Education

Community Health Workers Teach Asthma Patients to Breathe Easier

Stephen Rynkiewicz
Kimberly Artis, community health educator

Kimberly Artis, community health educator

When an asthma patient showed her inhaler, Kimberly Artis was encouraged, at first.

“She shook the medicine up and I’m thinking in my head, OK that’s good,” says Artis, a community health educator with Sinai Health System in Chicago. “The next thing she did was take a cleansing breath, and I’m like, that’s even better because most people don’t do this.”

Then the patient sprayed the inhaler over her shoulder and took a breath of the room air, and Artis knew why this patient wasn’t getting better. “If the doctor asked her if she was taking her medication, she would have said yes, because she thought she was doing it correctly,” Artis says.

Artis was hired to help patients in their own homes, and to keep them out of emergency rooms. Outreach workers like Artis have helped Sinai cut return visits. Sinai, which includes Mount Sinai, Holy Cross and Sinai Children’s hospitals, estimates the visits save $3,200 per patient, more than $5 for every dollar spent. Now the technique is spreading to treat other environmental health conditions in underserved neighborhoods.

Asthma affects 9.1 percent of Chicago adults, compared with 8 percent nationwide. It’s one of the top 10 reasons Chicagoans land in the hospital, with 7,325 hospital cases in 2012, according to a Chicago Department of Public Health analysis of state records.

“We’ve been working to address asthma disparities in the communities we serve on the West Side of Chicago since 2001,” says Helen Margellos-Anast, Sinai’s senior epidemiologist and asthma program director. “We focus on helping people understand what asthma is, recognizing it early in its trajectory – understanding these are the early symptoms, and I have to treat them now.”

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Sourcing Instructors for Youth-Led Tech

Smart Chicago

We’re in the second week of delivering on our inaugural Youth-Led Tech, and one of the most rewarding parts of running this program is working with our instructors. We assembled a stellar group of people in a very short amount of time.

At Smart Chicago, one of our principles is open. To us, that means publishing open source code, but it also means publishing step-by-step instructions on how we do less technical but often more sophisticated tasks like hiring a high-quality, diverse workforce for tech instruction in a short amount of time.

Here’s how we did it:

We opened the application process on May 15, 2015 and closed it on June 4, 2015 at 8AM. The main instrument was through text on the project page. We promoted the positions via Twitter, email, Facebook, and other means.

On May 26, 2015, we had 36 applications, 3 of which were duplicates. We sent out this Mailchimp email to all 36 applicants, inviting them for interviews

We conducted 15 interviews on June 2, 2015 based on responses to this campaign. As three of us did the interviews— Kyla, Sonja, and I— we collected quantitative and qualitative information in another Wufoo form. We asked general, open-ended questions about why they were interested in the opportunity, and also checked their availability for the six-week course. We also gave each a rating in three areas: classroom management, tech knowledge, and teaching experience.

An additional nine people applied after this initial interview set. We arranged and conducted another 12 interviews with a number of these applicants, as well as people from the initial 36 who couldn’t make it on June 2. We communicated with these people by email rather than Mailchimp. We offered interviews to every applicant, and we interviewed everybody who responded to our offers.

We received 45 applications total. After background checks, consent forms, and consultant contracts, we hired this set of wonder-people:

Youth-Led Tech Staff

Summer Job Opportunity: Instructors for Youth-Led Tech Program in Five Chicago Communities

Smart Chicago

6948480920_6f945ab8f5_kUPDATE: All positions are filled.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is getting ready to launch “Youth-Led Tech: Summer 2015”, a youth coding school in five locations across the city of Chicago in summer 2015.

We are working to get this program funded through Get IN Chicago, whose mission is to identify, fund and rigorously evaluate evidence-based programs that lead to a sustainable reduction in violence for individuals and communities most affected by violence and poverty. Read more here on our project page and complete this form if you are interested in a position.

In the interest of time, and an acknowledgement that the summer learning season is right about nowish, we are looking to start building staff for this potential program.

We are recruiting seventeen people to take serve as instructors, coordinators, and other key roles. Each of these roles are an 8-week summer job opportunity. The start date is Monday, June 15, 2015, with two weeks of orientation and preparation. Instruction begins Monday, June 29, 2015 and ends on Friday, August 8, 2015, which is the last day of employment. We will perform background checks on all applicants.

The five communities are Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland. Here’s are the job descriptions:

Instructor

Instructors lead all instruction at a location. There is one Instructor for each of the five locations. All instruction materials will be provided, with detailed lesson plans to guide your day. A dominant mode of instruction is “kinesthetic learning”, a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations.

We practice “youth-led tech”, which means that we teach technology in the context of the needs & priorities of young people. We will train you on the fundamentals of youth-led tech, but experience in working with youth in the context of needs & priorities is a plus.

The main technology we’ll teach is WordPress, a free open-source content management system. Familiarity with WordPress is a plus, and you can become familiar with WordPress very quickly. We will also offer “whet your appetite”- style training in gaming and app development.

Each instructor will be given a lesson plan for each day breaking down activities and explicitly laying out training content. Most of the actual training content will be taken from existing tutorial and instruction that is already available on the Internet in the form of teaching content and development environments. Instructors will also be responsible for documenting the program material so that it can be accessed, downloaded, and reproduced anywhere. Instructors will be responsible for filing daily reports about on-site activity.

In choosing instructors, we value strong classroom management, interest in and aptitude with technology, and the ability to listen to youth voice and make sure it gets heard and represented the the tech we make over the summer. Pay is $20 per hour.

Assistant Instructor

Assistant instructors will help Instructors to teach the material and also have other key responsibilities. These include activities like preparing the location each day (set up chairs, tables, computers), check the wi-fi, temperature, and other ambient details, order and manage lunch and snack, and assist in classroom management throughout the day.

We are seeking 10 Assistant instructors— three instructors for each location. Pay is $15 per hour.

Please apply today and share this opportunity as far and wide as possible. Questions? Contact us.

Compare & Contact Feature in Chicago Early Learning

Sonja Marziano

chicago-early-learning-logo-grayToday, Smart Chicago is launching a new feature on the Chicago Early Learning portal that will help parents kick off the process of enrollment. The Chicago Early Learning portal has been a resource for parents to find early learning programs near their home or work. Parents are able to compare programs side-by-side to select the best option for their child. With the new Compare & Contact Feature, parents will be able to contact multiple locations they are interested in learning more about.

Phase 3

Chicago-Early-Learning-Screenshot

This is one part of our Phase 3 work, where we wanted to help facilitate the enrollment process. While parents were able to compare locations before, the goal now is to drive more parents to kick off communication with locations of their choosing. We did this in a couple of ways:

  • On the search results page, we changed “Favorites” to “Compare and Contact” to be more descriptive about this new feature. We also changed the heart symbol to an envelope to make it clearer that parents are contacting locations.
  • We incorporated three different ways for parents to add locations to their list— in the search results list of locations, in the detail pages, and on the map.

Parents then can compare locations side-by-side and click “Contact.” They will reach a form that gives the locations some information about themselves and their children’s ages. Providers at those locations receive these forms and reach out to parents to provide additional information about their programs and enrollment.

Chicago-Early-Learning-Screenshot-Compare

Next Steps

We are hoping to make this an effective process for both parents and the providers at the locations. Therefore, we will continue to gather feedback and implement changes to make this process better. We will conduct Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) tests to speak directly with parents and see how we can make the portal fit their needs better. We will also continue to collaborate with our partners to understand the enrollment process better and create a portal and process that reflects enrollment.

Other Updates

Here are other additions to our Phase 3 work that will be coming up next:

  • Create a better search that allows users to find more relevant results. This includes implementing a search radius feature so parents can find the locations most convenient to them
  • Add more information about the enrollment and application sites
  • Update internal layout that will lead more parents to compare and contact locations they are interested in

A discussion about Local School Councils at OpenGov Chicago

Smart Chicago

opengovchicagoAt OpenGovChicago this year, we’ve been focusing on learning about and helping grassroots groups that interact with official government functions. This time the focus was on Chicago Public Schools and Local School Councils. Local School Councils were first created in 1988 from the Chicago School Reform Act. Local School council members are elected and receive training from Chicago Public Schools. Local School Councils are elected boards that serve at each school. Contract and charter schools do not have Local School Councils. Local School Councils (LSC) are responsible for three main duties:

  • Approving how school funds and resources are allocated
  • Developing and monitoring the annual School Improvement Plan
  • Evaluating and selecting the school’s principal

Local School Councils include the following members:

  • 6 parents
  • 2 community members
  • 2 teachers
  • 1 non-teacher staff
  • school’s principal
  • And in high schools, a student representative

To start off the meeting, we heard from Jill Wohl who is a former Local School Council member. Here’s her introduction:

The meeting then went on to a roundtable discussion regarding a variety of different topics. We started with the Open Meetings Act and how it impacts LSCs. The Open Meetings Act is a law requiring governing bodies to give notice of when meetings are going to occur. It was designed to prevent governing bodies from meeting in secret, but it can impact how LSCs use technology.

Here’s the discussion below:

The next point of discussion was the state of technology at the LSCs, which is poor, by default. It’s difficulty to allow the public access to basic information like who serves on the LSC and how to reach them. Calling the school is often an issue— people answering the phone are not necessarily (and usually are not) associated with the LSC.

Here’s the video of the discussion:    

 

The next point of discussion was on the lack of sharing of best practices, which could be done with adequate technology. There’s nothing to orient LSC members to their roles and no templates or methodologies for carrying out their their responsibilities – they make it up as they go along.

 

This created a good pivot point for Josh Kalov – who spoke about the work that’s been done so far to try and connect Local School Councils together.  Here’s Josh:

 

You can see the Google Drive folder here. Work on connecting Local School Councils will continue in the Education breakout group at Open Gov Hack Night. In addition to the discussion in the room, there was a lot of discussion online. Here is a sampling of tweets:

You can find out more information about local school councils on the Chicago Public Schools website.

KIPP New Jersey Talks School Data at OpenGov Hack Night

Christopher Whitaker

kipp-new-jersey-sq110At this week’s OpenGov Hack Night, Andrew Martin and Juan Pablo-Valez from KIPP New Jersey spoke about the usage of data in schools.

KIPP New Jersey operates nine charter schools in New Jersey and is part of a national network that includes four schools in Chicago.

The talk was described as an anatomy lesson in school data. The entire talk is posted here:

Here are some points as well as some pointers to relevant data in Chicago.

The School Information System (SIS) and the information they hold

A School Information System is a software platform that allows school districts to manage student data. School districts also use these systems to report information about enrollment, student performance, and other information back to their authorizing authorities. This system also holds personal information about each student such as their name, grades, and what classes they’re enrolled in.  This information is heavily protected by rules and it can make getting data from schools difficult because of the need to protect student privacy.

Data researchers, such as those inside the Office of Accountability at Chicago Public Schools, use the data to answer questions regarding school population. Chicago Public Schools information to make decisions about where resources and funding should go, and about what types of supports to provide to teachers.

Schools also collect information on behavioral issues so that they can track disciplinary infractions and their outcomes.

The grade book and the challenge of comparing students to students 

Martin also spoke about the difficulties of comparing students across the board. It’s relatively simple to aggregate data from all the gradebooks in one grade and determine their average GPA. It’s much more difficult to try and compare students from different schools – particularly if they’re in different states.

With the No Child Left Behind Act, all states must develop assessments (standardized testing) at select grade levels to receive federal funding. In Illinois, the current test is called the ISAT test – but the state is now moving to to PARCC test.

Because each state test is different, it can also be difficult to compare one state test to another. Because of this, a ‘Common Core’ set of standards were put in place by forty states – including Illinois – to provide guidance on what students are expected to learn.

Another way of evaluating outcomes are college admission exams like the ACT and SAT. However, those tests are administered fairly late in a students career when it can be too late to take any corrective action.

Education Apps 

The presenters also talked about the proliferation of ed tech apps like Khan Academy. There are a number of civic startups centered around education in Chicago including several from the Impact Engine accelerator program. The presenters also pointed out that it’s sometimes easier to track a student activities as they play games.

Here’s some education data in Chicago  

  • Illinois State Board of Education School Report Card Site: An interactive site that includes test scores and other factors.
  • Illinois State Board of Education School Research Site
  • School Report Cards from Chicago Public Schools
  • Chicago Public Schools Data page
  • Schoolcuts.org: Comprehensive information on schools that closed or received students from closing schools.
  • University of Chicago Urban Education Institute: The mission of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI) is to create knowledge to produce reliably excellent urban schooling.