We love our students.

Today, Joliz and our program team sent the following note to our volunteers:


--
Morning volunteers,

I really want to urge you to read this before stepping into classrooms today.  This is very scary to many if not all of our students - some of them this may even feel like a life or death situation for them and their families.

Hopefully this will help support you in navigating any conversations. Just know it's *really* important for students to know today that we support them and care about them. Please don't hesitate to reach out to a PM if you have any questions especially those of you who wont have someone in your class today. We're here for you! Have a great day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-should-we-tell-the-children_us_5822aa90e4b0334571e0a30b?

---


On days like today (... there are probably not many days like today, actually), I'm reminded of how important our work is.  Most of our volunteers will be stepping into classrooms today in which most students are not white.  We need to be there for our students.

I'm also reminded that we all have the agency to make a difference, even when the outlook is horrible.

I encourage you all to get involved or support our work so that we can keep pushing forward.

ScriptEd End of Summer Updates

I hope you're enjoying the end of your summer. Here are some updates on new developments at ScriptEd:

• We wrapped up our summer internship program a week and a half ago. 75 of our students had the opportunity to code alongside developers this summer. See below for a picture of the internship class.
• We've grown our team! We now have 16 people on staff, including a new Director of Finance and Operations, a Director of Development, and four new Program Managers.
• We're expanding to 37 schools in NYC this Fall, and doubling the size of our Advanced Course Program. We will hold our first class of the school year on September 8th.  We are still looking for volunteers: Interested developers can apply at bit.ly/ScriptEdVolunteer.
• We are looking to hire a Communications Manager and an Operations Intern. Can you help us find the right people?

Please don't hesitate to connect me with anyone you think might be helpful to ScriptEd's work.

ScriptEd 2016 Internship Class

July is Flying

Hello everyone!  I've been silent on my blog for a bit, but for good reason: July has been very busy!

• ScriptEd's internship program launched
• We added three new people to our ScriptEd team (Cami Aurioles as our Director of Development, and Michael Oppong + Alyxe Lett as Program Managers).
• Courtney Legates will join our team as a Program Manager on Monday
• We'll have two more joining soon... bringing our staff to 18 people! Whew!

A little over a year ago, we were a staff of four.  As you can imagine, the very quickly growing staff means that my job responsibilities change constantly.  I'm learning to adjust on the fly and am so excited to bring ScriptEd to the next phase of its organizational growth. I'm also in the process of searching for an (affordable) coach to help me navigate leading the ScriptEd team and community, so if you've got suggestions, send them my way.

Sort of related: this weekend is the New York City Triathlon, and we have a team of incredible supporters competing with us this year. Consider making a donation, or coming out to watch us on the run.  Bonus points if you bring ice with you and hand it to us at the top of Harlem Hill :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Swim Coach for Hire (to get me to Australia!)

As some of you may have already seen, I raced a half ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) in Syracuse, New York on Sunday and secured a spot to the World Championships in Australia this September. I qualified through the race's roll down process --  athletes in some age groups did not take the spots available to them, so the spots were allocated to athletes in other age groups.

I've spent the last couple of days thinking about whether or not I can make the trip happen.  It's a really long way to go for a race, and it's not cheap -- I estimate that it will probably cost me around $4,000 - $4,500 when all is said and done (flight, lodging, bike transport, etc).

At the same time, it's a pretty incredible opportunity to have a chance to race alongside world class athletes and I don't know that I'll get the opportunity again.  So I'm going to try to make it happen!

To offset the costs of traveling for triathlons in the past, I've used AirBnB and rented out my apartment. This time, I'm going to see if offering myself up as a swim coach can help me generate some extra income to help cover my costs for the race.

Here's my pitch:

Let me to help you with your triathlon swimming!

Some of my triathlon swim specific accolades: Over the weekend I did a 30:48 in the half ironman swim, which was only about 1.5 mins slower than the guy who won the whole race. My fastest Olympic distance swim was 13:13 at the NYC Triathlon. If we're not counting that one (because the NYC swim is notoriously fast), I think my second fastest was at the Westchester Tri last year, where I swam a 20:49.

I started swimming competitively at age 7, and was an athlete on Boston College's Womens swim team through my sophomore year.  I was also lifeguard and swim instructor in high school and college.

If you want to help get me to Australia and need help with your swim, let me know! You can email me at maurya.couvares@gmail.com.

Brooklyn Tri Club Triathletes Liz, Alan and me after Syracuse 70.3 in our World Championship Trucker hats 

ScriptEd Students are Making Me a Website

This summer, ScriptEd has a really cool pilot program happening at The Factory in Long Island City.  Our students will work with freelance web developers to work on clients' projects over the summer. The working title for this program is "The ScriptEd Dev Shop."

The freelancers are sourcing clients for the program now, so I signed myself up as one of their first customers.  ScriptEd students will work on building a website for me during the dev shop under the guidance of freelancers.  They'll integrate my blog into the new site, and will create an online presence for me that highlights my work and passion projects.

I'll be blogging from time to time about project and about the progress the students make throughout the summer.

If you've got website needs and are interested in becoming a dev shop client, please contact Olivia at Olivia@scripted.org.

TOMORROW IS THE SCRIPTED HACKATHON!

I'm so excited!

We have an awesome hackathon planned for tomorrow at Google.  Over the day, our students will build projects related to a surprise theme and then will compete for prizes at the end of the day.  We'll announce the surprise theme first thing tomorrow morning. Our hackathon is always a highlight of our year, and is one of the big ways that we celebrate all that our students and volunteers have accomplished during the school year.

We are really lucky to have a terrific panel of judges. They include:

• Amy Yan, VP of Product at Rent the Runway

• Jackie Trebilcock, Managing Director at NY Fashion Tech Lab

• Janet Schalk, CIO at Hudson’s Bay Company

• Kendra Farrell, ScriptEd alumni

• Kenton Jacobsen, Director of Engineering at Vogue.com

• MD Hossain, ScriptEd alumni

• Minverva Tantoco, CTO of NYC

• Peter Coles, VP of Software at Ringly

I'm running the Brooklyn Half tomorrow morning as well before heading over to the hackathon. Good luck runners!

Inspiring Road Signs!

Today I drove to Philadelphia to meet with a foundation that is interested in supporting ScriptEd.  It was great to sit in a car and drive without distractions or traffic. It helped me clear my head.

On the way back there was a toll booth that was closed. There were signs all over the road, probably 30-40, that said "keep moving" to encourage people to not slow down for the booth -- to keep driving through.  I've had a pretty rough couple of weeks between my workload and my life, and the stress of everything got me sick over the weekend, so it was good to see these signs. I've never looked to road signs for motivation before, but you've gotta find your inspiration somewhere, right?   Keep moving!

Endurance and Persistence

As you can probably guess from previous posts, I love drawing analogies and comparisons between the things I've learned as an athlete and the things I've learned running a company.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about endurance and persistence. Since January, I've been doing 14-16 mile runs on the weekends. For me, this is pretty epic -- I've never done this much running in my life.  I am not a naturally talented runner, and before I started doing these longer runs I really did not like running all that much. At the same time, it's the sport I need to work on most in triathlons so I'm making it happen. It's taken a great deal of motivation, persistence and determination to complete these runs.

When I first started doing my long runs it was nearly impossible for me to think about them in their entirety. It was too overwhelming. To get through them, I used a lot of self-talk and setting small goals (common refrains in my head during these runs: "Ok, I'm at mile 9, I just need to get to 9.5", "Just run to that lamp post over there", "Just get over this hill and reassess", "I'm going to count to 100 before I look at my watch again", "If I can get through this last half mile I'm going to have the biggest bagel sandwich I've ever had, then go to Ample Hills").

Breaking up the runs into little goals made the task of completing them more manageable.

Starting a company, or a new project (like a podcast!) is a lot of the same.  When I think about all the things we need to do at ScriptEd it's incredibly overwhelming.  We take time to make big picture plans, but most of my time is breaking down all of those big things we need to do into small action items. I love check lists (and checking things off those lists).  We'll always have more work to do, but getting little things done every day helps me know that we're making progress.

Announcing "Lost in Transition" - A Triathlon Podcast

I'm excited to announce "Lost in Transition," a triathlon podcast that I'm co-creating + co-hosting with fellow Brooklyn-based triathletes Mat Ward and Ben Kessel.  The show will cover all things triathlon with a little Brooklyn flavor, and will feature interviews with local triathlete and cover local races.

We recorded our teaser episode this week -- listen here  (disclaimer: I'm guilty of almost everything Mat and Ben talk about in this episode). 

Our first full episode will feature Danny Pego, aka BrooklynTriDad, and will be available sometime next week.

Please subscribe to us on iTunes or Soundcloud, and like us on Facebook.

Enjoy!

ScriptEd's New ED!

I'm excited to announce that I'll be stepping down as ScriptEd's Executive Director to pursue my life long dream of sleeping eight hours a night.

In my place, our intern Rebecca Ligier will take over as ScriptEd's Executive Director.  Rebecca, while only 19 years old, is a ScriptEd alum and has shown tremendous leadership ability during her time with ScriptEd.  She frequently expressed aspirations of running ScriptEd at some point in her career. She is looking forward to tackling this new challenge, and the ScriptEd staff can't wait to work under her guidance. I've mentioned Rebecca a few times on this blog, including in the post "Kids Say the Darndest Things."


(Obviously, April Fools!)

This has been a crazy week at work, so this is all I've got for this week!  Happy Friday everyone!

Building a House

Last summer, one of my friends suggested that I blog on the following topic:

"You refuse to do things half-assed. Why? What's good and bad about this mentality?"

I've never been able to just do things for the sake of doing them. For example, I would never do an ironman triathlon without putting in a great deal of time and energy in trying to be excellent. Because I don't have enough time at this point, I haven't taken on that project.


I've finally figured out how to answer the question.  When I was in high school, I had a teacher who incorporated life lessons into our Latin class by telling stories. One of the stories stuck with me, and I've used it several times as an example of why pursuing excellence is important.  I'm copy/pasting it here:

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. 

He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career. 

When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, the contractor handed the front-door key to the carpenter. "This is your house," he said, "my gift to you."

Life is a 'do it yourself' project. We are constantly building our lives and experiences, and therefore ourselves. Of course, no one ever does anything perfectly, and we can always improve -- but if you're not putting in your best effort with the tools, knowledge and time that you have then you'll start having regrets and wishing you had done things differently.  No one wants to be in that place.

Say What?

As ScriptEd continues to grow, and as I continue to get involved in helping to organize other passion projects, I have started to think a lot about communication and how very, very hard it is to do well.

There are lots of reasons people don't communicate well.  Some people don't have enough experience to understand why explicit communication is important.  Other people don't want to be responsible for hurting, offending or disappointing and then might withhold a full story.

When we're not clear and explicit in our communication, we usually run into trouble.  People can start working hard in a completely wrong direction, or inadvertently offend and annoy other people. When people misunderstand expectations and ground rules, small problems can turn into bigger ones pretty quickly.

Here are some communication strategies I try to implement to make sure that projects go smoothly when I'm working with teams of people.  (Teacher friends: these might sound a lot like classroom management techniques).  These are also good strategies for life in general, not just for the work place!

1. Establish ground rules.  Think about a time you've been chastised for doing something that you had no idea you were doing wrong. Did you feel defensive? Embarrassed? For example, several ScriptEd staff members have recently gotten scolded by WeWork staff members for not following certain etiquette rules on using our shared kitchen, but these new rules and norms were never communicated to us.  Being proactive and establishing the ground rules for how to operate in a group or relationship is a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page and can help avoid these awkward and annoying interactions. Never assume someone will know the ground rules without first communicating the rules to them.

2. Call something out directly and as quickly as possible.  If someone does something you don't like or is out of line with whatever your ground rules are, do not let it slide. Address it and enforce (or establish, if necessary) ground rules quickly and consistently. If an action isn't called out, the person might believe that the rule isn't really that important, or might not understand why the behavior is corrected sometimes and not others.

3. Talking is always better than emails or texting.  It's so easy to read tone into writing that does not actually represent what the writer means to communicate. If you are questioning the writer's instruction or intent, talk it out.

4.  Re-iterate instructions / to-do items / plans to ensure everyone is on the same page.  After a meeting, discussion or exchange, synthesize and summarize with everyone. This will help ensure everyone has a common understanding.

5. Try to not react negatively when someone gives you bad news.  This is a big one. If a one of my employees tells me something has gone wrong, the absolute worst thing I can do is overreact or get angry. If I do this, it's pretty likely that bad news will be kept from me in the future.  Be supportive and thank the person for bringing the issue to your attention, then work on solving the issue.  Doing this will help ensure that people are being open and honest.

Why You Need to Go to Strong Like Bull Training Camps

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I have wanted to go on a bike vacation for as long as I've been doing triathlons.  Finally, last week, I did it! It was incredible.

I spent the week training at Strong Like Bull Training Camps in and around Antequera, Spain.  I am tired, sore and on a huge high from the week. Before I get into all the reasons it was great and why all my triathlete/cyclist friends should go next year, I want to add a note about why this type of intense training is a great vacation for me: I check email compulsively and have a lot of trouble detaching from work. Extreme physical exertion makes it nearly impossible for me to focus on work. I can't (safely) check emails when I'm riding a bike, and I was so exhausted at the end of each day that I didn't have the mental bandwidth to really focus on anything too heavy.  This type of training is one of the only ways I can give myself a mental break.  If you're like me, I highly recommend doing an athletic vacation.

Now, all the reasons YOU should join me next year! (I'm aiming for to do both weeks of the camp next year!)

1. It's ridiculously beautiful. The South of Spain is unbelievably gorgeous. Just look at the pictures below. Now imagine yourself biking all over this. There really is nothing better than having your heart race while you're riding a bike in a beautiful place. It's basically euphoria.

2. You'll probably get into the best shape you've ever been in.  Between the bike rides, the runs and the swims, I exercised for around 30 hours last week. This is the most exercise I've ever done in one week (including as a swimmer in college). By the end of the week I was considerably faster on the bike. We also got to swim in a beautiful 25 meter pool and go on a few runs.  This is a great way to start a triathlon season.

3. It's very, very affordable.  The ticket price for seven nights is $1,285, but if you are coached by John Hirsch (or if you register early, I think..), the price is closer to $1,000. This is all inclusive -- the coached rides, the dinners (with lots and lots of wine), lunches, breakfasts, support van, a place to sleep, etc.  It also includes transportation to and from the airport (and if you're me, two additional round trips to Malaga to get bike parts because pieces went missing during my travel).  Compare this to Backroads Spain Andalucia -- they charge around $4,000 for only five nights. It's almost cheaper for me to be at the camp for a week than it is for me to live in Brooklyn for a week.

4. It's run well.  John and company have been running this camp for eleven years and they've got their logistics down. With fifteen different people at a camp, there are a lot of competing interests, and they were able to accommodate us all pretty well.

5. Make new friends who are as into cycling/triathlon as you are. The camp is run out of a villa in Antequera where all of the athletes live for the week. It's like being at summer camp for adults who love endurance events.  Nerding out about athletics is totally acceptable and encouraged.

6. Learn new things. Despite having been a triathlete for five years, there is still a ton I don't know about the sport. There were a handful of athletes and coaches at the camp who have done triathlons and cycling professionally, so I learned a ton from them. For example, I didn't fully understand the importance of hydration and nutrition for long workouts, and learned a lot about how and when I should eat if my body is moving for more than two hours.  I also learned about descending hills properly, drafting and riding in a group.  I even learned some new tricks for open water swimming.

Basically, if you are a cyclist or a triathlete looking for a great way to start your season, you would be silly not to go to this camp.

Here are the photos!

Sunset

A Room With a View!

Headed to Spain Tomorrow!

Tomorrow afternoon my bike and I are flying to Spain for Strong Like Bull Training Camps.  I'll spend next week biking (and swimming and running) all over the South of Spain with a bunch of other athletes.

A biking vacation has been on my bucket list for as long as I've been doing triathlons.  Biking is probably the only thing I've done where I've consistently experienced "flow." Needless to say, I'm very excited about next week.

Check out the camp.  The coaches are awesome (John Hirsch, my coach, is on their coaching roster!)

(If you are a last minute person, consider joining for this week or next week!)

Stay tuned to my instagram account for posts.

Data! Numbers!

Last week we had a bunch of grants due, so I skipped posting.  (Writing clearly is really hard and time consuming work).

Our grant submissions got me thinking a lot about data.  When we submit grants, we provide a ton of data on our program -- how many students we've served, how many students get internships, the demographic makeup of our student body, the social emotional growth stats on our program, our partner companies internship satisfaction rates, and so much more.

I like data, and we love data at ScriptEd. I've been using data since I started swimming at age six.  Measuring progress with numbers is a great way to understand where you are, where you are going, and how well you're doing.

Data also allows you to define success in an objective and measurable way. I think this is so important, especially in the field of social entrepreneurship where success can so easily be confused with attention.  ScriptEd has been very lucky to get a lot of media attention and awards, which are crucial to help us attract resources, but are also pretty arbitrary markers of success. Data keeps us focused on what we're working towards.

At the same time, data can be incredibly intimidating. Numbers don't lie.  There might be a million reasons why my swim times didn't get faster in a season, or why we didn't get as many internship positions as we would have liked last summer.  Doing a lot of work and not having the outcomes you hoped for can be disappointing.

When numbers don't move in the way you want them to, you have to change your approach and start working smarter towards your objectives.  When things go better than expected, you have to try to determine what made you successful and replicate those actions if you can.

And finally, sometimes people (and companies) are successful in spite of themselves, or not successful for reasons beyond anyone's control. It's important to recognize the difference between things you can control (and work on improving those things), and things that you can't.

Early Bird Gets the Worm

It has been a very busy week at ScriptEd, so am just getting to my weekly post at 6pm on a Friday.

As you'll see from my post last week, I've been in the middle of a bunch of longer term projects recently and was struggling to sit down, focus and tackle them.  Thanks so much to the folks who emailed me tips -- they worked well.   I think getting into an environment away from people, the constant notifications on my phone and social media was the most effective thing I could do to focus.

For me, this means waking up really early.  A couple of times this week, I woke up between 4 and 4:30 am and got solid work done until 7:00 am (and moved my workouts to the night time instead!).  Early mornings are the only time of day when I feel like I can easily get rid of all outside distractions.  I normally have to interact with people all day long, so it's hard to sit and focus for long stretches of time during the regular work day. I'm usually pretty tired by the end of every day, so evenings have never been very productive for me.

(Yes, I'm pretty tired from these early wake up times this week.)

I'm headed to DC tomorrow morning for Teach for America's 25th Anniversary. I'll be presenting on ScriptEd and Computer Science Education on Saturday with some of my team members. Hope to see some of you there!

Selective Procrastination

I have selectively procrastinated for as long as I can remember.

Does anyone else out there have this problem?

Selective procrastination, as I've come to understand it, is procrastinating while being productive.

Here's what I mean:

I'm supposed to be working on a grant right now. Instead of writing the grant, I've cleaned my bathroom and my kitchen.  I've responded to emails. I've reached out to some of our partner companies to see if they'll hire ScriptEd interns this summer.  I've asked my team to invite me to observe some of their classes.  Now, I'm writing my weekly blog post, and I'm going to start making myself dinner soon.

For the most part, these are all important things I need to do anyway, so I don't really think it's technically procrastinating.  I think that I'm just 'selecting' to do some of my to do list items and not others.

The reality is that I'm really just avoiding writing this grant.

What do you think? Tips anyone? Would you just call this procrastinating?

The Planners and The Executors

I've been thinking a lot lately about planning and executing, both at ScriptEd and in triathlon training. The more experience I have doing both, the more I recognize that planning and executing are two equally important but separate things.  It's really difficult to be a person who both plans and executes.
I think I'm starting to learn that for large projects and big undertakings, there needs to be people who plan, and people who can execute against that plan. One person shouldn't be playing both roles.

Here's an example of what I mean:

For the first five years of doing triathlons, I didn't have a coach. I made up my own plan (which was basically "run today, swim tomorrow, bike the next day...").  Because I have been an athlete for my whole life, this wasn't a terrible approach.  I did well. I also ended up spending a lot of time and energy first trying to come up with a plan, and then wasted some time executing on a plan that wasn't as good as it could be.

Now I have a coach (John Hirsch).  John is a professional triathlete and coaches tons of athletes, and brings his expertise to my training.  John makes my plan, and I execute against it. I don't have to spend time thinking about my workouts or my training schedule. John does that.  He listens to my progress and adjusts my plan accordingly. This saves me a ton of time.  I don't have to strategize, and the work that I'm doing has more of an impact on my progress as an athlete.

I'm learning the same thing at ScriptEd.  When ScriptEd started, I was both planning and executing against the plan.  ScriptEd is too big for that now. My time is not well spent if I'm the person executing against ScriptEd's plan. My job is to make the plan, adjust it as necessary, and make sure that my staff adjusts their execution as time goes on.  I don't always do this perfectly, but I'm getting a lot better.

Living Alone

On December 31st, I started living alone for the first time ever in my entire life.

I'm two weeks in. It's pretty amazing.

I moved into my apartment in March and had a roommate until mid-July. My fresh-out-of-college little brother moved into my apartment in August, and lived with me until he was able to secure his first full-time job (congratulations, Josh!).

The first week felt strange, but I got used to it quickly.  I'm spending a lot of time cleaning, decorating, reading, writing (it's grant writing season.. so tons and tons of writing happening now!) and sleeping.

I don't know how long I'll live alone, or if it's something all end up liking in the long run, but for now it's great. I've always wanted to try it, and for a long time I didn't think it would ever happen.  I'm proud of myself for making it happen.

It's 2016!

I'm back in the office after a relatively long hiatus for me -- 12 full days -- which is maybe the longest I've ever taken off of work, ever.  As I've written before, one of my goals for a long time has been to take a two-week vacation. This time-off almost hit that mark.  I was able to finish up a lot of personal projects that I had put off forever, and I think I learned a lot about myself by taking time off. By the end of it, I was definitely very excited to get back to work.  For better or worse, so much of who I am and how I perceive myself is wrapped up in my work.

I didn't set any New Years resolutions. Not to say I don't have goals -- I have lots of them --  I'm just not a huge believer in New Years resolutions.  I think that if there is something I want to accomplish, any time of year is a good time to start tackling it. I do think one of the things that came out of my 'time-off' reflections though is that I need to continue to prioritize my personal life and relationships, because I can very easily get sucked into work.  Generally, I think I'm doing much better than I was a year ago, though :)  I just need to keep working at it!


Happy New Year everyone!