Education Week - March 20,2019 - 8

By Marva Hinton
Before Kristen Angell took part in
District C, an after-school program
that brings together a diverse group
of teenagers to solve complex, realworld problems, she was not a fan of
group projects.
"I went into District C as an individualist," said Angell, a high-achieving senior at Athens Drive High
School in Raleigh, N.C. Now, she's a
team player.
That's the kind of turnaround
District C wants to achieve as it prepares students for a changing workforce that values employees who can
work in diverse groups to collaborate
and solve problems.
These so-called "soft skills" are in
high demand, but employer surveys
consistently show that students are
entering the workforce without them.
"Employers need students who
can face ambiguity, leverage the
strengths of a diverse team, persevere when they're faced with challenges or problems, think creatively,
analyze problems," said Dan Gonzalez, one of two former teachers who
co-founded District C in Raleigh.
"If we don't quickly as a society
help students get these experiences
in high school and perhaps even before," he added, "they're going to be
unprepared and ill-prepared for an
economy that quickly, very quickly-
it's happening today-is automating
away all the jobs that require execution of procedures. These are routine
cognitive jobs, routine manual jobs
that artificial intelligence and robots
are quickly able to do."

Learning to Listen
Angell's experience in solving
problems and collaborating with
District C was worlds away from
her old high school group projects.
In those classes, she didn't really
trust her classmates to pull their
weight, so she always took the lead.
The 17-year-old joined the program
during the second semester of her junior year, working with teams of students to solve three distinct problems
drawn from the business world.
"District C taught me to listen and
learn and value the ideas of others,"
said Angell. "You can't reach a solution that's really the best you can get
without the perspectives of others."
District C was started as an independent nonprofit by Gonzalez
and Anne Jones in 2017 after doing
extensive research into labor trends
and the skills employers valued. Both
are Ivy-League graduates who spent
time as K-12 science teachers before
leaving the classroom to become leaders in ventures related to education.
Their after-school program brings
together teams of four students from
four high schools to solve complex,
real-world problems brought by local
businesses or organizations, such as
how an athletic-apparel shop can
improve its hiring process or how a
boutique near a college campus could
attract a more lucrative clientele.
The students are either nominated
by their schools or themselves. And
they're drawn from public, private,
charter, and home schools.

For the founders, that's key to
achieving the diversity they want in
each team.
"There's nothing that says diversity
to a high school student like you're
from a different school," said Jones.
And although Angell is proficient
enough to take online courses at the
North Carolina School of Science and
Mathematics, a top residential public high school in nearby Durham,
Gonzalez and Jones also encourage
schools not to just recommend captains of the debate team and wouldbe valedictorians. They say any student interested in problem-solving
and who reads and does math on
grade level is a good fit.
"The nice part about it is when
they enter the program, they're all
at a level playing field because none
of them has done this work before,"
said Gonzalez. "It's brand-new to everyone, which for those students who
typically fall under the radar, it's
an opportunity for them to express
their strengths, skills, and passions
in a way that they haven't before and
maybe even reassess and re-establish
their role in the group."

Coaches Help Along the Way
Those groups, known as C Squads,
meet with their business partners to
get a good understanding of the problem, then they work together online
after school with coaches who help
guide them through the process of
finding a solution, and finally, they
pitch their solutions during a live
workshop that's open to the community.
The coaches help the students
break down the problems, test their
ideas, set goals, and recover from setbacks.
Yonas Kemal is a junior at Apex
Friendship High School in a suburb
of Raleigh. He took part in the program earlier this year, deciding to
nominate himself after a friend raved
about the experience.
The 16-year-old called the program's launch day "life changing"
and nothing like what he was used
to in school.
"It was so free," said Kemal. "It
was so open. We had full control over
what we did and how we decided to
run things when it came to solving
issues."
Kemal said the team feels pressure
to come up with solutions, but it all
seems doable because they're guided
by coaches who help them every step
of the way without ever being condescending.
"I learned how to get a problem,
widen out your scope and try to look
at it from multiple perspectives, and
then come down really deep and
hard and try to solve that issue," said
Kemal. "That's something we don't
learn in school.
Before completing the program,
Kemal saw himself as strictly a tech
guy. But now he's considering pursuing degrees in computer science
and business from the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill-a
shift in focus he attributes to his District C experience.
Since the program's inception,
it's served more than 165 students.

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 20, 2019 | www.edweek.org

Courtesy of Wet Paint

Students Learn 'Soft Skills' Solving Work-World Problems

Raymahl Sutton, left, a former CEO
and founder of a Raleigh, N.C.,
startup, talks about the company
with "C Squad" participants Katie
Hunter and Wesley Hawkins.

That's expected to jump by about 100
students by year's end.
Local school leaders have fully embraced District C. Drew Cook, the
Wake County school system's assistant superintendent for academics,
praises the program for giving students a perspective they might not
get at their home schools.
"One thing that really intrigued
us is the opportunity that kids have
to work with students from other
schools," said Cook.
Wake's director of career and technical education, Jo Anne Honeycutt,
applauds the program for the way it
aligns with district goals by giving
"students a way to practice skills and
project management."

An Expanding Initiative
In the future, the founders hope to
align the program even more closely
with schools through District C
classes that will be taught by teachers. An independent school in the
county has already started offering
this course after two of its teachers
completed training through the program.
So far, 21 businesses or organizations have agreed to provide District
C with problems for students to solve.
Some of the business partners offer
internships to students who have
completed the program, and one student has been hired for a paid position.
Raleigh was the first municipality
to sign on. Local leaders wanted to
know how best to help residents get
home safely after exiting a bus and
implemented some of the students'
suggestions.
"Our young people in no time at
all are going to be in the leadership
positions that we hold today," said Veronica Creech, the head of economic
development and innovation for the
city. "We want our residents, our
young people, to feel very welcomed

FROM JUICE BARS TO TECHNOLOGY:

District C Students Tackle Business Problems
Students in the District C program work in four-person squads
to solve challenges generated by businesses in the Raleigh,
N.C., area. These have included:
* A sports science and technology
company looking to increase user
engagement with its injuryprevention app

* A nonprofit coffee shop with a
social mission looking for a way
to more clearly define and
measure impact

* A juice bar and cafe looking to
improve customer experience
through better design of its space

* A nonprofit, pay-what-you-can
cafe looking for a system and
process for managing
volunteer staff

* An established real estate
company looking to improve
communication and alignment
across its divisions
* A provider of high-tech satellite
and drone imagery for farmers
looking to define and standardize
its customer-service operation

in the civic-engagement process, and
we want our leaders to have the benefit of that good thinking."
The city has since become a financial backer of District C, providing the organization with a grant
to support its work. The program is
funded through a mix of grants and
donations, corporate sponsors, fees
from schools that send their teachers
to the program's coaching institute,
and workshop and speaking fees
from those who invite the founders
to speak.
Christopher Gergen is the founding partner of HQ Raleigh, a coworking space where all of District
C's events are held, and the CEO of
Forward Cities, a national learning
collaborative.
He said the program provides the
type of experience that students
need to succeed in today's economy.
"It's really thinking about how do we
encourage young people to embrace

* A software development
consultancy looking to attract and
hire underrepresented software
engineers and designers
* A maker of healthy dessert snacks
looking to play a role in alleviating
food insecurity

the entrepreneurial mindset and
have both the mindset and the skill
set necessary to be able to navigate
this complex world and to be able to
be effective problem-solvers that have
the ability to put these ideas into action in a collaborative context," said
Gergen.
The program has shifted how
Angell sees her future. She's trying
to figure out what she wants to do
within environmental science but
knows it will be somehow related to
solving the world's problems.
"District C sparked a love of problem-solving in me," said Angell.
"Whatever career I choose, I'm definitely going to take that with me."
Coverage of after-school of after-school
learning opportunities is supported in
part by a grant from the Charles Stewart
Mott Foundation. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.

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Education Week - March 20,2019

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