Author: Madison

IDEATION SUMMARY:   

For the following three central ideas, the team tried to combine several of our ideas to achieve the most likely ideas to prototype. We also tried to achieve a wide variety of focuses.

Connect with Clay: (AKA Bridge Program)

The Connect Clay Program would establish concrete ways in which CHS students could interact with the community and middle school students. The more connected CHS is, the more positive commentary will circle and the more powerful word of mouth will be.

• Tutoring of Advanced Clay Students (ACADEMICS)
• Student Social Media Post Day (MEDIA)
• Boys and Girls Club Connection (
• Clay Sports Teams Sponsor Teams of Younger Kids (SPORTS)
• Inviting Middle School/Elementary School Students to Act in Musicals/Plays (THEATRE)
• Hosting Art Classes for People in the Community? (ART)

Entice: Advertise in middle schools, use art teachers, athletic coaches to go into the schools to encourage students to come and develop their skills. Sell them on building a connection with Clay to do work that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. SELL CONTINUITY

Enter: Get students enrolled in camps, classes during the summer

Engage: Make sure they receive good coaching, good teaching etc

Exit: At end of summer, lesson, give a speech to encourage them to continue coming back and to continue this journey at Clay high school. Students voice to their parents that they want to attend Clay High School

Extend: Reviews, ripple effect, students who go through the program through word of mouth encourage other students to attend.

Offering Opportunities // Building a Better CHS

A large part of the solution is focusing on marketing and how people find out about Clay, but we also wanted to touch on potential ways to improve Clay itself so that students want to stay there and tell their friends to go there.

One of these ideas was some sort of ND Connection. This could include tutors from ND coming to Clay and helping with academics, or ND art students working on joint projects with CHS students.

Another potential recommendation was to improve the physical appearance of CHS. Our recommendation for this was to paint the lockers and add some color to the slightly drab hallways in that way.

Another option, Hire better teachers, counsellors, tutoring, better coaches, fight song, identity, etc. And pair teachers with students.

Entice: Attractive facilities of the school will entice students to attend Clay.

Enter: The feeling that the school looks nice and has a good ambience will encourage students to enroll in Clay High School

Engage: Students need to feel engaged in their passions and their education. They need to feel like they are equipped to accomplish their goals: job or college. They also need to feel proud of being a CHS student.

Exit: Need to feel Nostalgia and look back on time at CHS with pride and. They need to miss being at CHS, the connections, the family

Extend: The positive experience at CHS then gets passed along through word of mouth and Clay has an identity.

Other Options:

• South Bend Connection?
• Advanced Students tutoring average students

Marketing Approach

Our primary idea for a marketing approach is a video that shows what a day in the life of CHS is like, and makes students excited to go to a school like Clay.

• Video
  • Show it in the middle schools
  • CHS informational day
  • Send to Counselors
  • Mass Social Media Post

Entice: Students are more visually engaged than brochures and informational talks, and having that information explained through a video format readily available would be more effective of a tool.

Enter: The video would distributed through social media platforms or at the beginning of an informational session about Clay.

Engage: The video would demonstrate the various types of students, following them through their daily life and what their 4 years would look like.

Exit: The video ends with a pitch specifying that the student watching the video should really consider Clay as an option and recommend them to pursue more resources to find out more about CHS.

Extend: Students, excited by the video, share the video amongst their friends, maybe to try and convince them to look at Clay with them all together.

• Other Options:

• Virtual Tour
• Synchronize materials

• Parents commit to telling their friends.

Work Around Assignment

The following three images are all work-arounds that I noticed on my vacation in Paris and here on ND’s campus.

This sign was hanging in a crowded tourist area upside down so that the arrow would point in the correct direction.

This bike was locked to the edge of a garden instead of to a bike rack like it might have been.

This bike seat is covered by a plastic bag so that it stays dry in the rain.

Gallery Day Feedback

Initial Thoughts:

Mansour Eid and the teacher who joined him were immensely helpful in their feedback and comments. It was such a pleasure to actually talk to them about our subject; I found that our take-away’s and theirs seemed to align a lot. I do wish that they had given more feedback via the sticky notes, or emailed us their thoughts after gallery day.

It did feel really incredible to have compiled all of that information, and I think our team is excited to move forward and come to more definite conclusions.

The most difficult part of the whole project seems to be where to go from here. Our team has a lot of interesting data, but it is unclear in which direction is the best for us to go to accomplish the intended goals.

What we learned//need to learn in the future:

• Walking through our journey map, we realized which sections of the journey map were more important to our project (Entice and Engage).
• We also talked a lot about the necessary target markets to address in our final solution. Parents? Students? What age for the students? What age for the parents? What demographics of parents and students should we look at?
• I feel like M. Eid could have given us more feedback on what he was looking for or what he wanted, so finding out what it is that he really wants.
• Furthering our research on what the proper demographics to reach out to might be.
• Ranking and assessing what factors are most important in the school choice for parents, students, etc.
• Update our design brief.
• Build out our archetype map — this is complex for us as we want to focus both on parents and students.
  • This might mean creation of more than one archetype map.
• Figuring out WHO our main focus and user should be.
• Assessing all of the BLUE sticky notes that I added

Patterns that Began to Emerge:

• Socioeconomic differences
  • Low income parents care about different things than
• Age differences
  • Time when
• Preference for the magnet
• Lack of academic advertising
• Desire for a more attractive learning environment (school aesthetics)
• Misconceptions about Clay’s strengths and weaknesses
• Preference for Adams due to academic strength and college placement

 

 

Immersion Research – Guided Tour and Two Classes

The type of interactive immersion that I conducted was a Guided Tour and sitting in on a CTE class and on the start of an English class.

On the guided tour:

Principal Eid took us around the school and pointed out his favorite parts.

–       We started in the principal’s office, walked past the gym which he did not even point out.

–       Then he walked us down the Arts hallway. It was lined with lockers, and above the lockers were banners from the shows that Clay has put on. On the other side of the hall were classrooms and he showed us the orchestra classroom, the learning piano classroom (where they have a bunch of keyboards set up in front of computers), and the dance classroom (where some sort of interpretive dance/yoga activity was going on).

–       We then followed him past the cafeteria. The cafeteria is small, and the colors are not pleasant. It is probably one of the most unattractive rooms in the whole building.

–       He showed us the inside of the CTE classes – the dental program, doctor program, auto/car program and the welding program.

o   He was really passionate and excited about these.

o   Talked about how great they were for the kids, and how only Clay offers them — but kids from the other high school’s can bus to Clay to take the programs

–       After that we walked down some halls and saw the academic classrooms but did not check inside as there were classes going on.

–       There seemed to always be students in the hall’s and Principal Eid was constantly asking them to return to class.

–       He really emphasized:

o   The Arts and CTE aspects (first things he showed us).

o   How safe the building was (safety patrol people, police officer, gates, policies).

o   The quality of the teachers – he introduced us to almost all of them who we saw.

In the English class…

–       I was only present in this class for the first 15 minutes, but it pretty much took the teacher the whole time I was there to calm the class down

–       Kids kept walking in late and she would be stern with them

–       Kids showed up without pencils or paper

–       Her classroom was colorful and exciting, the walls were covered in pictures

–       It was evident that the kids in the class who were not excited to learn dominated.

–       There may have been dedicated students, but it was not evident who they were.

–       The teacher was kind to the students, patient, and clearly well-educated.

In the CTE class…

–       The CTE class was welding

–       The teacher of the class is a past Clay graduate himself

–       Kids walked in and the teacher told them to go get dressed in their welding gear

–       The kids in the class respected their teacher, he didn’t take any of their sass or procrastination

–       There were challenges they had to meet written on the board, and the kids seemed motivated

–       The class seemed to be structured more around building their specific skills, and there was no lecture portion

I personally felt:

–       That the school was a little boring looking for an Arts building. I had imagined more visual elements, more artwork displayed, and more colorful hallways.

–       It was beige all over, and could have been a little cleaner.

–       Potential Idea: have an art class have a unit focused on how to make the school look better each year.

–       That there were a weird amount of student’s wandering the halls at any given time.

–       That the staff we interacted with really care about the school and students.

 

Interview 6: *** Conducted Tuesday, 3/7, at 9pm in the Hesburgh Library

Name: Sophia Bevaqua

Gender: Female

Age: 21

Appearance:

Occupation: Student at Notre Dame – Art History Major, Gender Studies Minor

Background:

–          Lived in South Bend for 21 years (her whole life).

–          She went to Stanley Clark School and the Montessori Academy for primary and intermediate schools.

–          She attended John Adams (graduated 2013).

–          She lives in the Clay School District.

–          In HS she did environmental club, Java – a community service club where they helped south bend community, she had a job located next to Adams, she was a dancer.

–          Three sisters — oldest one went to St. Joe, next three went to Adams

Why Adams?  

–          Chose Adams for the IB, it really stood out because so few schools have it, she liked its focus on discussion based classrooms and heavy reading, and multicultural readings.

–          She received several IB certificates

–          She didn’t really consider any other schools. Her older sister went to Adams.

–          Did not take athletics into account.

–          Adams had a really intense IB Art Program, and they all got an endless supply of free materials, very successful feeder program

 

–          She didn’t always feel safe at Adams.

–          Freshman year quite frequently she got threatened about being “beat up after school” or “cut with a knife”

–          Junior year she got hit by a flying fist from a guy in the hallway of Adams

–          She thinks it is safer now, her little sister goes there. Little sister chose Adams cause Sophia and older sister went there.

How did she make her choice?

–          Just talked to people and got word of mouth, her dad is a prof and she talked to a lot of faculty kids, kids of profs look for education

–          Doesn’t know anything about the Riley or Washington magnet programs

–          Adams super diverse, thought about the diversity a little bit – dissuaded her from St. Joe

–          Tiers at Adams —- IB Kids all went to top 20 universities, AP kids went to state schools and good smaller private schools, Honors kids went to community colleges, lower rung never pursued any other education

–          Lower rung and honors rung made up the vast majority of the student body

–          All over the board for socioeconomic status, vast majority were lower class single parents who worked nights – all lived in the same neighborhood.

–          The IB program has parents who are not divorced and have white collar jobs.

Other Commentary on South Bend Schools:

–          Every School has a stereotype,

–          St Joe seems like it is the Notre Dame feeder school. She thought it had too much emphasis on religion, that it was very cliquey and very preppy, and that it didn’t have the reviews for different teachers that she wanted.

–          Considered Clay because it had a great arts program and she lived closer to Clay, but she didn’t know anything about it really outside of the arts stuff and that alone wasn’t enough to persuade her.

–          “Washington and Riley are horrible schools”

–          Didn’t consider Penn because it is so far away, and massive “4000 students is too far away”. She also didn’t hear anything super positive about the teachers there.

Interactive Immersion – The Card Sort

 

The Card Sort was conducted on Friday 3/3 at Clay High School during the school day.

The set of cards included the options:

–        Safety, the Arts, CTE, Athletics, Dual Credit, Reputation, Appearance, Diversity, Community and Academics

When we conducted the card sort, myself (or Faisal or Michael) would ask a student (or occasionally a teacher or school worker) to read and order the cards, ranking them based on the question,

“What does Clay High School do best?”

Observation: We received a variety of responses from the students, in a variety of different formats. Many students were curious what we were doing and wanted to help, this means that we may have had some bias by choosing students who were interested/engaged.

The most common trends were:

1. The Arts, CTE and Academics consistently ranked near the top of the list. This was interesting as Clay does not have a reputation for being an academic school among people in the community.
2. Athletics and Reputation were pretty consistently near the bottom of the list. This is consistent with our other research.
3. Safety was usually located near the center of the card sort spectrum. Sometimes appearing closer to the best and sometimes to the worst.

Below are two examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Analogous Immersion – Madi’s College Decision

The Process:

When I sit down to think about my college decision I remember it being quite the process.

Stage 1: I hadn’t put a lot of thought into the decision prior to High School, and in the first two years of High School I also didn’t think about it a lot – I only knew I wanted to succeed, and that I had a few schools that to me equaled success.

Stage 2: Over the summer before junior year, I remember incessant googling.

–          Best colleges in the United States… in Michigan… in the East… etc.

–          Best colleges for Business… for Liberal Arts… etc.

–          Most beautiful college campuses

–          If you can think it, I googled it. And after lots of googling, you start to notice patterns.

Stage 3: Then junior year we were faced with the decision at the end of the year, and the apps at the beginning of the year.

I was noticing patterns, and compiling lists of all the schools I was considering. I compiled criteria and tried to narrow down long lists. I talked to counselors, teachers, friends, and pulled out the common app and started to fill out essays. Then, once I had a decent sized list formed, I wanted to talk to people, so the school visits began.

Stage 4: I visited schools on the East Coast, the University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Michigan State University.

The visits entailed me learning a lot more about what each institution offered, what life was like on campus

I wrote up spreadsheets, and tried to figure out where I “fit”. The following are the criteria I considered in my spreadsheets:

The Factors:

–          Price

–          Faith Life

–          Academics

–          Job Prospects

–          Alumni Network

–          Location

–          My Parent’s Opinions

–          Safety

–          Ratings

–          Reputation

 

The Options:

–          I applied to eight different schools, and remember thinking that I could have applied to so many more.

–          I was so indecisive, and despite having tons of criteria and spreadsheets and reflections, it still felt like I wasn’t sure I had done enough.

–          I felt highly informed, but like there was still so much I did not know, and could not know until I attended any of these places as a school.

The Emotions:

–          Falling in love with places over and over again. Looking around, and feeling shock and awe that I would be privileged enough to attend these kinds of places – this is a feeling that students deciding between a lot of schools might feel, but slightly less relatable.

–          Being fascinated by the college students and their lives – this could be equivalent to how intermediate school students feel visiting high schools.

–          Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, or disappointed by the lack of proper information – I’m sure intermediate parents and students feel this.

–          Nervous that I wouldn’t fit in or have friends.

–          I was fighting with my parents a little bit over where to go, and over my procrastination of the decision. I’m sure some students feel tension with their parents when making the decision.

–          Worried about every aspect listed above under factors.

 

Five E Framework:

Entice – online articles, word of mouth, reputation, media, books, common app,

Enter – common app (we do not know anything about what it is like to actually choose a school or register for a school? Must add to our research questions.)

Engage – filling out the common app, finding letters of recommendation, etc.

 

For the purposes of this project, I think that Entice, Enter, and Engage are probably going to be foci of the project, so I only cover those three here.

High School Visit on Friday 3/3/17

Short Interviews:

Mr. Smith – One of the adult employees of the school.

*** He just sat down as we were about to converse with Principal Eid and started to give his opinions on everything, so this was not a formal interview, but below are my documented notes.

–          There is a Fear Factor.

–          The bottom 1% of students are the ones who cause all the problems, and they are where all the focus is

–          There are policies called Age Placement that mean that even if a student fails middle school, if they are high school age, they must be in the high schools.

–          Clay has the highest rate of suspension and expulsion, but they think that is a good thing.

–          The importance of safety is extreme.

–          “High School is a microcosm of society”

–          There are fights like nothing you have ever seen at Clay.

–          They are trying to build a culture of respect, but it doesn’t really exist yet.

–          With Trump and Devos who knows what is going to happen, they are trying to pull students out of public education.

–          He says marketing is great, but you can only do so much. We need real change and new programs.

 

Jacob Williams – Sophomore

Favorite Part of Clay: his CTE classes (cooking and welding)

Favorite Regular Class: gym, followed by English.

He doesn’t even pay attention to the Art Magnet aspect of Clay

Thinks Classes are hard.

 

Jayden Riffle – Junior

–          Favorite Academics: English and History

–          CTE Course: Welding

–          He thinks that there is a lot of talent at Clay, but he isn’t a big arts person himself.

–          He thinks classes at Clay are easy.

–          He thinks he will go to college, and said Clay is helping him figure it out.

–          Favorite part: The Community

 

Melina Andino – Junior

–          Favorite Part: nothing

–          The sports all suck, we should get new coaches

–          Not involved in the arts

–          Favorite Academics: English Honors (she has the best teacher)

–          Her classes are easy and she doesn’t take AP’s

Maythe Ortega – Junior

–          Favorite Part: can’t think of anything

–          Sports: Baseball and Basketball are good

–          She is involved in the arts programs

–          Taking CTE – culinary arts

–          Favorite Academics: Marine Biology

–          Easy classes, no AP’s

Adam – Sophomore

–          Sports at Clay are all right

–          Favorite Class: Geography

–          He likes art and CTE, taking those classes next year

–          Easy classes, no AP’s

Cameron – Freshman

–          Plays sports – football, wrestling, and track

–          The arts programs are all right

–          He wants to take automotive CTE

–          Some of his classes are hard

–          I showed him the cards, and he told me he can’t read well.

 

Safety Patrol Person:

“South Bend schools need to get away from magnets and put everyone in blocks. Magnets hurt enrollment, and destroy the loyalty in the schools. Adams gets all the top kids.”

 

Professors of the CTE Classes:

–          CTE is an offering only at Clay, but it is open to students at all four High Schools.

Louise Melander – dental careers (2-year program, students earn 6 credits).

–          Smaller number of students, most of whom are tremendously dedicated.

–          They push their students, but have to teach to the middle (some students have experience, some none.)

–          “CTE is a well-kept secret. All of the students in Welding already have jobs.”

Barb Wieczorek – Intro to Health Careers and EMS (6/7.5 dual credits respectively)

–          The students are highly motivated, and grade driven.

–          They have to attend summer school to get into the CTE programs because they are half day courses.

–          90% of the students go into the field of medicine.

–          “CTE is the only reason some students are still in High School. It makes them feel like they have found a purpose.”

–          Only 5/30 and 3/9 students are from Clay HS.

Interview 5: EXPERT (Conducted at Brothers at 5pm Thursday (3/2)

Name: Mr. John Anella

Gender: Male       Age: Middle Aged

Expert Status: Member of the South Bend School Board

Mr. Anella attended the University of Notre Dame and studied Psych and Accounting when he went to Notre Dame, has 5 children (Senior and freshman at Adams, 7^th, 5^th, 2^nd grade at St. Joe, and sits on the school board.

His two oldest children are at Adams, the other three attend St. Joe Middle and Elementary schools.

Experience and decision making for first kid:

–          First kid was so done with Catholic School.

–          You live here and you have kids in the schools,

–          Your friends, and your kids friends have older siblings, you hear about the schools

–          The perception of the south bend schools is terrible

–          The perception of Clay is a lot more negative than the actuality

–          My son who goes out to Washington jokes about going to the ghetto.

–          There is an administrator who works at clay who sends his daughter to penn, because “even I wouldn’t send my kids here”

–          We lose kids in South Bend to Penn

–          The catholic schools in the area are also good.

–          A lot of it is perception of the kind of environment kids want.

–          If one of his youngest wanted to go to St. Joe, he would let them as long as they have taken all the options into account

o   However, his younger kids look up to their older siblings (one is an artist and one is sporty)

o   Most of the time, younger siblings go where the older siblings go?

 

Did you choose Adams because of the IB?

–          It is very important to him – considering both of his boys are in it. “Both of his high schoolers are in IB, and love the program.”

–          Obviously, you are looking for the best academic choice.

–          His kids came through Catholic grade school, St. Joe

–          Most kids from St. Joe went to St. Joe, about a third went to Adams

–          He likes IB over AP, curriculum that is internationally accepted. His son has two friends (one from Austria and Belgium because they can transfer back to his European schools.)

–          His son is on track for the diploma and has not taken any AP classes.

o   Last Year, 27 got the diploma, 100 some got the certificate,

–          IB is more standardized.

–          They chose the school for its IB, and the fact that it is close.

o   They live less than a mile away.

Other Notes:

–          His kids are in the IB program.

–          His son has participated in the Orchestra Pit at Clay, he wasn’t in the school, but they needed a base player so he got to play with them.

–          “South Bend will be closing schools soon.”

–          Downside to the Magnet:

o   Gay Clay perception and you pigeonhole students

–          A referral is the most powerful thing you can do.

–          A principal does set the tone for a building

–          The news loves bad media, and it just feeds the stereotypes.

–          Clay has School Within a School – it is in school detention but not called in school detention because they’re learning.

–          The alternative school has a lot more resources.

–          Clay could be an AP magnet.

–          Adams will soon face enrollment options (too many students), if students can’t get into Adams, might they go to Clay?

–          People also base where they go on geography

–          Looking at local middle school scores – if people don’t get their kid into LaSalle, they might send them into Jefferson.

o   If people can’t get into one of those, they bail out of the Catholic school system.

–          The hardest challenge in the HS is that most teachers are white, because that is who is available. Minority faculty aren’t as prevalent.

–          Adams has an incredible bilingual program.

–          For him, as a parent, he just wants good teachers. Their level of diversity doesn’t really make a difference.

–          Most funding comes from the state, then the local tax collections were capped (so now they get less for transportation), and they get federal dollars for students with special needs.

o   If you lose a kid, you lose 65,000 dollars.

o   There is not enough development

–          All the South Bend Public schools are roughly the same looking

o   Most of the schools are really nice.

o   Clay Intermediate is falling apart a little bit.

o   We should close buildings because the money is spread too thin.

Quotes:

“As a parent, I’d rather choose a school because of academics.”

“Washington has a uniform policy, I guess there are some kids who will go there just because they don’t have to wear a uniform.”

“When they see their friends moving to Penn or St. Joe, they’re like ‘I’m not going to Clay’”

“One of Mansour’s challenge’s is that they will have behavior problems, and it is a very small amount of kids… the joke is that every year Clay sends 50 kids to Rise Up. These schools would love to send more kids to alternative institutions.”

“Safety has never been an issue at Adams.”

“Some of the perception of danger is probably a little racist too. People have a perception that isn’t always fair.”

“You have got to get the parents to buy in, a lot of it is getting the word out. Maybe you have to start small and earn the respect of people of the community.”

Interview 4: Conducted Friday, 3/3, at 1pm

*** Recording taken, no pictures included.

Name: Professor Jenny Martin

Gender: Female       Age: 37 Years Old

Appearance: I did not ask to take her photo. Professor Martin has long, blonde hair, glasses. Looks very put together in her dress – was wearing dress pants and a grey blazer.

Her office has a beautiful wooden desk, and bookshelves lining the entire room filled with books.

Occupation: She teaches PLS at the University of Notre Dame, and specializes in Theology.

Her Story:

She has lived in South Bend since 2005, and she came her for Graduate School in 2012, and then was employed by Notre Dame to teach PLS. Initially from Georgia. She is married, and her husband teaches as well (he used to teach at St. Joe).

She has three children. A 9-year-old boy in the 4^th grade, a 7-year-old boy in the 1^st grade, and a 5-year-old girl in preschool.

 

Where do her kids go to school? Has she thought about their schooling?

–          Her children used to attend Marquette Montessori school, and it was nice in theory.

o   Montessori schools allow the students to assign themselves work, and self-regulate. This system was great for one of her kids, but the others need structure, and she believes in a more traditional teaching role (considering she is a teacher).

–          So, she transitioned them to St. Joe, and believes that they will continue into St. Joe High School.

o   This was mostly because…

o   Her husband used to teach at St. Joe, so they know teachers and people there. She felt like they had a personal connection to the school.

o   She likes the focus on Catholic Formation

o   St. Joe is their home parish

o   It is only 15 minutes from their house (although there are closer High Schools).

–          At their ages, her kids already pretty much know that they are going to St. Joe for HS.

o   Her sons have visited for a Cub Scouts trip, and they’re comfortable there.

What is important in looking at schools?

–          The academic element is essential, and the structure for her kids to learn.

–          The Catholic element was nice, but not entirely necessary

–          Arts are incredibly important to her, and so were athletics in the decision.

o   Two of her children are highly artistic, and they are all athletic.

–          She already knows that her children will attend college one day.

–          Physical appearance did not really play in to the decision

–          Her children definitely have a say in their school decision

 

She talks to other parents about education a lot.

–          Public schools are a common topic of conversation among her and her friends,

–          They think there is an unusual amount of school switching in South Bend.

–          She has heard of different kids from one family attending different schools.

–          Her perception of Clay is vaguely positive, she thinks it is a good public school

o   a decent number of students from St. Joe grade school move on to Clay

–          School Recommendations and Word of Mouth are very powerful,

o   Someone messaged her on Facebook the other day asking for school recommendations.