Welcome to NetLIFe officially and Challenge

[Preeti Gupta]

Hello,

There are many of you that are recently joined NetLIFE..Welcome! Please use this space to write a few sentences about your biggest challenge as a leader of floor staff this week! In your post, tell us your challenge and specifically, tell us what we might help you figure out.

I'll start:

I recently began working as the Director of Youth Learning and Research at the American Museum of Natural History. I have been asked to increase the number of students served through our programs who are from economically disadvantaged communities. Zip code data is deceiving because the same zip includes housing projects and middle class homes. Ethnic data is a incomplete and somewhat deficit approach to correlating economic hardship. School attended doesn't help because students from disadvantaged homes are admitted to pretty good schools often. I don't want to ask for tax returns. What to do without invading privacy?

preeti

[Nathan J. Bellomy]

Hi Preeti, very interesting challenge. Do you have a sense of what's worked well in the past to guage disadvantaged communities? Do property value data suffer from the same problems as zip code data?

 

For myself--

I don't usually train floor staff per se, but I have had an ongoing difficulty since I recently took over as Coordinator of YouthCaN (an international student-led network of student environmental activists). The group has been neck-deep in planning for a big conference, and there's a lot to get done. An increasing number of adult YouthCaN alumni have been attending meetings. This has been a blessing and a curse...on the one hand, because both myself and the youths are fairly new to the program, the alumni input in planning has been enormously helpful. On the other hand, YouthCaN is supposed to be a student-led organization, and it has been difficult at times keeping the alumni from dominating the conversations. I think it is very important to limit their numbers at meetings, but I don't want to say "Thanks for all your help, now go away!" My plan is to wait until the conference is over, then encourage them to form an alumni association whose meetings are separate from the youth meetings. But should I keep organizational oversight of the alumni, or should I tell them they should form an independant group? Should the youth and alumni meet side-by-side, as they seem to want, or should I insist they meet separately? How do I recognize and utilize alumni contributions while discouraging too much alumni participation? Should I create a specific, limited role for alumni, what role should that be, and which of the alumni get to participate?

-Nathan

[Priya Mohabir]

Hi Preeti and Nathan -

Nathan - I would love to touch base with you about how you sustain a connection with your Alumni's as its a challenge that I am facing right now.

I have been at NYSCI for an extensive period of time, but have recently taken over overseeing our career development and mentoring initiatives with our Explainer staff.  It has been very difficult to schedule these career development workshops (for about 80 participants) and then follow up with one on one support to help them develop a portfolio, including a resume, cover letter, and writing samples.  I am going to try to hold 3 workshops that the participants can sign up for rather than doing 10 trainings throughout the week and I have been working with our development team to find grants to support funds for technology that can allow us to have larger workgroups.

But as always, how do I get Explainers to buy-in to these trainings and see the long term value?  Suggestions?

[Priya Mohabir]

Nathan - I think you can do a quick mentoring training for your Alumni to help them see that they need to involve the youth and be their in support role, but this is a youth led initiative.  It's subtle way of defining roles without stepping on toes.

Nathan J. Bellomy said:

Hi Preeti, very interesting challenge. Do you have a sense of what's worked well in the past to guage disadvantaged communities? Do property value data suffer from the same problems as zip code data?

 

For myself--

I don't usually train floor staff per se, but I have had an ongoing difficulty since I recently took over as Coordinator of YouthCaN (an international student-led network of student environmental activists). The group has been neck-deep in planning for a big conference, and there's a lot to get done. An increasing number of adult YouthCaN alumni have been attending meetings. This has been a blessing and a curse...on the one hand, because both myself and the youths are fairly new to the program, the alumni input in planning has been enormously helpful. On the other hand, YouthCaN is supposed to be a student-led organization, and it has been difficult at times keeping the alumni from dominating the conversations. I think it is very important to limit their numbers at meetings, but I don't want to say "Thanks for all your help, now go away!" My plan is to wait until the conference is over, then encourage them to form an alumni association whose meetings are separate from the youth meetings. But should I keep organizational oversight of the alumni, or should I tell them they should form an independant group? Should the youth and alumni meet side-by-side, as they seem to want, or should I insist they meet separately? How do I recognize and utilize alumni contributions while discouraging too much alumni participation? Should I create a specific, limited role for alumni, what role should that be, and which of the alumni get to participate?

-Nathan

[Preeti Gupta]

Priya,

Can you describe your specific technology needs for larger workgroups for the mentoring workshops?

preeti

[Priya Mohabir]

We are looking to get a base set of 10 laptops for participants to use during these work groups.  I would also need a back up hardrive to house their work.  I would ideally love to give the participants flash drives so they can have the materials they develop in one central space, making it easier to build a portfolio.

These are some starting thoughts, anyone have any other suggestions?