “should never, ever be surprised”, when problems happen, we must be flexible and take responsibility quickly (personal loss of time and convenience in her example) in order to avoid a problem/hurdle/obstacle from turning into an irreversible, abject failure.

late budget

So I have been working on some project management angels with the school administration and the granting agency and have learned some interesting things (which I'm happy to talk about in our meeting along with my justification on your good funnel question). The format for the budget part of the application is fairly simplistic with 1) an amount 2) a task and 3) a brief description. That follows:

Airfare $450

For moi for creating the projects and surveys, and training the project assistant

Project Assistant $15 100hours $1500

Acquire material, resolve administration red tape issues, administer surveys, train supervising teachers in project detail, and assist in publication

Participating teacher Stipend 4x$250 $1000

Supervise students towards productive completion of micro-service projects. They typically get to do their own work or read.

Materials

Fabric $250

The quilts for homeless, elderly

Crayons $25

Melted crayons for shelters

Boxes $25

To sent care packages to military

Postage $300

Uh…..duh

Gas $100

Help with all the shopping and delivery

Books $250

Buy the books for the creation of “books on CD” for visually impaired

Audio CDs and machine $75

Printing material $25

Surveys, reports, letter writing for soldiers

Humanitarian supplies $500

Donated to red cross, or as potions of 72 hour kits for low-income families

Solider supplies $500

Jerky, toys for children, music, etc.

Funel

After struggling with what ideas were relevant enough to include and which were distracting and having sent my introduction to family members for feed back (ranging from finished high school to PHD) I am left with the following funnel. I am pretty happy with it, though my guess is I will be doing a second round edit after I let it sit, untouched and published (sort of) for a couple days. Here it is:

From the dawn of time people have attempted to instill values and pro-social citizen behavior/attitudes in the rising generation. Songs, stories, and working side by side in apprentice positions bound children to their parents and their culture. In aggregate, these attempts to instill moral, pro-social, and ‘invested feelings” into children is called education. Over the centuries, developing nations increasing formalized this human ritual and organized schools, libraries, and lectures. This formalizing of education was in an attempt to accent and maximize the long-recognized soul-refining of learning. It was not the mere accumulation of knowledge that had potent promise, but it was rather the infusement of knowledge with culture, moral obligation, and paradigms viewing humans as relationally connected. This benefit was so widely recognized that we moved from elite private educational experience to governments endorsing the universalization (publication) of these benefits by creating public schools. With these schools, religious influence was originally the chief benefactor in creating pro-social citizens attitudes and behaviors. After the French Revolution Burke claimed this influence to be mostly ripped away from education and argued that educators must fill the vacuum. Nitizche would later famously say “God is dead.” In the absence of what was previously the single greatest driving force of the soul-refining aspect to education, the academy turned toward alternative sources in hopes of maintaining education’s soul-refining effect. These alternative sources included Burke’s own moral reasoning and the development of and commitment to natural law theory. Educators today are still attempting to create pro-social citizens with additional tools such as Moral Intuition, Ethics Reasoning, Character development, empathy exercises, narratives, etc. These methods have mixed results but generally have people wishing education could yield still more influence on youth’s development (grandma’s “kids these days”). A return to the theistic influences within education-the optimal solution- is currently politically untenable. I wish to argue for further development of temporary holding places such as those listed above. One avenue that has not been explored is assisted charity practice. This aims at instilling care for community, adherence to law and order, and active civic engagement by helping students participate in micro-service projects. Those who are currently hardest to reach-those for whom the above skill sets/paradigms are working the least-are those behaviorally-challenged students who are habitual detention receivers. It is for this hard-to-reach population which I seek to develop a workable model within which they can develop as society expects students of education to do. The current detention model generally consists of a student “serving out time” by sitting in a room. Does optional participation in micro-service projects during detention periods increase a participating student’s pro-social attitudes more than the traditional punishment technique of just sitting there?

initial lit review

1. There are way too many journals out there wanting money-even junky quasi journals/essays

2. I’m grateful for BYU subscriptions.

3. Detention is a horrible name. Why do we make it sound like prisons? I feel like I’m doing my parole and probation studies again. SCHOOL detention” google!; “school detention.”

4. I’m glad, I’ve found what I thought. School detention doesn’t reduce school disciplinary problems, there is a desire for innovative practices in the areas of reducing school discipline problems. It appears my project is worth doing after all.

5. I’ll keep you—yeah that’s right, the audience of one- updated

New direction

So while I thought, and do still think, my other questions were very interesting, I am very excited about this one. This one, I can really feel good about sinking my teeth into. Perhaps my training in public administration has conditioned me towards innovation. Perhaps my 6 summers framing helped me develope a need to see results (changes in behavior being the easiest to see, and thus for me, appreciate). Perhaps my degree in sociology helps me appreciate juvinile offender issues. Either way, I'd like to address what is a serious issue in high schools. Detentions do not work. Repeat offenders comprise the vast majority of detention recipients. I would like to try an innovative approach to detentions involving micro service projects. Specifically my question is. What are the effects micro-service projects (replacing detentions) on repeat offenders' attitudes and behaviors. I will measure their attitudes towards authority (specifically the person who issued the detention) and rules. I will also measure their willingness to engage in service in the community (and other compassion scales). Obviously I'll look at recidivism rates. The really neat thing is I'll be able to look at teacher/administrator perceptions towards this as well and answer revealing questions such as their attitudes (timeone, timetwo) students who after detention, perceptions of justice and effectiveness, and willingess to experiment with innovative strategies of reducing repeat offender behavior. I believe the Pepsirefresh project has the greatest flexibility and has the greatest likelihood of granting my proposal. I will pursue that lead.

From previous research, it appears that students learn more when they have a good relationship with their instructor. From qualitative responses, this relationship seems to be centered on love. Essentially, students learn more when they feel loved. My obvious gut questions would be: how to increase the love, and then how to increase the behavioral cues of that love. However, there are several variations of this question that may capture better my interest in this subject. Virtually no one is writing or researching this issue and therefore, the last “final question” would not be the first question I’d need to answer. Rather, it simply is the most accurate description of my interest regarding this issue.

This question isn’t terribly complex and I doubt I will therefore narrow it. However, this question is rather vague and so this process may actually serve to specify and give researchable context to it. If this process were graphed, I suppose that it would look more like a upward helix and less like an upside-down triangle.

1. How can professors love more fully?

2. How can professors show love more fully? (in addition to the above examples)

3. How can students show love more fully? Does how much a student loves a faculty influence how much he/she can discern a faculty’s love in return?

4. How can professors develop love more fully?

5. Can this love be ‘faked’ or at least mostly supplanted by simple pedagogic training? Which behavioral attributes associated with showing love can be faked?

6. When can showing love be misinterpreted? What hurdles are there to developing love more fully? Can someone love someone, quickly—even within a semester?

7. Does the subject matter of the class matter? Does it matter to differently to different classes of students. (younger, single, gender, subject ect)

8. What are those signs/indicators of love that are common to all students (won’t help some while distracting others?)

9. Are there pedagogic strategies (assumes that it can be taught (see q#5) that can reveal an instructor’s love for students that will increase learning?

10. What are those strategies? Which ones are most efficient (ease of training teachers, is most effective in relying the ‘love’ message to the student body (most bang for buck).

11. What are the most efficient pedagogic strategies, relevant to showing love ,that will lead to the greatest increased student learning.

Having just completed this exercise, I think I may have another question that I’ll have to rapidly move towards. Perhaps one of the nature of an effective moral education curriculum. Of course this connection isn’t readily obvious to the reader of the above post; it is hardly clear myself. Before stepping in that direction, I’ll allow the above question (#11) to sit as is for a few days.

From research conducted in BYUs faculty center, it is apparent that students learn best when they have a good relationship with their professor. The relationship between professor and student needs much more attention, but current research seems to show that it centers on love. Christ commanded, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” We live this law in our families and try to apply it in our church and social circles. However, it often is very difficult to apply within the confines of a classroom with a transient, large number of strangers. Nevertheless, it is one of the most frequently repeated factors students judge when gauging how “spiritually inspiring” their teachers are. Accordingly, it is wise to ask, “How can we show our love more fully?” From researching students, they feel loved when you:

1. Know and call them by name. This shows you took time and care about them individually.

2. Give concrete feedback on their work. This shows students you cared enough to read and evaluate their work that they invested in.

3. Establish high expectations. This reveals your trust in their potential and feels empowering.

4. Make time to visit with them after class. When talking with them after class or in your office, ask them about things outside of school (family, work, interests).

5. Respond to their questions respectfully.

6. Share yourself.

This sharing of yourself can be in occur in various ways.