Planning the Year

Over the past few days, I've asked ScriptEd's staff to participate in a calendar planning exercise for the next year so we can make sure that we're staying on top of everything.

I decided that this would be a good exercise when I realized that my first two weeks of January are nearly entirely booked with meetings already. I know there are really important projects I need to focus on in January that will require me to sit, think and write for uninterrupted periods of time, so I realized I needed to be more proactive about my calendar.  I'm trying to block out periods of work time in in advance so I'm not totally booked in meetings and unable to work on long term projects.

Here's what we did:

1) We took three pieces of chart paper, and wrote the months of the year out on them (four months per piece of chart paper).

2) We got stacks of post-it notes and different colored sharpies. Each pen color represents a work stream (Fundraising, School Programs, Internships, Strategic Planing, and HR-- there might be more additions soon).

3) We wrote the major dates for each work stream and posted it on the chart paper.  We are using post-it notes rather than writing directly on the chart paper so that we can add/remove dates as necessary.

4) As we went through each work stream, I began to block off time in my calendar to work on the projects I'll need to focus on through out the year.

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This calendar will stay hanging in my office through out the year so that everyone has a visual reference of the bigger picture of things.

We'll see how it goes! I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Want to read more on time management? Check out this article Becca shared with me.

My office wall

The hustle never stops

Our hackathon last Saturday was awesome. You can read all about the day and our students projects here.

We were lucky to have Fred Wilson stop by and check out our student projects. During his visit, we had a long conversation about fundraising. Fred blogged about it here.

One thing that really stuck out to me about our conversation was that strategies we use and challenges we face with fundraising are incredibly similar. The biggest difference between us is that Fred has many more connections than me and has the ability to access people that I am not able to at this point in my life and career.

Fred is still hustling though.  He's getting out there, pounding the pavement, getting his pitch down and doing his best to figure out how to inspire people to get involved with computer science education. He's doing the long, hard and necessary work for something he believes in.

This took me by surprise. I think very highly of Fred, and kind of automatically assumed that his reputation and credibility would make fundraising a cake walk.  The reality is that it's not and will never be.  People like Fred are so successful because they never stop hustling.

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Speaking of fundraising - ScriptEd is nearly half way to its holiday fundraising goal. Please consider making a donation here!

Tomorrow is the most wonderful day of the year: ScriptEd's Hackathon!

Computer Science Education Week is coming to a close, and we'll be giving it a great send off with our Hackathon tomorrow.  Our event has grown so much over the last few years that for the first time ever the event will take place in two locations at the same time: Google and Microsoft. Students will spend the day building projects in teams and will compete for prizes at the end of the day in front of a panel of very esteemed judges.

Another highlight for ScriptEd this week was helping to open the NASDAQ exchange on Wednesday morning with other CS Education champions. I've included some photos from the event below.

Stay tuned next week for updates on our Hackathon winners. And if you haven't donated to our holiday fundraising campaign already, please do! You can donate by clicking here. We're less than $1,000 away from reaching our weekly goal of $10,000. If we get there by Saturday, I've made a promise to dress up in 1984 apparel and share it with our mailing list and social media outlets. Have a great weekend!

$50,000 by the New Year!

Yesterday we released our ScriptEd annual report for Giving Tuesday, and launched our holiday fundraising campaign.  Our goal is to raise $50,000 -- the same amount we raised last year -- by midnight on New Years Eve.

We had a great start! Yesterday we raised about $3,000.  I'm competing in the New York City Triathlon this July as part of my fundraiser.  You can donate here.

This is why you should consider supporting us and making an investment in the future of the tech work force (even Karlie Kloss is on board!):

When Liz and I started ScriptEd in 2012, we had collectively worked with nearly a thousand students from low-income communities. None of these students had access to computer science or software development education in their schools or communities.

This was (and still is) a problem. In the US, we don’t have the capacity to meet current labor market demands in the tech industry. By the year 2020, 1 million jobs will go unfilled in the tech industry.

This isn't just a labor market problem - it's also an equity problem. The tech industry is wildly undiverse. The US is not doing a good enough job preparing students from underrepresented backgrounds for careers in technology, and they must be represented in the field. The creators of technology hold our futures in their code. Existing technology defines what we can do and how we interact. New technologies define the parameters -- so to speak -- of everything.

By teaching students from all backgrounds computer science, we will build a future in which our technology creators are fueled by a diversity of experience and thought.

That's why we started ScriptEd.

With your support, ScriptEd can reach more volunteers, teach more classes, partner with more schools, identify more mentors, and arrange more paid internships.

Even if you can't donate, we can still use your help. Tell your software developer friends about ScriptEd and ask them if they're interested in volunteering. Or, post one of these blurbs below to Twitter or Facebook.

• I’m proud to support @ScriptEdOrg, teaching #NYC students to code. You can help too by donating: bit.ly/1NDOPZj
• How can you give back this holiday season? Make your mark for #NYC #tech students & donate to @ScriptEdOrg! bit.ly/1NDOPZj

Thanks for your support!

Welcome, Kate!

Even though it's a short, it's been a very busy one for ScriptEd!  We're gearing up for our holiday fundraising campaign, planning our hackathon, and we gained a new team member: Kate Holzman!  Kate is our new Corporate Partnerships Manager.

Before joining the ScriptEd team, Kate was the Connecticut Director for literacy nonprofit Read to a Child, where she built partnerships with a wide variety of companies and foundations around the state and coordinated over 100 corporate volunteers. In addition to her nonprofit work, she spent several years as an ESL teacher and teacher trainer, at home and abroad.

Kate holds a Master's in Community Development and a BA in International Development & Social Change, both from Clark University, and completed a post-grad year as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar in Argentina (University of Buenos Aires). She is a textile and handicrafts enthusiast, and previously ran her own small fair trade label.

Welcome to the team, Kate! And Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Voice to Text Errors

As a result of my hand surgery, I've been using the voice to text on my computer to write a lot of my emails.  Below I am including some of the funny translations.

My hand hurts a lot right now.  I've joked with my staff a few times that I feel like my brain is in my hands.  Its's a lot harder for me to get work done when I can only use my hands for a couple hours a day before I have to call it quits and ask for help.  I'll have the pins taken back out of my fingers in about three weeks.

In the meantime I'm looking for someone to be my 'right-hand' --someone who can basically write emails for me, help me use the computer, and take notes for me in meetings.  If you know someone looking for temporary work please let me know.  I think it might be a really cool way for someone interested in learning about all that goes into running a fast growing start-up nonprofit.  Email me at maurya@scripted.org with your phone number and i'll give you a call back - its much easier for me to speak than type right now!

And now my speech to text translations!  I didn't include as many as i hoped because copy/paste is hard right now :/  ......


Me: ScriptEd Hackathon Judging Information
Voice to text: Dad have fun judging me information

Me: You can just sign up and go
Voice to Text: you can just Final bingo

Me: I look forward to seeing you
Voice to Text: I will report thing you

Me: Becca
Voice to Text: Fuck

Me: Becca
Voice to Text: Baccha

Me: Becca
Voice to Text: Back I

Me: Hi Vika
Voice to Text: Hyvee cup

Me: Did you hear anything back about the last newsletter?
Voice to Text: Did you hear anything back from Austin's letters

Story of Last Saturday + Reflections

Everyone keeps asking me about what happened last Saturday that made me look like this, so I'm writing and reflecting on it here for anyone who is curious.

I was competing in a Draft Legal Sprint World Championship Qualifying race on Saturday in Cleremont, Florida.  Most triathlons are not draft legal, meaning cyclists have to make sure there is lots of space between each other on the bike portion.  In this race, close riding is encouraged -- it helps cyclists go faster and makes the race more like a game of chess.  This was my first draft legal race.

The race started well. I was one of the first people to finish the swim, and therefore one of the first on the bike course.  I started riding my bike, and almost immediately a woman from a younger age group was behind me, drafting off of me. There were a few riders in front of us, so I asked her if she wanted to work together to catch them. She took a turn riding in front of me, but almost immediately started to slow down. I got dangerously close to her wheel, tried to hit the brakes, but they didn't stop me quickly enough  (if you've been following my triathlon stories on this blog, you'll know that brake issues have been a persistent problem for me this season).  I went down really hard. Fortunately she did not go over and kept riding.

For a few seconds I considered getting back on my bike, but the amount of blood running down my face convinced me otherwise.  Watching the reactions of the riders behind me as they passed confirmed my decision to stop racing.  In retrospect, it was totally crazy for me to think that I could have kept riding.

The medics found me walking my bike back to the race start, picked me up and cleaned me up a bit, and eventually I made my way to the ER thanks to a mom of another athlete at the race. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the ER getting shuttled back and forth for X-rays and CT scans, and by the end of the day had 10 stitches in my forehand and cast on my hand for a broken finger and tons of cuts, scrapes and bruises all over my body.  I did not have a concussion.  I was able to fly back to NYC that night.

I'm getting my stitches out today, and I'm having surgery on my finger tomorrow.  Compared to what could have happened, I think I'm pretty lucky. I'll recover quickly. About 8 other triathletes ended up in the ER with me after the race, some were brought in on body boards, and some lost consciousness when they got into their accidents.  All of it happened on the bike portion.  There were only about 200 people in the race, so it was a pretty bloody event.  

At the same time, the accident has definitely made me see the world from a slightly different perspective in the last few days. This is not my first time dealing with a major medical emergency (either for myself or for someone else), but it was a great reminder of a bunch of things:

1. We are incredibly reliant on other people: I am an independent person and like being self sufficient, but also have a clear understanding that almost everything I've been able to do in my life is a direct result of other people helping me. After an accident, this idea becomes even more important. Obviously having medical professionals help me make sure my body heals well is important, but also having people to help me do things like take out the trash and go grocery shopping makes a world of difference in this kind of situation.  I'm so, so grateful to everyone who has helped me and sent me well-wishes.
2. Some people don't understand what "urgent"means: I had to reschedule a bunch of meetings this week to make time for doctors appointments and to give myself time to rest and recuperate. Almost everyone was really understanding of this.  Some people were not.  For example, I asked one person if I could reschedule a  call for next week, and he insisted that I speak with him this week because it was 'urgent.'  This surprised me, so I made room for him in my schedule only to discover that he was just seeking my advice on a business idea he had. This is not an urgent matter.  Things like running payroll or an emergency with one of our students, volunteers or staff members are urgent and need my attention.  I understand that working with a sense of urgency is important, but it's also important to have empathy and a sense of priorities -- when someone says they are having a family or medical emergency, believe them. The same idea applies when you see someone else in an urgent situation -- whatever you were planning to do is probably not as urgent as stopping and taking the time to help someone who needs it.  Back in 2010 I got hit by a cyclist who was looking at his iPhone instead of what was in front of him while I was running on the West Side Highway. The cyclist stopped for about 30 seconds, gave me 20 bucks and biked away despite the fact that I was very clearly hurt. A person skateboarding nearby stopped what he was doing and made sure I was OK, called an ambulance for me and waited until the ambulance got there. Be the skateboarder, not the cyclist. Whatever you had plans to do are not as urgent as making sure someone is OK.  
3. Being super athletic does not always mean being super healthy:  What I do puts my body at risk in so many ways. Not only do I greatly increase my chances of getting hurt by doing triathlons, but the amount of training I've done both for triathlons (now) and swimming (when I was younger) have caused other medical issues for me  -- from overuse injuries to amenorrhea. There's a delicate balance between being healthy and being unhealthy and sometimes it's difficult to find the happy medium.

Again, I'm glad I'm OK. It's really not that bad, and I'm so grateful to everyone who has been helpful.  I'm excited for next season.

Sticker on the Forehead for Responsibility

We are really lucky to have Josh Silverman as the President of ScriptEd's Board of Directors. He's a terrific mentor to me and brings a wealth of valuable experience to ScriptEd.

 Josh and I have been chatting a lot lately about how best to manage the growth of ScriptEd's team. One piece of advice he gave me in a recent conversation was the idea of "sticker on the forehead" -- that I should hold one person accountable for an outcome or goal rather than a group of people. For example, if I broke out the big parts of ScriptEd -- volunteer recruitment, curriculum development, volunteer training, fundraising, etc., I should be able to write down each topic on a sticky note and (figuratively) stick it to the forehead of the person on our team who is responsible.

This might sound like a very obvious piece of advice (it did to me as soon as I heard him say it), but it's something I had never really thought about before. As soon as he said it, it made a ton of sense to me.

 I've always believed that giving ownership to people makes them more bought into what ever it is they're working on. Giving one person ultimate responsibility for an outcome helps them develop ownership over the goal. When it's not clear who is ultimately responsible, things can fall through the cracks more easily.

 We're still doing some big picture thinking and team structure for the future, but I hope to incorporate this into ScriptEd's work soon.

 

Lap Swim Etiquette and (possible?) Gender Politics

At the beginning of this year, I started lap swimming more regularly.  First I started swimming at the Dodge YMCA, and when I moved to South Slope, I switched to the Prospect Park Y.

When I swim, more so than any other type of exercise I do (ie, biking and running), I feel like I face a lot of gender bias.  I have always tried to make sure that I'm not being overly sensitive to people's reactions to me in the pool, but the last few weeks have made me not want to keep my mouth shut any more.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I'm the fastest person in the pool the majority of the time that I go swimming. This isn't true for biking and running.

I'm starting to get the sense that a lot of people, and especially other women, view me as aggressive when I swim.  I touch people's feet to give them a notice that I want to go ahead (this is a typical lap-swim etiquette signal for wanting to pass)**. If people don't stop to let me go ahead after two or three laps -- which is really more than enough time -- I'll swim around them.  If I'm swimming around them, I'll always make sure that I pass quickly and safely. I've probably swum laps for more days in my life than I haven't, so I'm very aware of lap swim etiquette.

I've been scolded and told by other (usually female) swimmers that I'm in a communal swim lane, and that we all need to share the lane. I always circle swim if there are more than two swimmers in the lane, and I don't feel like I'm swimming aggressively, so I'm kind of dumbfounded by their reactions.  I'm just left to believe that they just want me to swim slower, or that maybe they don't understand the rules of lap swimming as well as I do.

I should also add that I always try very hard to go to the pool when it's not crowded to avoid these interactions, but sometimes the pool is just full.

The reason I think there might be some gender bias in their reactions is that when I see men do the same things I do -- tap people's feet and swim around people -- and they don't get the same feedback and reactions that I get.  In fact, when there is a swimmer who is faster than me (so far those have only been male swimmers), they get a lot of praise for their speed.  I haven't seen any get scolded.

It's also possible that I am just being sensitive and not seeing it happen, but it's something I've been hyper aware of in the last few weeks. I just am not seeing people react to men doing the same things that I'm doing in the same way people react to me.

There are lots of studies that show that as men get more successful, people like them more, while when women get more successful, people like them less.  I am starting to think this might be playing out at the pool for me.

Even if this has nothing to do with gender, no one ever became a better athlete by staying at a steady speed in an effort to please everyone around them. I have goals I'm working towards. I'm going to keep trying to swim faster and faster, and if I need to, letting people know that I need to go ahead of them.

And of course I'll leave you with my favorite ad of all time (I've posted it before), that gets at some of my feelings on this...

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**After sharing a draft of this post with two of my ScriptEd colleagues, I've discovered the foot-touching thing is something that might freak most people out, and that perhaps the people I encounter in the pool don't know this etiquette rule.

Work Life Balance / Running a Start Up / Burn out

I've been thinking a lot about work life balance lately -- not only for me, but for my team, too.

It's incredibly difficult to learn how to balance your life when you're running a start up. I didn't do a great job of it for the first three years of ScriptEd's existence.  I worked nearly from the time I woke up in the morning to the moment I went to sleep, and all through the weekends. I stopped seeing my friends as much. Even when I was training for triathlons, I would send emails from my phone while riding on my bike trainer.  I took almost no vacation. And, silly me, I thought it wouldn't catch-up with me.

From the start of my career, I worked in environments that promoted this type of non-stop work, first as a teacher with Teach for America, and then at a top tier law firm.  In TFA, our motto (at least while I was a corps member) was "relentless pursuit of results" -- meaning, do whatever it takes, no matter how many grueling hours you have to work, to get results.  At the law firm, long hours were celebrated. The more hours you work, the more hours get billed to clients -- it was good for business.

Luckily for me, I have a high tolerance for long hours and hard work.  I was also incredibly lucky to do work in which I was completely invested, so that helped a lot too.

Everyone has their limits, though. Running my own company has helped me learn about how this work style can be detrimental to both me individually and to teams at large.

Starting in the Spring, I felt myself coming close to the edge of burn out.  I'm not sure that I've ever really experienced burn out before. I started to feel tired, less inspired and borderline apathetic about my work.

This is NOT a good place to be if you're running an organization where your first priority and duty is to inspire other people to join you in working on your company's mission. I felt ashamed for feeling this way -- I have a great job and believe strongly in the work we're doing at ScriptEd. It took me a while to admit to even my closest friends that I felt this way, mostly because I felt tremendously guilty about my feelings.

After several conversations with people, I now recognize that it's really not surprising that this happened. I'm working on achieving more balance in my life now. The breakneck pace is just not sustainable in the long term.

I'm sure there is still a lot of work I need to do, but I started making small changes that have been helping. I think I probably just need a solid two week vacation (something I've never done ever...), but I'm not there yet.  I'm working up to it.

I know I need to do a better job at balance for both myself and for my team -- both so I can be an effective leader, and so that I can set an example of healthy working habits.

Here are some things I've been doing to try to get more balance in my life and to avoid burnout:

1. Writing: Committing to writing on a regular basis grounds me and helps me reflect.
2. Reading, watching and listening to things that have nothing to do with work:  This has two benefits -- it gives me a break from working, and it helps me think of new ideas.  Staying in the "ScriptEd bubble" makes it difficult to think up solutions to problems.
3. Leaving work at the end of the work day: If I don't have a night event, I try to get out of the office by 5:00 or 5:30pm. I often feel guilty about doing this, but I know that it's one way to prevent myself from overworking. It also sets the tone for the rest of the office that it's ok to go home and take personal time.  It forces me to work more efficiently while I'm in the office, too.
5. Not carrying my work cell phone on the weekends:  My work cell-phone stays in my backpack all weekend.  I still check my work emails (maybe I shouldn't be?).
6. Joining a community completely unrelated to work: I've written about this before, but joining the Brooklyn Tri Club was one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. It's a great community of people who live near me, and who don't talk to me about work. I see people from the tri club nearly every day.

Discipline

As an athlete, I know a lot about what it means to be disciplined.  I started training and competing at a very young age, and as a result I think I’m very good at being disciplined in the way that I approach most things in life. 

Discipline is becoming an increasingly important virtue at ScriptEd. The attention around computer science education in New York City means that we have a lot of great opportunities coming our way. We are positioned to expand rapidly and several directions.

At the same time, we have to stay disciplined and true to our long-term vision and values.  It’s tempting to make big goals, like saying we’ll teach a million kids to code or solve the entire problem in NYC in the next few years.  But for us, that’s just not realistic. 

Some organizations will take the “spray and pray” approach – for example,  getting millions of kids to do an hour’s worth of coding and hoping that it will stick with a few who choose to pursue computer science. These programs are valuable because they bring tons of attention to the issue and give kids an introduction to computer science, but this isn’t who we are at ScriptEd.  We are attempting to make a deep impact in the communities we serve. Our students need so much more than just learning how to code. They need access to the tech community, mentors, and other resources to help make them successful.  

We are also trying to change the mindset and practices of the tech community. Tech professionals working in underserved schools and building relationships will result, we think, in breaking down unconscious bias and getting talented young developers (primarily of color) from low income backgrounds into companies.  Through building relationships with their colleagues and supervisors, our students are changing the perceptions of what a software developer looks like. 

This all take deliberate, intentional and disciplined work. It means we must continue to develop deep relationships with schools, students, and people from the tech community. It means we need to grow at a rate where we can continually increase the quality of our program while serving more students at the same time.

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Thanks to Becca Novak for her contributions to this post!

Adjunct Computer Science Teachers

At ScriptEd, we are often asked about whether we will get into the business of training classroom teachers to teach computer science.

I don't know the answer to this question yet, but as an organization made up almost entirely of former teachers, I think think this idea makes us cringe a little bit.  Most trainings we experienced when were teachers were not very helpful, and most of the teachers we know do not think highly of professional development opportunities.

Teachers have a lot of work to do. They teach all day long and then have to grade assignments, lesson plan, call parents, attend meetings, etc. Teaching is, hands down, the hardest thing I've ever done.  It's more difficult than starting and running a company and training for triathlons at the same time. When I was teaching, any type of professional development training afterwork hours was a huge burden and mostly felt like a waste of time.

Asking teachers with full schedules to attend trainings is tough. Asking a teacher to learn an entirely new subject (computer science) well enough to teach it is infinitely more difficult. Further, 40-50% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years, so even when young teachers are trained to teach computer science, many will end up leaving and taking that knowledge with them.  This is especially true for computer science teachers -- ed tech companies (and tech companies in general) are looking for talent.

Of course there are some teachers who will leap at the chance to learn computer science, and for those folks CS trainings are great if those teachers are supported with the necessary resources.  It's also important to incentivize these teachers appropriately so that they'll stay in the classroom.

So if ScriptEd ever does a training, it will be incredibly efficient, productive and useful, and will have an eye towards keeping teachers in the classroom.

In the meantime...

What other alternatives are there, then, to get more computer science teachers into the classroom other than training current, in-service teachers?

I've always loved the idea of an adjunct high school teacher role. ScriptEd volunteers are essentially adjunct teachers.  They teach a couple of times a week in addition to their jobs. This allows our volunteers to experience a lot of the joys of teaching without getting bogged down or overwhelmed. We now have volunteers that are in their 4th year of teaching with us, and these volunteers have become very good teachers.  Good enough, in my opinion, to be 'real' teachers.  Unfortunately, however, it's not possible to get our volunteers certified as teachers if they want to continue only teaching part-time.

I've been working with a couple of my ScriptEd team members to figure out whether we can make certification a reality for our volunteers.  It looks like an uphill battle. In order to get an alternate certification, our volunteers would need to become full-time teachers, which most are not able or willing to do.

We are going to continue to look for ways to figure out how to do this, but bureaucracy is real and in the mean time, we're doing what we need to get our kids the CS education they need to thrive in the 21st Century.

Three Things I've Learned from Blogging Every (Work) Day

It turns out that it's really hard not to blog every day. It's a habit for me now, and scaling back has been difficult.  I'm not sure how to adjust to longer and more in-depth pieces yet. I'm still trying to find the right balance.

So in the meantime, I'm going to share somethings I've learned from blogging every work day for the last four months.

1. I never know what's going to be a hit.  One of my most read blog posts is about wallpaper. I was having writers block one morning, went into the WeWork bathroom, looked at the walls, got annoyed at what I saw and decided to write about it. The post went viral. I've also written topics that I've spent a lot of time and thought on that end up not getting read all that much.  My top five most read posts this year are: (1) Teaching Kids to Fail through Code (by far my most read piece ever... by like 4x any other post), (2) We Need Female Volunteers, (3) Trust Yo'Self / Imposter Syndrome, (4) WeWork Wallpaper, and (5) Wallpaper Update.
2. I never know who I'm going to reach.  ScriptEd has gotten donations and new volunteers through this blog.  I've been asked to speak more as a result of this blog. We even got the bathroom wallpaper taken down as a because of this blog. The last few months have turned me into a believer in blogging.  It works.  For people who are working at nonprofits and/or on social missions, I  couldn't recommend it more -- it's a  free and easy way to amplify your work and mission.
3. There is always something to write about. Writing every day isn't always easy.  There have been a lot of days where I've had no idea what to write.  Something always materialized, though. The habit of writing every day forces me through writers block.

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I'm off to the Bay Area tomorrow for a Computer Science Education conference, and will be in LA next weekend.  If you're around, let me know!

Scaling back

Last night, one of our volunteers mentioned to me that he really enjoyed my blog, and especially my earlier blog posts.  I tend to agree with him. This is something I've been thinking a lot about the last few weeks.

Beginning this May, I revived my blog and started publishing something every day. It's been a terrific practice to help me reflect and process things that are happening to me and ScriptEd.

I often find myself, however, staring at my computer and forcing myself to write down whatever I can in 10-20 minutes. There are a lot of other things I want to write about, but they'll take more than 10 or 20 minutes to get down, so they've been sitting on the back burner for a while.

Starting next week, I'm going to scale back this blog so I can focus on writing the things that take me more than 10 minutes to complete.  I will aim to publish something at least one time per week (possibly more, but I'll hold myself accountable to 1x per week). I'll still probably continue to write every day as a personal exercise, but it won't appear on this blog.  I hope that scaling back will allow me more time to work on some more thoughtful pieces. We'll see how it goes.

Happy Friday.

We Finally Started Using Slack

I know we're late to the party, but we finally started using Slack at ScriptEd a couple of weeks ago.  It looks like it's here to stay.

Over the summer, we made a huge effort to reduce the number of emails we were sending internally.  We were spending way too much time and energy in our inboxes and not getting enough real work done. We started off by using Asana, which has been a terrific. (Read more here).

Slack takes it to another level.  My email traffic has slowed to a trickle. It's great.

A lot of people tried to describe how Slack works to me before I started using it, and I always felt slightly confused afterwards. I'll try to summarize here, but can't promise that you'll totally get it if you've never used it: Slack is a communication platform for teams.  You can categorize conversations into different streams ('channels'). It aggregates conversations as information, and is searchable.  Do a google search for "Slack Reviews" to learn more.

These two efficiency tools have reduced the number of emails I receive to my work address every day from roughly 200 to 20 (This is just INBOX emails -- not newsletters / noncritical emails that go to the other tabs of my gmail mail box).  This works out to tons of saved time.

Check out these tools! You won't regret it.

Growing a Community

One thing that surprises and impresses many people about ScriptEd is our strong connections with the NYC tech industry. We have over 100 company partners who lend us space, donate money and hire our students as interns over the summer.  Without our industry partners, we would be unable to do the work that we do.

I am constantly asked about how we are able to so successfully make this happen.  When ScriptEd started, Liz and I had basically no connections in the tech industry, so it wasn't just a matter of going through a contact list and calling it a day.  Our approach was and continues to be incredibly grassroots.  

Occasionally we work through company corporate social responsibility departments, but we are far more successful with getting people involved with us through community events and platforms.  The majority of our volunteer recruitment is through meet up group, like BrooklynJS, QueensJS and ManhattanJS, through industry leaders blogging about us, and through word of mouth. Our industry volunteers are the most important part to making our program work -- they have the technical expertise, know what is relevant in the industry, and can be advocates in their workplaces. They are the key to our company partnerships.

This means we spend a lot of time, energy and resources on making sure the volunteer experience is as good as it can be.  We try to strike a balance between providing the right level of support to our volunteers while also allowing them to take ownership over their classrooms.  We make our community more cohesive by holding social events throughout the year.  We even have a line in our budget for volunteer retention -- money that program managers can use to take our volunteers out for coffee and afterwork events for check-in meetings.

All of this helps us grow a community of people and companies who believe in our work and mission.

Last Tri of the Season: 5 Days Away

On Sunday, I'll compete in the Westchester Triathlon - my last triathlon of the 2015 season.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've started working with a triathlon coach to up my game for the 2016 season. I've followed a new work out plan for the past six weeks, and I'm noticing a lot of changes already.  I'm going faster on the bike and the run. My pants are getting a little bit too big for me. I've spent a lot of time feeling really tired and beat up as a result of all the work, and I've needed to re-learn the importance of stretching, but I feel confident that it's paying off big time.

I'm also coming to the end of my first season training with the Brooklyn Tri Club.  I really love being part of the team. Going to practices in the morning before work help make me happy and motivated for the rest of the day.  I joke with my non-triathlete friends that it feels like I've finally found my people (that is: people who don't think I'm completely insane for getting up early / doing crazy workouts / competing for fun).  It's a great community.

This season has been a terrific reminder of the fun that comes with being part of a team, the importance of coaching, and of my epic and continuing love affair with the sport.

Tough Stuff

I've written about adjusting on the fly before.  It seems like the theme of the last few weeks for a handful of people I know is "sometimes things don't go according to plan."

... And that's OK.

A surprising number of my friends and family have been going through really difficult things recently. As someone who has been thrown a couple of crazy life curve balls in the last few years, I am really feeling for them right now. Tough stuff just sucks all around, and I hope I can be a good friend.

I don't have all the answers, but here are some things I've learned from going through tough stuff:

1. You will become more emotionally resilient as a result of this...  if you allow yourself to do so.  You can either chose to let the situation control you and your mental state, or you can control it. You are ultimately responsible for your own happiness, and need to be empowered to do what needs to be done to keep yourself happy and emotionally healthy.
2. The situation could be a lot worse.  If you're reading this blog, your life is probably relatively good compared to most people on the planet. Keep things in perspective. 
3. Someone else has gone through what you're going through.  Ok, maybe no one has gone through exactly what you've gone through, but there are a lot of people out there so chances are that someone has had a similar situation. Don't be afraid to talk things out with your friends -- it's really helpful, and you'll be surprised to learn how many people go through similar things and just don't talk about it. 
4. No one has a perfect life. 

Hitting the Road

I am traveling a ton over the next month.  Here's what's on the docket:

• September 22, 23: Boston (Speaking at Boston College Entrepreneurship Center)
• October 1, 2: San Francisco (for a Computer Science Education Conference)
• October 3, 4: Los Angeles
• October 14-16: Houston (for  Grace Hooper)
• October 23-25: Kingston, NY (for Catskills Conf)

I'm excited to spread the word about ScriptEd and the work we're doing.  I'm also looking forward to meeting new people and sharing ideas and best practices.

Are you going to be in any of these places when I am? Let me know!

So much attention!

The Mayor's announcement yesterday has generated a tremendous amount of attention for ScriptEd.  In the last day and a half, we received more volunteer applications than we normally receive in a month. It's clear that the NYC Tech Community is excited to help be part of the efforts to bring computer science education to all students.

We've also had a number of companies reach out to us about getting involved.  If you want your company to get involved in our efforts, please email us at info@scripted.org.

It also means that we have A TON of work to do.  We're excited to do it, and are ready to make a huge impact this school year.

CS Education for All NYC Students! Get Involved!

Today, Mayor Bill De Blasio will announce a 10-year deadline to offer computer science education to all New York City Public schools students. Read more about this announcement here.  

With more than 120 volunteers teaching in 30 under served New York City high schools this fall, ScriptEd is proud of its efforts towards bringing computer science education to students across our city.


We envision a future in which students from all walks of life have access to the technical skills and experiences they need to access careers in the tech industry. 


We applaud Mayor De Blasio for his leadership, and will continue to work with the New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education and the booming tech community in NYC to help make this goal a reality.

If you want to get involved, you can volunteer with us. Please find more information here, and submit an application here.


Onwards,
Maurya + The ScriptEd Team

Welcome Tashay!

We're so excited to welcome Tashay Green to our team as a Program Manager!  Today is her first day with ScriptEd.  Here's some more information on the newest member of our all star team:

After graduating from Howard University with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, Tashay became certified to teach through The New Teacher Project in the District of Columbia. In Washington D.C., she taught high school biology and conceptual physics before relocating to New York City. In New York City she continued to teach high school science until joining ScriptEd as a Program Manager. Tashay is deeply passionate about education and committed to achieving equity in the sciences for those that have been historically underserved.

Amongst her favorite things are dark chocolate, reading, and listening to podcasts.

Today is NOT a Sad Desk Lunch Day!

We have a running joke in the ScriptEd office is about sad desk lunches.  Like so many people, ScriptEd's staff has sad desk lunches way too much.  (Watch the video).

Today is not a sad desk lunch day.  It's gorgeous out.  We ate outside.

We really should do this more often.

 Get outside!

New Goal: Inbox Zero Fridays

Anyone who has ever worked closely with me knows that I keep my inbox pretty clear and I tend to respond to things very quickly. It's so extreme that the last time I took a day off work to compete in a triathlon, my staff thought that I was responding to emails while I was on my bike and racing (I wasn't!). If my inbox ever has more than 20 emails, it means I'm having an incredibly busy day or week.  Currently I have 9 emails in my work email inbox, and one email in my personal inbox.

Anything that is in my inbox is basically a glaring "To-Do" that I have not dealt with yet. I strive to get those emails out of my inbox and into my to-do list, but unfortunately some of the emails can't simply be put on a to do list.

I think by holding myself to a Friday rule (and not an every day "inbox zero" rule) will help me feel less compelled to triage an email whenever it comes in.  I have until Friday to make sure my inbox is clean.  It also means I can leave work on Friday, hopefully, without feeling the need to check my email for a bit.

Happy Friday, everyone!

"Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male"

A friend shared the blog post "Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male" by Michelle G., an undergraduate student at MIT, and I just finished reading it.  I loved it and I think you should read it too.   

I'm sharing the excerpted part my friend sent to me as a teaser here as well:

"Soon after participants described themselves with either the male- or female-associated traits, they were asked to take a mental rotation test presented as independent of the first part of the study, supposedly to measure their personal spatial aptitude. 

On this mental rotation test, women who were “primed” with the female identity scored an average of 3.86 on the exercise, compared to the female-primed males’ average of 5.14. Okay, expected. But then when primed with the male text, women scored an average of 5.49, while men scored 5.53… wait a second, what?  

As it turns out, there is zero statistically significant gender difference in mental rotation ability after test-takers are asked to imagine themselves as stereotypical men for a few minutes. None. An entire standard deviation of female under-performance is negated on this condition, just as a man’s performance is slightly hindered if he instead imagines himself as a woman. 

Similar findings have been shown regarding racial identities: for example, asking black students to indicate their race before a test both significantly increases their anxiety and lowers their test scores. Black students’ performance under a "diagnostic" condition is improved when the test administrator is black as opposed to white (that 2.9% black MIT faculty tho) and black participants taking what was actually an IQ test scored better when the same questions were presented as a test of “hand-eye coordination.” Unsurprisingly, the same stereotype threat effects that were initially found for black test-takers were also found to apply to Latinos and students of low socioeconomic status."

This piece is so important to keep at the forefront of our minds in our work with students at ScriptEd.  Stereotype threats can negatively impact performance. It's so important that we remind our students that they are smart, capable and talented, and to celebrate their hard work and accomplishments.

Happy First Day of School!

Today is the first day of the 2015-2016 school year for New York City students, and the fourth school year for ScriptEd!

This school year we're partnering with 30 schools and engaging more than 120 volunteers from the NYC Tech community to teach our classes.

ScriptEd is kicking off its first classes through September and early October.  We're excited to get started!

Happy International Literacy Day!

Today is International Literacy Day, and tomorrow is the first day of school for NYC Public School students.

At ScriptEd, we believe that coding is a form of literacy.  We live in a society that is increasingly shaped and controlled by technology, and we believe that students should have the means and capabilities to create that technology and not just be consumers of it.

Read more on this in my article on "Learning to Code from the Otherside of the Digital Divide."

Kids: Don't forget to set your alarm clocks tomorrow.

ScriptEd Alumni

This school year, ScriptEd will roll out an Alumni Program.  Our staff had a meeting today to plan for all of the ways we'll engage our alums over next year.

Our ultimate goal is that our former students will enter into careers in technology, so we'll have a lot of programming planned to connect them back to our classrooms and the technology industry in NYC.

Have any cool opportunities or ideas for our alums? Send them our way at info@scripted.org.

...and happy Labor Day! I'm headed home for a wedding tomorrow, so I'll be blogging again as of Tuesday.

Happy 1-Year with ScriptEd, Joliz!

A year ago today, Joliz Cedeño joined ScriptEd as a Program Manager.  Her first day was crazy.  It was the first day of school, and another one of our team members was out on a personal emergency.  With out missing a beat and with almost no preparation, Joliz covered a class within the first hours of the job. Her first months here were crazy and tiring (as they were for all of us).

We've changed so much since then! Things feel calmer now. We have a better sense of what we need to do at the beginning of the school year and have contingency plans for when unexpected things happen. We have more team members to rely on.

We wouldn't have gotten here, though, without the hard work Joliz, (and Becca and Tom) put in over the last school year. Joliz has become an integral part of our team and has made a huge impact on our community and culture.

Congratulations, Joliz! We love you.  Happy 1 Year!

Joliz with Tom, Rebecca and Chinnell!

Advanced Courses at ScriptEd

We're really excited to launch a new program model at ScriptEd this school year for our Advanced students.

Students who have already completed at least one year of ScriptEd classes will have the opportunity to take classes once a week in technology companies like Google and Foursquare. The courses will be taught by developers from those companies who will volunteer their time.  The curriculum covers advanced web development concepts.

Check out our advanced curriculum here, and if you're company is interested in hosting a class, please be sure to contact us at info@scripted.org.

Two Weeks of New Workouts

It's been a bit since I've done a triathlon post.

I had a great National Championship race three weeks ago (see the caption here).  This summer, I trained for triathlons more seriously than I have in past summers and after the race, I felt even more motivated to commit myself to trying to make the world championship next season. I think with the right amount of training and focus, I'm completely capable of doing it.

So I'm going for it.  I've started working with a coach, and have done crazy amounts of working out in the last two weeks -- definitely the most intense training I've done in the last 10 years. I'm really tired and hungry all the time, but I am already starting to notice that my body is changing and adapting.  My running is getting a little faster.  I am noticing new muscles in my legs that I didn't know I had.

This also means a bit of a lifestyle change for me. Normally during this time of year I start easing off of my workouts and returning to a more "normal" life -- one more similar to my non-triathlete friends who get to stay up and get up late on weekends and take vacations that don't revolve around training schedules.

But I think it's worth it. I think I would really regret not making my best effort at this -- I might never have the opportunity again in my life, so I think I've got to try now :)

Getting Ready for the School Year

There is almost no time of year when there is no programming for students at ScriptEd.  We run classes during school year, and run our internships during the summer.  Right now is one of those rare times.

The past couple of weeks has been a great opportunity for us to spend time preparing for the school year. That means we're busy recruiting and training new volunteers, preparing our welcome packets for our new students, finalizing letters to send home to parents, confirming our partnerships with schools and forming our volunteer teaching teams. We're just a week and a half away from the start of the year, and I feel like we're more on top of things this year than ever before.  It feels good and exciting.

Here's some photo documentation of the process in our office:

Our Volunteer Placements Wall -- This is where we assign volunteers to schools

Our intern Rebecca is getting our files ready

We Need Female Volunteers!

The school year is starting in two weeks, and we are in the middle of recruiting and training 120+ software developers to volunteer in our classrooms.  

We have are absolutely determined to have at least one female volunteer in each of our ScriptEd classrooms this school year.  Our students need female role models in the tech industry.

Do you know any female coders? Can you help us spread the word?  Send them a link to our website, or direct them to our volunteer information page.  If you're interested, you can fill out a volunteer application here.

Come to Catskills Conf!

I am really excited to have the opportunity to speak at the first ever Catskills Conf  at the end of October.  Catskills Conf is a gathering of Technologists and Creators at a retreat in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Its goal is to bring people together to be inspired by a diverse program and the landscape of the Hudson Valley. 

Check out their website and consider joining! They are capping the number of attendees at 130 people so it should be a small enough group for folks to meet like minded people over the weekend. And the location is BEAUTIFUL!   

Treat Employees like Customers

I'm embracing a new work philosophy: To treat ScriptEd's employees as if they are my most important customers.

Over the weekend I spoke with a friend who has been running a company for a long time, and he mentioned that this was one of the most important lessons he's learned. Hearing this idea was a lightbulb moment for me.

My job continues to change everyday, and recently I've found myself spending more time than ever before listening, delegating, and managing. Now, my primary responsibility is to help ScriptEd's employees do their jobs as well as they can. The best way I can do that is to make sure the team is happy, healthy, fulfilled and productive. They are the boots on the ground carrying out ScriptEd's mission and maintaining our relationships with schools, students, volunteers and companies.

Who's got some creative ideas for me on awesome things I can do for ScriptEd's staff?

Back at it

I just got back from a week long vacation.  I spent most of the week at my mom's house biking, running and swimming. It was great.

ScriptEd's staff, of course, teased me about being overly responsive to my email the entire time I was away. It's incredibly difficult for me to just let go and not pay attention to what's going on at work.  I think it's a bit better now than maybe a year or two ago, but I feel a ton of responsibility and have trouble tuning out work while I'm on vacation.

Despite my inability to disconnect, I still feel rejuvenated after the week and am excited for our school year to get started soon. I visited our volunteer training session this weekend, and it's great to see the new and returning volunteers who will be teaching in our classrooms this Fall.

It's going to be a great school year.

Chinnell leading a portion of our volunteer training this Saturday

Last Day of Our Student Internships

ScriptEd's Internship program comes to a close today.  Our students have spent the last six weeks in paid internships coding alongside developers from NYC's Tech Community.  Congratulations to our Class of 2015 interns!

 It's been great to see some of the tweets from our partner companies about the internship program (some included below). One of our students even dedicated Whiz Khalifa's song "See You Again" to his co-workers at Thrillist in a recent blog post.

Our team is headed to the NYC Media Center now for our End of Internship Celebration event. Check out our Facebook and Twitter streams throughout the day for updates.

I'm on vacation next week and taking the week off from blogging!

Happy Friday Everyone.

@ScriptEdOrg We enjoyed having the interns here in the office. They were a tremendous help and we hope they enjoyed their summer with us. :)

— globaloria (@globaloria) August 13, 2015

@ScriptEdOrg thank you for our talented interns this summer @Daquanworks106 & @Dominique_TW !! Excited for the TW showcase #ThoughtWorksNYC

— Amy Schantz (@amyy_schantz) August 13, 2015

@ScriptEdOrg our pleasure, we are polishing up the projects today! http://t.co/AgshdelSKC http://t.co/KV1GhCfKFA pic.twitter.com/Iu3DzwBoxt

— flowthings.io (@flowthingsio) August 13, 2015

Go Team!

It's another busy day at ScriptEd.

I feel really, really grateful to have such amazing colleagues.  We're now about two weeks into having our new staff members with us, and it's so great to see them take ownership of their work so quickly.   am starting to feel relieved as they continue to take bits of work off of my plate and am impressed by all the things they can do much so much better than I can.

ScriptEd's team helps to make my job a joy every day.  Thank you!

ScriptEd is an Awesome Team! (Missing: Tom :( )

ScriptEd Student Blogs

If you haven't seen it already, please be sure to check out our ScriptEd Student Blog.  Our internship students have been blogging about their experiences this summer.  Here are some of my favorite posts:

• Final Week by Earl Smith
• The Adventure of the Week at Thoughtworks by Daquan Humphry 
• Internship: First Week by Katy Yang

Please explore and enjoy reading!

Our Internship Students!

Become a ScriptEducator: Volunteer with ScriptEd!

ScriptEd is growing! We will partner with 30 schools in NYC beginning this fall, and we’re recruiting volunteers to teach in our partner schools.

ScriptEd is a nonprofit organization (that I co-founded and run) that engages software developers on a volunteer basis to teach web development in underserved high schools throughout NYC. 

Classroom volunteers commit to teach for the entire school year (approximately late September through May) twice a week. Each volunteer is part of a four-person team, and is supported by ScriptEd’s staff members.  To learn more, click here.

Interested folks can fill out a volunteer application here: bit.ly/ScriptEdVolunteer. A ScriptEd staff member will reach out and schedule a time to discuss the volunteer commitment further once an application is submitted. Trainings for volunteers will be held in late August.

Volunteering with ScriptEd is a great way to meet like minded people while teaching the next generation. We’d love for you to join us!

Some ScriptEd Volunteers at Our End of School Year Celebration

Here's some more background on ScriptEd for your reference:

ScriptEd Background Information

Our Annual Report is here.

Founded in 2012, ScriptEd is a non-profit organization that equips students in under-resourced schools with the fundamental coding skills and professional experiences that together create access to careers in technology.

We bring our tuition-free program directly to schools, where classes are taught by software developers on a volunteer basis. Students apply their new coding skills in paid summer internships where they work with role models in the field as well as gain the experience and confidence necessary to pursue careers in technology.

In its first year, ScriptEd served 27 students in two high schools in Harlem, New York, and placed four of its students in internships at technology firms. Next school year will be ScriptEd’s fourth year in operation, and we aim to serve 600 students across 30 high schools in New York City.

Our student population this year is 44% Black, 34% Hispanic, 18% Asian, 2% White and 2% Other. 88% of our students qualify for free or reduced price lunch (which means their family of four makes less than approximately $40,000 a year). Our internship pool is 44% female and 56% male.

ScriptEd won the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award from South by Southwest, the Judges' Choice Award in the Millennial Impact Challenge from Huffington Post, the Teach for America Social Innovation Award, the Emerging Innovator Award from American Express, the Tufts' 100k Challenge Award and both the My Voice Our City Award and the American Dream Award from Ashoka.  ScriptEd has been recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion. The organization has been has been featured in Smithsonian, Time, Huffington Post, CBS, New York 1, Technically Brooklyn and the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and its Executive Director and Founder Maurya Couvares was a featured speaker at TEDxNYED, has been recognized by the New York Business Journal as a ‘Women of Influence' and as a Catalyst by the City of New York.