Home

Redoing GOKiC
Introduction
Autumn 2022 - Summer 2024
Geeking Out Kids of Color (GOKiC) is a non-profit dedicated to teaching BIPOC and underserved youth in the Greater Seattle area about technology and social justice. Partnering with school districts and community centers, they run after-school programs, reaching hundreds of students from elementary to college each year. 
GOKiC runs multiple after-school programs in tandem quarterly. During my time there, I brainstormed, conducted research, and worked with the education team to develop a new system of curriculum development that is still being used today.
Team
Curriculum Manager: George Zhang
Lead Educators: Ana Beatriz Mendoza Ramos, Emily Morado, Jocelyne Herrera
Assistant Educators: Aliyah Musaliar, Britney Pham, Esmeralda Bonilla, Hanan Sherka, Ronnel Abrigo
Design Challenge
When I joined, every single site was to use the same curriculum, just scaffolded to different levels, with every session having its own slide deck. This proved to be a challenge as the curriculum designer because:
There was a huge age and skill gap between our students
Different sites had different routines and wants from the curriculum
I only had a few weeks to develop and scaffold entire curriculum at times, while still teaching
User Research
Surveys​
We administered surveys to the students at the start and end of every quarter. Questions on these surveys included asking about how much they knew about problem-solving, computers, and how well they felt represented at school. Post surveys would also include sections for students to give feedback about their experience and to tell us what kind of curriculums they would like to see in the future, helping give us a sense of what students are looking for when they come to our programs.
Field Studies​
As the curriculum designer, I had the opportunity to go to my co-workers’ sites and directly observe how the curriculum they were teaching for the quarter was going. This gave me direct information as to how well the students were resonating and engaging with the curriculum as well as seeing how prepared my co-workers were to be able to teach it.
Personal Narratives​
When thinking about the students’ experiences in our program, the employees that knew best about how they felt would be their educators. It did not make sense for me to make curriculum decisions for them when I knew so little about their site and students. In talking to them I learned about the nuances of each site and the limitations and challenges of teaching there.
Takeaways
These were the main findings from our research
Curriculum
One Size Does Not Fit All

After a few quarters of designing curriculum, it was clear that one curriculum scaffolded was not serving any site or student well. Curriculum would be too challenging for younger students and too simple for older ones. 

However, when we did scaffold, we found it easier to scaffold down to an easier level rather than scaffold up to make it more complex.

Slide Deck Challenges

Initially, each class day had its own dedicated slide deck that already built out. However, to be always having to look at a slide deck was not how students wanted to be engaged; some days, the nature of the classroom This meant that a lot of the slides created were just wasted work.

A sample of what the slide decks for each session would look like in a folder
Building Process
Time Allotted to Build Each Curriculum

Fall - 1 month

1 month of dedicated time in the summer before fall programming starts

Winter - 1 month*

*1 month split between teaching fall curriculum and building winter curriculum

Spring - 3 weeks*

*3 weeks split between teaching winter curriculum and building spring curriculum + spring break

Summer - 2 weeks

Two weeks of building time between the end of the school year and summer programming

Due to the nature of breaks between programs, the available time staff had to build curriculum varied heavily. This left staff in a bind as the same curriculum building process was applied each quarter. We had to figure out a way to plan accordingly for the year.
Training Challenges
Lack of Tech Expertise

I was the only employee with a technology background 

My colleagues were incredible in other areas, but it left our overall tech knowledge quite low 

The majority of classes had one or two students with more knowledge than the instructor about the subject 

No Resources to Help

Staff were willing and wanted to learn and be trained 

No budget was ever written into our grants to provide professional development (PD) in technology training 

Even though it was going to be added into future applications, the need for PD was still present at the current moment
End Results
Curriculum
Changes Made

Unique Site, Unique Curriculum

I pushed for the idea that each site needs its own curriculum. After all, my coworkers know their students best - their voices need to be included in the curriculum they use. Even though two of our sites serve middle schoolers, those students will still like the same things and learn in the same ways.

We > Me

This meant that developing curriculum went from a solo task of mine to a coordinated group effort. I could provide guidance and bring ideas to life, but the initial ideas would be curated by my teammates based on their observations of what their students want and are capable of.

Streamlining Lessons

We also removed the requirement to have an entire slide deck per lesson and kept only vital information on the slides. This result, while more to coordinate, gave a lot more meaning and personality to each of our sites.



Results

Educators Empowered

Educators were teaching things they and their students actually wanted and cared about. They could put their own personalities in them by customizing physical materials and overall lesson plans.

Ownership Achieved

We gave ownership to each educator. It truly became their site, their students, their curriculum. It also gave them the ability to change things at will since it was their curriculum.

Time Saved

Since each session didn't need its own slide deck anymore, there was no need in copying and pasting the same slide deck over and over.

Happy Students

Each group of students could be taught something that was tailored more to them and was flexbile to adjust to how they reacted to it.
Building Process
With our takeaways on how different the time we have to build curriculum was between quarters and how scaffolding curriculum works best for us, I came to a few conclusion that would dictate the building process:

We would start making notes on which programs would be prioritized in having brand new curriculum and which programs could revamp or recycle previous curriculum.

High school curriculum was easy to scaffold down so I decided to prioritize giving the high school students new curriculum for the year.

For future quarters, we can scaffold that curriculum for the middle and potentially elementary school programs to use.

We would do the bulk of the work in creating brand new curriculum for all the different programs between summer and fall programs.

Not only do we have the time, it would give the hours of work to us hourly employees who have bills to pay.

This starts the year off with everyone having their own lessons to be proud of, but it also increases the bank of curriculums that can be revamped and reused.

Due to the limited time, we would revamp and reuse previous curriculums that would be new for those specific sites for the remaining quarters of the school year.

By frontloading building brand new products in the month between programs, we could ensure that our students receive a new curriculum they haven’t seen from us before while also setting us up for success for the remainder of the school year.
Training
Due to the fact that I was not singlehandedly building out the curriculum with dozens of slide decks, I could build out training documents specific to each curriculum for my coworkers. In these documents, I would list out how to set up the technology and what programs needed to be downloaded, go through all the code that curriculum goes through, and have a section on common errors and other frequently asked questions. These documents serve as instructions so that even though I’m gone, others can come in and have a foundational understanding of the curriculum they are teaching. 

Here is an old version of a training document that I created