Splash into a new school year 💦
Splash into a new school year 💦
Plus the beginning of in-person programs, hopefully this year 😍
☔ A Rainstorm of Firsts: Virtual Firestorm
In the spirit of summer, we decided to try some new things to reinvigorate students, teachers, and admins for our first ever summer Rainstorm! One of those firsts was to host a virtual Firestorm - essentially a group of 6 admins and teachers performing 5 minute classes for students the week before our program! Roughly 40 students attended and our chat box was on fire! 🔥 We are looking forward to keeping this going even outside periods close to bigger Rainstorm events, and hope to loop in more teachers that are interested in trying out new topics, techniques, or just looking to get more involved! Email us if you’d like to be at the next one! cloud@learningu.org
📸 Humans of Splash
Each month, we will profile people from the Splash community, be they a founder or director. We will adopt a “Humans of New York'' approach and add archival photos. For July, we have Paul Kominers from MIT and Justin Luo, the most recent co-director of Princeton Splash.
I was involved with MIT ESP throughout college. When I participated in Splash, LU was still a nascent organization, and the chapter board had just come into existence. I served as chair of MIT ESP from 2009-2010 and eventually transitioned to a position as the MIT LU Rep. The representative position served as the dedicated interface between LU and our group. While I was coming up through MIT ESP, and throughout my time as LU Rep, many of the foundational conversations about the function of LU and how chapters should relate to it were still taking place. Those conversations involved questions like how LU should be funded and what a Splash should be – and how much of a say LU would have in the latter question. At that point, MIT was bigger than any other chapter, and developing a system that gave all chapters appropriate representation presented an interesting puzzle. Around the same time, I also started to mentor other chapters such as Yale Splash, and became the Director of New Chapter Mentoring at LU. As the Director, I helped to define and streamline the chapter onboarding and mentoring process. We would vet students who demonstrated interest in starting a chapter and then recruit mentors for them, typically experienced admins from more established programs. In 2014, I left my role as Director, and over time the remainder of my mentoring positions naturally wound down.
Alex Zhu (Princeton’s former co-director) was my Peer Academic Advisor at Princeton my freshman year. Very nice welcoming guy. When I went to the club fair, he was a familiar face. He was running a stand there and said, “Just write your name down.” I spent so little time researching Splash, so I didn’t even know what it was. But Alex was nice so I wrote my name down, and it ended up being great. In high school, I tutored inner-city kids that lived in the Metro Detroit area. While it was a fulfilling thing to help kids get into college, no one wants to do tutor about the SAT on Saturdays. No one actually wants to do that if they don’t have to. The kids that come to our Splash program legitimately want to take the classes. That difference is something you see in how enthusiastic they are. The other members of Splash are also very enthusiastic, so you can see that everyone wants to be there. As college students, we have academic interests that other kids who don’t have the same exposure or even resources could ever get access to. Splash is a great opportunity to show that if you are legitimately passionate about something, show why you are passionate. Maybe it’s not seen as the most lucrative or prestigious thing, but there’s a lot of value in education. All of us got here via education, so everyone would agree that it’s important.
📋 LU board: future of Rainstorm
By board chair Will Reid, willreid@alumni.unc.edu
The LU board met on Aug. 1. The board discussed the future of Rainstorm and identified a path forward to formalize a leadership structure. Link to the meeting notes. The next board meeting is Sept. 12, open to the public. Email Will for a link.
✅ Resources
Learn about teacher training, social media engagement, Amazon smile, LU handbook, SplashCon notes, and Website documentation on Github.
💻 Beep boop beep
Join Learning Unlimited Slack or Splash admin Facebook.
🔔 Who art thou?
Executive director, Benjamin Horowitz: bhorowitz@learningu.org
Chief financial officer, Ted Hwa: ted@learningu.org
Board chair, Will Reid: willreid@learningu.org
Director of chapter services, Miles Calabresi: miles@learningu.org
Director of program mentoring, Ellis Burgoon Miskell: ellis@learningu.org
😂 Monthly meme
Courtesy Jackie Folmar
Join the “Splash memes for overworked admin teams” on Facebook.
Hi! We’re Cori and Anne, members of the Learning Unlimited board. Thanks for reading our LU newsletter. We’d love your feedback and tips to include - feel free to email us at cori@learningu.org or ajwen@learningu.org.