Pact reflection 2

Thomas Woodside
3-7, August 20
Kiva
Kevin O'Brien
kevin@kiva.org

Towards the end of my time at Kiva, I began a new project that aimed to cut down on the amount of time Kiva's community support team has to spend responding to common and tedious questions. For instance, despite entries on their FAQ page, Kiva gets many email requests with questions about how to change passwords and email addresses, which are all answered in a very similar way.
I had written a program that attempted to identify the most likely existing solutions for new questions. The program could identify the top 3 most likely solutions, and testing showed that the correct solution would likely be among those 3 more than 50% of the time.
I presented my findings at a meeting with the community support team and the machine learning weekly meeting. We brainstormed various ways to present the predictions: we could show them on Kiva’s website before Kiva issued a request, or we could include them in the confirmation email they receive after they submit a request. Hopefully in the future, these predictions will allow the community support team to focus on more important cases.
After the meeting, I worked with Melissa, a software engineer, to set up a new server environment that anyone at Kiva could use to do simple data analysis. We ended up staying in the office until about 7 because of some tricky issues with the setup. In the end, we had it set up, and now anyone at Kiva who knows a little Python can easily do analysis on Kiva’s data.

Brian Mhatre
7/5/2018 1:30
Penisula Bridge
Rolando Victoria
rvictoria@menloschool.org

Going into my second week of teaching at Penisula bridge I had a whole new group of students. I focused the second week of the class primarily on website development. The kids the second week of the program were a little less interested in the material and more interested in playing Roblox. This presented a bit of a challenge when trying to keep the kids entertained for an hour. I tried to incorporate more fun stuff into my lessons and reference Roblox in a lot of my explanations. Managing sixth graders definitely tested my patience on multiple occasions but luckily my calm and relaxed nature won out on all occasions. I think my overall impact was relatively limited since I was only with the kids for two weeks and wasn’t able to go that deep into any subjects. The only impact I think I could have had on the students is encouraging them to pursue computer science in the future. Although I also did teach them some useful things they can do in terminal (their computers text interface). Overall I enjoyed my time working with these kids and I learned a lot from them. Communicating with them effectively was a skill that I honed during my time a bridge and I think this also helped me become a more understanding person in general.

Brian Mhatre
7/5/2018 1:30
Penisula Bridge
Rolando Victoria
rvictoria@menloschool.org

Going into my PACT project I wasn’t sure how I was going to be received. I was trying to teach computer science to kids how to code so I was definitely a little worried about how interested the kids would be. For the first week, I taught the kids a combination of lessons from code.org as well as show them cool things that they could do in terminal. The kids took a little interest in the lessons but I took quite a bit of encouragement to get them to do the work. However, they were a lot more receptive towards learning stuff in terminal. I showed them a bunch of commands that allowed them to do all sorts of things with their computer and they were really genuinely interested in learning more. This was really encouraging for me and was really nice to see. Going into this opportunity I felt if I could have an impact on just one kid and change their views on a future in computer science I would consider the opportunity a success. I am really appreciative to have had this opportunity to share something I am very passionate about with kids who were willing to learn. At the end of the day while I may not have had the biggest impact on any individual kid I think I did do a good job of showing the kids some of the cool stuff that can be accomplished with Computer Science.

Raab PACT Reflection 2

Colin Raab

April 28th, May 5th and May 12th

Dance Arts Center

Carol Nicholas

+16502187871

As the S.N.A.P. spring session came to a close, the final performance loomed ahead.
Like any vaguely theatrical performance, things would always come together at the
last minute, sometimes even during the performance itself. In the final few classes
I had worked with 2 students: Alessandra and Jacob, a student whose siblings had
attended Menlo, and whom I’ve worked with many times. Jacob, like Alessandra, is
rarely vocal, but is generally much more willing to jump headfirst into the activity at
hand. Jacob’s enthusiasm is refreshing, but it’s much more rewarding to see a student
come out of their shell and begin to enjoy dancing and singing because of your help.
Jacob makes me feel comfortable, but my job as a buddy is to make the students
comfortable. In the final sessions before the performance, Alessandra was still struggling
with some of themoves, not because they were difficult, but because she had a lot of
inhibitions. In this sense, she isn’t very different from many of us, who allow ourselves to
be controlled by our self-conscious nature, and then fail to really enjoy our time together
with others. When the final performance came, her previous hesitancy was replaced by
a certain excitement as she knew her family and relatives would be in the audience. My
role as the ‘encouragement’ then shifted to ‘guidance’, as I needed to direct her
enthusiasm into performing the correct dance moves. At the end of the performance,
instead of reverting to her usually uncommunicative self, she proudly said her name in
front of the audience as instructed during the final bow. My experience proved the
profound influence a buddy can have on someone with a mental disability, and the
invaluable reward a buddy gains in terms of compassion, patience and confidence.

Raab PACT Reflection 1

Colin Raab

March 24th, 31st and April 7th

Dance Arts Center

Carol Nicholas

+16502187871

At Dance Arts Center, the spring session of S.N.A.P., a program aimed towards sharing
the joy of dancing and the arts with special needs kids, had begun. Each volunteer
student might be paired with the same buddy or a different buddy for the 10 weeks,
and in the past I had done both. This session, I began with Alessandra, a girl I had met
in previous S.N.A.P. sessions, as well as when I volunteered as a referee for AYSO’s
special needs VIP program. She was originally hesitant to have someone new as a
buddy, as she had had the same buddy for the past 2 or 3 sessions. Needless to say,
it took a couple classes before she would even talk to me, but she rarely talked to
anyone other than her mom in the first place. In previous sessions, I typically worked
with kids who were pretty vocal (sometimes too much so when they would disrupt the
entire class), so working with someone who refused to communicate other than in
head-shaking was at first a trying experience. Once she had become accustomed to
being back at S.N.A.P., Alessandra more readily participated in the dances and
became more animated in her gestures and facial expressions. I noticed that as she
enjoyed each class more and more, so did I, because I felt that my directions and
efforts to convey the dances and songs to her were having a greater effect.

PACT Reflection 2

Bridget Quigley
5/29/18, 6:00pm
Scott Ammon
Eshoo.SAB@mail.house.gov

The students on the advisory board attended meetings twice a month in order to give and receive feedback about our developing policy papers. Each student reviewed approximately 5 papers per meeting, and our finished drafts were officially reviewed and edited by members of Congresswoman Eshoo's board in her Washington, D.C. office.

I really appreciated all of the feedback, especially from her assistants in Washington, D.C. because it felt as though my policy paper was truly going to be valued and appreciated by the Congresswoman, and not simply a project that she would not pay any attention to.

I continued to work on my solution, pulling statistics about mass deportation from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement fiscal year studies. By the time I finalized my proposal, I was urging the Congresswoman to work with the national government to devise a system in which adult undocumented immigrants could earn citizenship and permanent residency by providing proof of a clean criminal record, steady employment and income, and other necessary requirements.

Finally, the day of the presentation had arrived. As nervous as I was about the Congresswoman reviewing my policy paper as I recited my speech, I was thrilled that she would finally be able to hear the product of my months of hard work and research.

After speaking, I was delighted to hear the Congresswoman tell me that she absolutely loved my proposal, and that she agreed that the government needed a system such as the one I suggested. She told me that she had been working on a similar project with the government, and had high hopes for its success.

The Congresswoman's positive reaction to my proposal was more than I could have asked for. Not only was I happy that she approved of my ideas, but that she was currently working on something similar and would try to implement some of my ideas into her project was amazing. I felt as though my work was truly making an impact on a national level, and hopefully someday soon it will be able to help adult undocumented immigrants across the country gain citizenship and permanent residency. I felt like I was not just a student working on a project, this experience actually enabled me to make a change on a national level, and help those in desperate need.

PACT Reflection 1

Bridget Quigley
12/12/17, 6:00pm
Scott Ammon
Eshoo.SAB@mail.house.gov

I have always been very passionate about social justice and human rights. When I started high school, I wanted to participate in extracurriculars that would allow me to exercise this passion. I joined my city's youth council, and started studying journalism so that I could write for my school's newspaper and produce pieces about injustice and human rights violations. However, I wanted to enact change on a larger scale than my school and local community. So I joined California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo's Student Advisory Board.

After submitting my application and being accepted onto the board, I had no idea what to expect before the first meeting. When I arrived, I was surrounded by a group of students just as passionate as I was. Our meeting was lead by one of the Senior Field Representatives of Congresswoman Eshoo's office. Our project for the year was to choose a topic that we were passionate about, identify a problem, and develop a solution. Each student would then propose this solution to the Congresswoman herself at a board meeting in May.

I immediately began to search for a problem relating to social justice. I settled on fighting for the protection of adult undocumented immigrants. While people are fighting to protect children of undocumented immigrants through DACA and the DREAM Act, adults are being forced to return to their "home countries" after having remained law-abiding people and building a life in the United States. I felt that this was unjust and began to develop a solution to this issue of mass deportation.

Our positions on the board allowed us to utilize computers that had access to government information to help us conduct our research. I hoped that my extensive research and effort on this policy paper would make a significant impact on the Congresswoman.