PF Whiteboard

In a past life I was a Montessori Directress. The founder of the Montessori Method was Maria Montessori, who designed her education methodology for the children of Rome’s slums. A lot of the Montessori method revolves around children being their own teachers, and becoming self-directed learners. The directress (teacher) prepares an environment where the students can go at their own pace and collaboratively learn/teach one another. The directress observes the children, what work they are drawn to, keeps a log of their progress in each area of learning, and at times steers or encourages a child to try something they haven’t before or that might be an appropriate challenging next step. The directress is not occupying the position of primary vehicle of knowledge. She directs the learning and progress of the class or individuals as a coach or guide.

This morning we visited Covington School in Los Altos. It’s not a school we’d typically visit, as the kids there seem to have every opportunity and support that they might need. However, a very interesting pilot project is taking place in their 7th grade classrooms, and our friends at Innosight Institute invited us to go with them to see this exciting experiment in action.

In November 2010 Covington’s 7th grade Maths class began integrating the materials and learning platform of the Khan Academy in to their curriculum. The students utilise school Macs to log on to the Khan Academy learning platform to practice mathematical exercises at their own pace, in the areas they most need to currently be focusing on. Each child sees a ‘constellation’ of their current accomplishments in topics they have mastered, the ones they are currently working on, and also the topics that are suggested as their next areas to work through. They choose how to navigate their own learning. They set their own goals for each week and they see their progress and achievement at the end of each day and week. Each child works at their own pace during their ‘Khan Goals’ and ‘Khan Challenge’ time.

Where is the teacher in all this? Observing the whole class directly in the classroom, observing each child’s progress individually on the online teachers dashboard, and spending time with each child one-on-one reinforcing concepts that the teacher, through the dashboard report, can see they have been struggling with as they’ve worked through exercises. The environment is prepared for every child to direct their own learning at their own pace. Children struggling with a certain concept can spend the time they need to master it, without the whole class knowing they are repeating concepts. Children who excel in particular areas can learn and practice at an accelerated pace, without feeling self conscious or having to sit through disengaging reinforcement of things simple to them. Teachers no longer teach to the middle or bottom of the class, get an accurate picture of where each child’s strengths, struggles and enthusiasm lie (many children go home and log on to the Khan platform to continue doing exercises and challenges they enjoy and decide they want to master), and they get time to work one-on-one with each child every week.

I’m pretty sure Maria Montessori would be impressed with the use of today’s technological advances to reinforce the key principle of self-directed learning, and the development of a solution that has the potential to serve children in almost any circumstance, background or geography. It’s an exciting project because of the extremely broad potential for application and the fairly low barrier to adoption for schools, teachers, families and after-school programs in practically any part of the world.

My current understanding and ability to explain this pilot is nascent. For more info check out the blog that the Khan Academy, the teachers, AND students are using to share their experience.

These past few months we’ve been configuring salesforce to manage our grantmaking and relationships.  It’s so nice to have – still needs some tweaking, but a lot better than our tired spreadsheets.  While doing this, I’ve had a chance to look over our historical list of grants going all the way back to 1979.  I can’t help but wonder, what have we achieved?  As I look at each grant individually, I can site the good that has been accomplished, but if I had to summarize what we did in one sentence, what would I say? 

Right now we’re preparing for our family board meeting in early February.  There’s a lot to cover – highlights from 2010, new partnerships, lessons learned.  But one thing we need to do is pose some questions to the board that will really make us think about where we’re headed, and what changes we need to make.  The kinds of questions I want us to think about are along these lines: If we closed our doors today, would we feel we accomplished something?  If someone told us this year was our last year to make a difference, what would we do differently?

Our foundation was initially established to exist into perpetuity, to grow the endowment and involve future generations – all the typical reasons for doing so.  However, the idea of spending down is exciting, and takes a lot of guts, as it forces you to confront how you are going to make every last dollar matter before it all runs out.  Alternatively, the endowment squeezes out a drop each year that is then distributed far and wide, and often feels like a literal drop in the bucket.  When you’re committed to solving a big problem, that drop feels hardly adequate.

What I’m inviting our family to do, and any other funder for that matter, is to either spend down, or at least adopt a “spend-down mentality”.  Previously we’ve had neither the capacity nor the issue-focus to wisely spend-down, but we can move towards approaching each year as if it were our last.

We have family friend who after adopting a child from Ghana, became aware of the thousands of orphans in Ghana who are undocumented and therefore suffer terribly in the streets and in substandard orphanages.  He is now working in partnership with the government of Ghana to account for every undocumented child in the country, and place them into a loving home. Successful or not in this endeavor, he will have worked for something beautiful. My point is, let’s not let each year pass without working towards something great.

The depth to which we are involved with each of our partners varies. Some organisations are newer and have a list of things we can help them find/do, others are very well established and for the most part we just get out of their way and watch with awe. Each partnership is defined by the situation and needs of the organisation.

One unique partnership is with BYU (Brigham Young University). Before I joined the PF, Dave and the Peery family had noticed an opportunity at BYU. A number of the family are BYU grads and they were very familiar with the student body who are highly entrepreneurial, have diverse international experience and language skills, and firmly believe in the school’s motto of ‘Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve’. It’s obvious, right? Social Entrepreneurship fit! While there were a few solid SE activities already established on campus, they recognised an opportunity to coordinate the existing efforts, as well as build a robust program that would serve students and faculty across campus more completely.

Currently, this is what about 40% of my time is spent on, as we prepare to launch the program. This will dramatically decrease over the next year but for now BYU is the one partner we are in communication with almost daily. I’m a BYU grad myself, so it’s extremely gratifying to be able to continue to build what I wanted to see while a graduate student there. I work with the program’s director, a founders group of professionals all volunteering their time to create the program, and many faculty and student leaders. As with most of what we do at the PF, it’s gratifying work -just in a different way.

The program will be launching in February, the week of the 7th. I’m pretty sure you’ll get to hear a little more about all the goings ons, then.

And if there are any funders out there working with universities already doing or currently thinking about doing a similar thing, we’d love to hear from you. We’ve learned quite a bit over the last couple of years we’ve been working on this partnership, and we are still trying to figure out how the relationship will change as the program becomes more established with time. Always open to learning/sharing.

Once in awhile, something comes along that doesn’t fit, but it matters.  Yesterday we decided to support an organization called Embrace, which has a developed an ultra low-cost Infant Warmer that costs less than 1% of a traditional incubator.  This product has the potential to save the lives of millions of prematurely born babies.  The product also happens to have the right business model, the right entrepreneur, and highly favorable results in its pilot testing.  Last year we reluctantly declined to fund them because they didn’t “fit” our global portfolio’s criteria, which has increasingly favored programs focused on livelihood creation.  However, I could never seem to remove the post-it on my wall that said “Embrace” on it. What they are doing might just be more important than our guidelines.

Another such case was our support last year for the Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF).  I initially met with them because a family friend introduced us, but didn’t expect to get involved; first, because there is almost no connection to our mission, and second, because funding medical research often feels like a never-ending quest with no real results.  MRF has developed an accelerated research model that promotes accountability, results, and ultimately a real treatment for multiple sclerosis.  Their work has the potential to not only bring a treatment for MS to market, but eventually revolutionize the way medical research is conducted, funded, and the pace at which treatments and cures are brought to light.  MRF has been funded by numerous individuals and large foundations, many who were able to ignore their primary mission in order to support something of potential major importance.

By no means should we get distracted by every interesting opportunity that comes along (as they always will), but let’s build in some flexibility for the ideas that may just matter the most.  We would love to hear any examples of other funders that have pursued a tangent because of its immense potential.

As you probably know, we are a small shop and both relatively new to foundation work. There are many advantages to this situation. There are a few downsides too.

One downside is that it’s harder to get regular feedback from different perspectives on how I’m doing as a developing foundation professional. So I want to attempt to crowd source my own annual review. I’m hoping this will provide feedback on a variety of the roles I find myself playing, from all different angles.

If we worked together, interacted or you’ve observed me working at a conference, event, etc during 2010, I’d like to hear from you. The only stipulation is that you provide at least one thing I should keep doing that you saw in 2010 and one thing you suggest I should work on/try in 2011. Please feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section, or if you’re more comfortable emailing them then send to jessamynATpeeryfoundationDOTorg.

Many thanks, in anticipation of you taking time to do this. It will be a great way for me to figure out what I can work on during 2011 to be better at what we do.