Preparing Students for Education Beyond High School

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. We're looking at data and privacy from the perspective of two generations.

Paige:

I'm Paige Biderman. I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I'm David Biderman. I'm the boomer. I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice. In this podcast, we'll be having conversations with cyber hackers, privacy experts, and guardians of security who can explain some of this to me.

Paige:

Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Disarming Data. We are a podcast that comes at it from two different perspectives, the millennial and the boomer. Today our guest is Raj Salhotra. He is a native from Houston and started a program called Momentum Education, which is a combination of two other programs that he originally started. But I really do want to let him talk about it. I have a long bio for you here, but I'd rather hear it all from you. We'd like to ask our guests where they're from, how they got started doing, what they're doing, just their background, if you don't mind.

David:

How you managed to escape the law firm life to do what you're doing. You got to tell us about that.

Raj:

Sure. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for having me, first of all. Grew up in Houston, went to college here. I think really the relevant part of the story starts after college. I became a high school math teacher through Teach For America here in Houston, and I absolutely loved that. I had done some kind of teaching programs in college and that what prompted me to apply. My mom is a professor at university here in Houston, and my dad has a consulting company, but also does some teaching. It runs in the blood, so to speak. I loved my experience as a teacher. I taught high school math, pre-calculus, and statistics, but the big challenge was so many of my students would not go to college.

Maybe they're the first in their family. Maybe they didn't have the resources financially. Maybe academically they weren't prepared. And then even if they did start college, many of them did not finish. I started thinking, I'm spending hours every week preparing for pre-calculus, giving these lessons, grading. But if the students are not finishing college or community college, in some ways, what is the point of all this? What is the point of all this effort? I knew. I thought I wanted to get into policy and politics, which is what prompted going to law school. I went to law school, graduated, came back to Houston.

The plan was to start working at a law firm here, but I ended up deferring that to run for city council, because I really believed and still believe that politics can provide a vehicle to enact positive change that would've helped my students, whether it was things around education, things around homelessness, things around food deserts, things around flooding in Houston, a big issue. But I ended up losing that race. In January 2020, I was at a fork in the road. I could go back to the law firm or continue with my passion in education.

I was very lucky that a couple of the individuals whom I had met both as a teacher and they had supported me on the campaign were willing to get behind and provide some support if I jumped in and started this organization called Momentum Education. Here we are three years later, three school years later. We focus on helping low income students graduate high school, graduate from college or community college, and then get a job so they can get out of poverty. We can talk a lot more about how we do that, but that's the arc of the story.

Paige:

Do you find students, or do they come to you?

Raj:

We partner with high schools in Houston. We'll go to a high school. We'll make a presentation on our program, which includes mentoring, coaching the students through a curriculum that we've built, helping them with exposing them to different careers by partnering with different companies to bring in speakers. Then thirdly, providing scholarships support, connecting them to external scholarships. Once schools sign up with us, students then can opt in from that school to join the program. It's totally free for the student. That's how we go about recruiting students.

Paige:

Have you found it was easy for schools to come on board, or was there pushback? What was that situation like?

Raj:

It was interesting. We started, our first school year was 2020-2021, and that was COVID year. Virtually zero schools in this country had in-person education. Certainly Houston was the same way. I think given that that was such a year of upheaval, schools were really willing to try things, quite frankly. Our model had always been virtual. We had always thought both as a way to scale and as a way to ensure safety. We had always thought virtual mentoring was going to be the way to go. The second piece of puzzle is the high school students are mentored by college kids.

That's the unique piece here. We hire the college kids through the mentoring. Schools were interested in this, I think, in part for the mentoring, but in part because they really felt that the college students could almost be a positive force on the high school students during this relatively challenging period. As a result, we didn't have too many challenges getting into schools in that first year, and then we've been very lucky that the vast majority of schools have come back year-on-year.

Paige:

Do kids that come into the program, do they come in already having all the academic skills needed to get into college? Or do you really have to teach them a lot of extra stuff because of the way the education system can be?

Raj:

We start working with students as early as ninth grade year. All the students we work with, over 98% are either the first generation in their family to go to college, their parents did not go to college, and/or they are low income in the sense that they're receiving free or reduced price lunch in high school. As a result, they often have no idea what is needed to get into college. They've just been told like, hey, college or community college or vocational pathway is something you should do from an economic perspective.

We are really starting with some students from having no idea what the SAT is, having no idea what a college list is, having no idea what college essays are, having the desire because they see their economic situation of their parents with no college degree, and so they want to go and they have the drive, but they have no idea how to get there. Our mentors are guiding them through a curriculum twice a month meeting to prepare them for all this in large part because those mentors themselves are first generation students. They were in those same shoes four or five years ago.

They totally can relate and resonate with the students. We've seen pretty good success, I think, because of that relatability piece.

Paige:

Did you find it really frustrating when you were a math teacher that the schools didn't provide a lot of college prep work? Because I got sent to private school. I mean, I felt like they were doing college prep work when I was 10, basically. Did you find it's frustrating that a public school seemed to not be focused on that at all?

Raj:

Through Teach For America, I was actually placed at a charter school in Houston, a high performing charter school, which did have a lot of college prep. But even still, we only had about a 40% college graduation rate, which is better than the 20% rate in Texas for public school students, low income students in general. 40%, yes, it is 20 percentage points higher, but still is nowhere where we need to be. I think the frustration came because I would see there was so much lost potential, where you would see someone, a student, who wants to be let's say a doctor, has the aptitude and the drive, but doesn't have the financial resources to go to college.

You just sit there and you say, "Something is not right here because this person could be a hugely valuable contributing member of society, but for this financial burden, or but for this academic lack of preparation," or et cetera, et cetera. I think what crystallized it was some of my students had friends who were in the traditional public school, and they shared with me the situation where... They said, "Hey, our friends, there's four, 500 students per college counselor." They have no idea what is happening. The school I'm at, I'm like, wow, 40%.

And then I hear that down the road it's like 20% or less graduation rate from college. Then I'm like, okay, that's where the frustration really came in and said, okay, we got to do something.

Paige:

It's really interesting. I just finished taking educational psychology, actually. A lot of it was about the Philadelphia Public School System. I mean, the public school system here I learned, it was like last year they did testing and it was of the 16 year olds they tested, 24% tested illiterate. I was baffled how that even kids can be slid through to that age without having normal level reading skills.

I mean, I was really excited to talk to you actually because it's been really irking me since I learned about this. There's so much stuff in the media all the time about so many different things, and I'm like, why is no one ever talking about education it feels like, when it's one of the biggest and most important parts of someone's life?

Raj:

You get to that. I think you raise a really good point. Well, the direct answer to your question is we have a lot of schools where we're just passing students along, unfortunately. It happens across the country. I mean, I would have students in pre-calculus that could not solve x plus two equals five. You're just like, how did you get to pre-calculus when you can't solve this basic algebra one concept? That's for sure part of it. I think it's interesting because on the one hand, we think of education as such a local issue, and so you don't hear a lot about it at the national level.

And then at the state level, what you see now in the conversation is often these curriculum battles of which books to ban or which curriculum to teach. I think that detracts from the more pressing issue of nationally, about 67, so two-thirds, of all jobs and a significantly higher percentage of middle class jobs require education beyond high school, whether a six month welding certificate, a two year community college degree, four year college, grad school, whatever. Whereas only about 20, 25% of students are getting these degrees. We really have this mismatch here. I think we've been filling that hole with immigration in some ways.

We haven't had such a high preponderance of jobs requiring education beyond high school, but that is changing. If we don't solve this issue, I think we're going to have a real, real challenge, both with a significant group of people just trapped in poverty and a significant percentage of jobs just totally unfilled.

Paige:

Right. Yeah, that is so interesting because you see people just arguing all the time about teaching critical race theory in school, but it's like all these kids cannot even read to learn critical race theory. Why are we even arguing about this?

Raj:

Exactly. That's right. That's right.

David:

Raj, I got to ask, there's some controversy in Houston right now, isn't there, about what's going on?

Raj:

There is. We have a very interesting law in Texas. It says in Texas, every school in the state, every public school I should say, is rated A through F, given a grade. The idea here was so parents could have some understanding of how their school is fairing, because it is really asking a lot for parents to go into every test score and try to research. The state sets up the system A through F. There was some chronically underperforming schools across the state, but also in Houston. A state representative from Houston introduced a bill that said, if an individual school has five years of getting an F, then the state must either close the school or take over the whole school district.

There is a high school in Houston that failed the state standards, got an F five years in a row, which triggered this law. The local school district, Houston Independent School District, filed a lawsuit to try to stop the state from taking over. That's been going through the courts. The Texas Supreme Court at the end of 2022 issued an opinion that no, the state is within its rights to take over the district. Last week, the state announced that effective June 1st, so at the end of this current school year, they will institute nine new school board members who will have all the power that the elected nine members currently have.

Those nine appointed we call managers, they're calling them, will select the superintendent, will approve the budget. Those nine will run the school district. This has caused huge uproar in Houston because community members are feeling I think two main concerns. One, this is not democratic at all, and the second is there is a fear that the governor, who has been pushing school vouchers, charters, is going to try to make Houston ISD a test case for perhaps increasing charters or some way privatizing the schools. That's the situation here.

Paige:

I had no idea about this actually at all.

David:

Is it going to happen, you think?

Raj:

Oh yeah. They already have 185 applications from people to be on this new board of managers. The state education chief, who's appointed by the governor, sent a letter to the HISD administration saying, "Effective June 1st, I'll have nine new people." He said, "We will pick a new superintendent." He's very clear about it. There have been now two community meetings which have just devolved into shouting matches, because the Texas Education Agency has brought their representative to explain the process of how to apply for this. Of course, nobody wants to hear that.

People are just trying to shout. It's actually a very, very bad situation here. It's not clear the efficacy. The research is mixed on whether these takeovers actually improve outcomes for students. It's really, really hard to say from a student academic perspective what's going to happen. Leave the democracy question just on the side for a second. But if the actual goal is we want every single student in Houston ISD to be successful, then we have a wait and see of how this might work.

Paige:

And just out of curiosity, do you see benefits to school choice yourself or no, not as much?

Raj:

It's interesting. I'm not a fan of the voucher argument as much because I think it's really tough. There's a difference between a food stamp and a school voucher to me, which is if you're buying a loaf of bread, it somewhat doesn't matter if you buy brand A or B with the food stamp. But there is a massive societal impact on if you pick a school A versus school B, and the impact is bigger on your kid if you make a mistake. But if you make a mistake on brand A or B of bread, it doesn't really matter that much. I'm not a huge fan of the vouchers.

On the charter school side, I think that some of the charter schools in Houston at least actually do have a positive impact in the test scores and the graduation rates are higher. In Houston, we have one school district, or actually a couple school districts, where the charter school actually embeds itself in the public school, so it's a true partnership, where the charter school says, "Hey, we are really good at college preparation and teacher training," and the public school is really good at offering a breadth of classes. Because for example, most charter schools do not offer all the electives like the AP psychology, for example, Paige, or the charter schools don't have the facilities for a sports team.

When you bring the charter and the public school under one roof, the charter kids get the benefit of the electives and the sports teams, the public school kids get the benefit of perhaps some innovative teaching methods and some deeper investment in college prep. That to me shows the potential for some promise. We have that now in two districts here in Houston where KIPP, which is a big national charter network, and YES Prep, which is the big Houston-based charter, are partnering with traditional public schools. I think that's the future that I would like to see.

Paige:

Okay, that makes sense. That definitely makes sense. I mean, not to go way back to your Teach for America days, but this is just out of curiosity. Do they train teachers much differently through Teach For America on how teaching is going to look than the average teacher?

Raj:

The way it works is you apply, and if you're accepted then... You graduate school let's say May of your senior year, hypothetically. Then in June and July, you have two months of teacher training. The training is, at least in Houston, we were teaching summer school to the kids who failed. Now, just stop and let that sink in for a second. Teachers who have no experience are teaching the students who probably need the best teachers. Something is not right there. I don't think that's the best system. I do think what Teach For America provides is some innovative or more research-based teaching methods, so to speak.

And then the bigger thing is during your first year of teaching, you have a coach that comes and observes you multiple times and provides you really good feedback. I think when I talk to my friends who became teachers through maybe a traditional certification, they had more preparation on how to be a teacher, but they didn't have that frequent observation. That to me was an added benefit. Because in your first year of doing anything, you're not going to be that good. Having that constant feedback is hugely helpful.

Paige:

Because one of my best friends, she's in law school now actually, who is a teacher, but I mean, she's going big law. She worked I don't remember if it was KIPP, it was one of the charter schools in Philly, but she just said that no one really prepared her for what it would look like. It's such a challenging job, honestly. It's an important job, but it just seems like very high stress in a lot of ways. There's a lot of disappointments that come with it.

Raj:

You know what I think it is, Paige? I think many of the whether it's the large urban schools or schools with a higher preponderance of low income students, what we're not trained for is actually the stuff that you're going to be training for, which is the therapy side, the emotional side, the social side. When you have a student tell you like, "Yeah, we got evicted yesterday," we don't really know how to respond to that. I'm not talking about finding them housing, but I'm talking about emotionally how to respond to that as the best methodologies we teach. I think that's where it can be very challenging, actually.

David:

Raj, just going back, because we were talking about your career, one, you're too modest. I mean, you went to a law school. You went to Harvard Law School. I know you got full rides at other Ivy League. You had some pretty enormous opportunities available to you. I know you had a job at a big law firm. What do you think made you decide to go this other route? What would you say to other people that are thinking about going a different route, they're just going out to all offer?

Raj:

I think for me, I felt like when I was a teacher, I was most alive and excited and I just felt so passionate about it. When I did my summers at some law firms in Houston, I just didn't find the same passion. I think my situation, I just should be very clear, I'm very, very, very privileged and fortunate. My parents live in Houston. They've been super supportive. I don't pretend to say that everybody has the same opportunity set that I did and do. But I do think that for me it was just, hey, I'm really passionate about this. I think we can potentially make a huge impact. If every day I'm going to be spending eight to 10 hours doing this, I really want to like it. I just wasn't passionate about the work at the firm.

Paige:

Did you find that law school was helpful for setting up your own nonprofit though and dealing with all the things that you deal with in terms of the company aspect?

Raj:

Yeah. I mean, certainly there's the legal aspect of setting up a nonprofit and filing a 990 and reading all the regulations, for sure it's been helpful there. I think it's also been helpful just in the teaching method in law school of breaking down a problem into steps, trying to piece all the facts together. We've had to do that same thing with Momentum. Whenever there's an issue, try to approach it the same way.

And then I'd be remiss if I didn't say, I think the biggest benefit is the network beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that I'm very lucky that when I apply for a grant or when I meet a potential donor or a partner, they see that I went to law school at Harvard and I think that does open a lot of doors.

Paige:

I have heard Harvard Law School has that tendency.

Raj:

Anyways, I think that's probably... And I would say, honestly, I've made four really good friends from law school who I talk to every day. That helps with our group chats. If I'm going through, I can just drop something in there and they'll always be there to give me advice. That's probably the biggest one, honestly.

Paige:

Since you're doing a lot of virtual, do a lot of the students not have access to laptops and computers, and how do you go about dealing with that?

Raj:

This was a huge challenge, and it would've been worse for us if COVID hadn't happened. When COVID happened, almost every school district started providing high school students with laptops to take home. That has been a huge benefit. Now, they don't get to keep it after the four years of high school. They have to give it back, obviously, but that's been hugely helpful, number one. Number two is Comcast, which is the main internet provider here, has a very, very low cost internet essentials plan for families that are receiving some form of government assistance, like $10 a month for high speed internet.

That's been a huge help also. We continue working with students when they go to college. The vast majority of college students do have a laptop, but we have had some that didn't. I want to just give a big shout-out. Comcast donated laptops to those students for free, and that was huge. They didn't have to do that. They've done that multiple times. We've been really fortunate. It has made the hours of tech support with them worth it. At least you're giving free laptops to our kids, so I'll sit on the phone with you for two hours, my wifi is out or whatever.

David:

Listening to that music for two hours.

Raj:

That's right.

David:

Tell us practically on the ground, there's a high school that's in your program, what happens next? Do they identify the students? How does it work?

Raj:

It depends on the principal. Some principals will say, "Hey, these are the 20 students who I feel like need the most support, so we want you to mentor these 20." We'll meet with the 20. We'll explain our program. We always say to this school, "Hey, even if you give us the 20, if only 12 of them sign up and do the permission slip and stuff, we're not going to work with the other eight." If someone's not expressing some interest, we're just not going to do it. Legally we're not going to work with someone without the permission slip. Then let's say the 15 to 20 sign up, whoever signs up does a permission slip, we then go out and we hire the college student.

The college student gets a stipend from us. Each college student then has 10 students. They work with us six hours a week, the college student. They have five one-hour meetings a week. They meet with every kid twice a month. And then in the last hour of work, they meet with a full-time team member on our staff to track how the progress is going, see if there's any issues, anything that needs to be resolved. That's pretty much the model. And then some principals will say, "You know what? We want to open it up to whomever wants to sign up."

So then we'll go at lunch and we'll do a presentation, or we'll go into an English class for 10 minutes per class period and present. And then whoever signs up, signs up. And then same thing, once we get a group of 10, we hire the college kid, boom, get it going.

David:

Wow! How do you find the college kids? Where do you go? Which colleges do you go to?

Raj:

Two ways on the college kids. One is we recruit college kids who were in the program when they were in high school to serve as the mentor, number one. Number two is when we meet a principal, we ask the principal, "Hey, can you give us three of your alumni who are now in college who you thought were great students when they were in high school?" And then we'll go and hire those alums. In an ideal world, your mentor not only is also low income and first generation, but they went to your high school. They can really connect with you. They know the same teachers you have right now. They had them three years ago or whatever. That's the treasure trove of getting mentors is the principal recommendation.

David:

What are the outcomes? How are you guys doing in terms success rate?

Raj:

Yep. We measure the success really on the percent of students that graduate from high school, number one, the percent that graduate from college, number two, and the percent that get a job after college, number three. First statistic, in Texas for low income students, which is about the national average, only 75% of students graduate high school. We are right now at about 87%. We're a little bit higher there. Nationally and in Texas, only 23% graduate from college and we're at 60, so we're significantly higher there.

That's key. So far, we have 650 kids in the program right now, 400 in high school, 250 in college, and we've had 25 complete college who are let's call it alums. Of the 25, 23 are employed or in grad school and the other two were employed, just recently lost their job with some of the tech company cuts, and so now we're working with them to find a new position.

David:

Wow. Wow. What's a day-to-day life for you overseeing this whole operation?

Raj:

Yeah, no, it's changed a lot. When it started, it was just me. Now we have three other full-time folks, so it's a total of four of us now. My job day-to-day essentially usually drops into three main buckets. The first is coaching my teammates, the other three full-time people. I have a weekly check-in with each of them. And then usually we'll have a quick touchpoint each morning if they have a question for me or I have something for them. That's part of it, giving them feedback and coaching. The second is fundraising. I'm usually writing one to two grants per week.

David:

Oh, no kidding.

Raj:

And meeting one to two donors, individuals per week for lunch or for a Zoom meeting. And then the third is visiting our school partners and developing new partnerships. My teammates are at our office, which is at one of the high schools we work with we have an office. But each week I'm driving around to different schools, meeting with principals, meeting with teachers just to make sure things are going well. That's typical day. Start at about 7:00 and end at about 6:00. Just doing this all day.

Paige:

Do you find that kids get more discouraged once they get to college and they see the difficulties in college? Or does it seem easier once they're in school and they've gone to the SAT and getting into it?

Raj:

It cuts both ways, I think. On the one hand, when they get to college, there's a greater sense of maturity, a greater sense of, hey, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Four years, I'm going to start making money. I have that freedom. On the flip side, what we also see, however, in college is a feeling of, yes, I have this freedom, but what do I do with it? Oh, I only have class 15 hours a week, not 40 hours a week. What do I do with those other hours? Oh, I only have two exams the whole year, not a quiz every week. How do I study for that? Do I need to just study at the end?

Not even to mention the social freedom, all that stuff. I think we see it on both sides. The students who focus on the light at the end of the tunnel, I can get to my career, they're the ones who are killing it. The ones who are deer in the headlights in some ways, they're the ones who we see after the first semester GPA is at 2.5, and we're like, okay, we need to work out of this hole a little bit.

David:

What do you see as the future? Do you see taking your program outside of Houston, or what's the next step for you?

Raj:

Yeah, I think for sure. I think we want to really just deepen and keep growing. I think we probably the next couple years we'll stay in Houston. We want to get to 1,000 students in Houston. For a lot of nonprofits, that's the tipping point, where if you can prove out the concept that 1,000, then you can really scale if you want to, and we do. I think my hope is that we would just start going city by city, so Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and just grow this, because I really do think we have potentially found a model where just using the college students. There are some other ones across the country in the Northeast, but in the South, there really isn't anything like this.

It's scalable in the sense of our average cost per student per year is $500 as compared with over 1,000 for many other programs in the space. Obviously we have lower cost because we use part-time college mentors, not full-time staff members. But the bottom line is, I think if we can continue to show the results, then there's no reason to stop. I love what I'm doing every day. There's nothing getting to manage a team of people and try to build this thing. I didn't know this about myself until I really started this, but I think I have that entrepreneur spirit in me. I love getting to start something and build.

Paige:

You ran for office, obviously. What made you decide to do that? And then what did you learn from the entire experience, including not winning?

Raj:

I wanted to do it because I really thought that as a city council member, I could help enact policies that would help my students' lives. I think that was one. And then the second is I think there was a good deal of ego involved of like, I want to be the youngest person ever to be on city council and the first Indian American, blah, blah, blah. And then I think the third is I'd always just loved politics, just been interested in it. I was like, oh my gosh, I can jump in. I think the biggest thing I learned, honestly, was...

During the campaign year, I missed a lot of family weddings and things with my friends. I remember after I lost just thinking, was it all worth it? Even if I had won, would it have been worth it to miss not one, not two, but three of my cousin's weddings, because I was campaigning? I told myself the answer was probably no, actually.

David:

Oh, really?

Raj:

Yeah. I just didn't think it was worth it to not be present. I said, okay, the next thing, I want to be able to just be present for my family and my close friends. And then the second is I think I broke this narrative that I had in my head that politics is the way to have a macro impact. I still think it is, but I don't think it's the only way to have a positive impact.

I think in some ways I had that narrative in my head. Now I've just realized that if the goal is making an impact, then there's a million ways to do that, and I should try to find the way where I can be of best service. I think right now it feels like this is the way to do that.

Paige:

You still have faith though in this political system and how it all works at a local level at least?

Raj:

At a local level, exactly. That's my big caveat. At the national level, I don't have much faith. But at the local level, I have a lot of faith that if people are close to the situation, I think I'm optimistic, but I'm very naively idealistic still.

David:

Speaking of family weddings, we understand you're going to get married.

Raj:

Yeah. Oh man, it was an amazing story. During COVID, my mom started a book club with some of her friends, and one of the women in the book club said... My mom asks the women like, "Oh, does anyone know anybody? My son is single," in a typical Indian way. One of the women in the book club said, "Oh yeah, my niece lives in Atlanta. I think they might be a good fit." I was like, "I'm not moving to Atlanta, so forget it." But then I said, "Why not at least have a conversation?" We met on FaceTime. Her name is Ekta. We just totally hit it off. I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I told her on the first "date" FaceTime like, "Hey, I cannot move from Houston. I just started this organization."

This is 2021. She was like, "Okay, well, I'm a doctor, so Houston's a good place to be for that. Let's see what happens." We just kept chatting. And then I met her in July. And then I happened to have a friend's wedding in Atlanta in September. And then in October, we really started dating seriously, October 2021, and proposed in November '22 and getting married in August 2023. She's moving here in end of June. I'm just really excited.

Paige:

That's so exciting. Congratulations.

Raj:

I'm very lucky. Best thing happened is that book club. It all made it happen.

Paige:

Are you doing one of the huge weddings?

Raj:

No, no, no, it's a traditional Indian multi-day thing. We're getting married in Houston. Because she'll already be here, we thought it was a little bit easier to do it here. It should be fun. It's been great just having... She's such a huge supporter of what I'm doing. I think, honestly, that was a little bit challenging during dating. Sometimes people would be like, "Oh, what are you doing? This is weird and off the non-traditional path," so to speak. She's just been a total rockstar.

David:

Back to what you guys are doing, how'd you come up with the model?

Raj:

When I was a teacher, I had some students who I taught who were really with it, high achieving, had really mastered the college application process. I remember talking to them and I said, "Hey, you were telling me that there are these students at the public school down the street who you go to church with who do not have all this knowledge. Why don't you come? Let's start maybe connect you with them and you can help guide them because you're so well versed in it."

That experience, when I was a teacher back in 2014-2015, that idea of having peers helping peers, that is what led to this model now, because we saw, oh, they really prefer to listen to someone who looks like them, is about the same age than someone whose way older and has no connection. That's where the model came from.

David:

That's pretty cool. I take it then that the mentors, they help with the college application process and everything?

Raj:

Exactly, exactly. And then we have volunteers who help with feedback on college essays, for example. We've actually partnered with a lot of law firms in Houston, because go figure, the associates would rather read a college essay than a purchase agreement or whatever. We have volunteers who do that.

And then we also have volunteers who provide tutoring services on Zoom. And then when the student gets into college, we have volunteers that will read their resume to give them feedback to improve their resume, and then we connect them with a professional in their career field who can guide them into the career world.

David:

Wow! You've got an unbelievable network then.

Raj:

Oh, we have hundreds of volunteers.

David:

Oh, is that right? Wow!

Raj:

Yeah, we're very lucky. You know what's interesting is literally everybody we talk to, nobody says no. Everybody just wants to find a way to do a little piece. For some people, it's writing a check. For some people, it's having a conversation with a student about becoming a dentist if that's their career. For some, it's tutoring. For some, it's reading an essay.

But I really think that that's one of the greatest things I think I've noticed about the US versus let's say a family in India maybe where that public service ethos or volunteerism isn't always there. But here, I feel like that ethos is so inbuilt that everybody's willing to help. We just have to ask.

Paige:

Yeah, that's what I was talking to someone about recently. I feel like in the United States, it all comes out differently, but people always think we can do better and always want to find ways to try and make it happen.

Raj:

Yeah, I agree, Paige. 100%.

Paige:

Do you work with students that have disabilities? And if you do, how do you approach that?

Raj:

We do. Not too many, to be honest, but some do. We have been really lucky that, first of all, we have some volunteers who are special education teachers who we can call on if we need things. And then also we have several students though, the more common thing beyond a learning disability is a mental health or emotional. We are very lucky to have some volunteers who are counselors who can provide some pro bono advice for the students and resources.

Paige:

Have you found that that has been one of the major issues is the mental health component and a lot of what's going on at home?

Raj:

Yeah. I mean, I don't think a week goes by when I don't hear student X had X situation and needs some support resources or mental health resources. I mean, it's frequent. Whether it's college students who are away from home, whether it's high school students who have things going on at home, whatever it might be, but it's constant.

Paige:

And then when it comes to the parents of these students, are most of them on board, or do you find that it's a lot more student driven and it's their own decision to be coming to the program? How does that go about?

Raj:

Mostly it's the student who signs up. Now, every parent does have to sign a permission slip. We have that piece, and then every month we send parents a text message on, "Hey, this month here's what you can do to help your child." Those have been a way that we engage parents. I don't think we're perfect at that. I think that's one project for the summer is to improve the parent engagement a little bit, but the vast majority of parents once they hear about it are excited for their kid to be a part of it.

Paige:

When you were a teacher, did you find it was f difficult to get parent engagement as well?

Raj:

Somewhat. It's interesting. I taught seniors and juniors, and so sometimes parents would say, "Well, they're 18. They got to figure this out." And then some parents would be on top of their kid, "You have to go to tutorial. You have to do this. You have to do that." It really depended on the parent. But the narrative that parents don't care, I didn't see that. Some people say that narrative low income parents don't care about their kids' education. I didn't see that from my experience.

David:

We talked a bit about a book club. We always like to hear something interesting for all of us. What two or three books have been most influential on your process?

Raj:

Wow, that's really good. I love to read, so I'm very excited about this question. The first one is called, I'm looking at my bookshelf right here behind me, the first one is called Be Where Your Feet Are. This is a book by the former president of the Philadelphia 76ers actually, and the New Jersey Devil's Hockey Team. What I got from that book was... He has a quote in there. He said, "You know you found it when every day when you wake up, you want to run to work. And every day at the end of the day, you want to run home." He said that's when you know found it. Now I feel with the moving here and this job, I feel like I've got that.

That's the first one. The second one is after I lost my city council race, I read this book called The Second Mountain by David Brooks, and I love that he talks about basically how many of us are striving for the first mountain, which he calls status, success, and prestige. And maybe if we focus on the second mountain, which he talks about is like family, faith, a cause greater than ourselves, and finding a community, we can really be happy. I love that book. He has a great quote at the end of it, which has really impacted how I approach things. He said, "You have to say a multitude of nos for a few meaningful yeses."

I love that because I feel like I was someone who would say yes to everything before, and now I've really tried to set boundaries and focus on what's important. That'd be my second one. And then the third one is I recently read... I saw this show called The Good Place, and I read the book by the guy who created it, Michael Schur. It's called How to Be Perfect, and it's about morality and doing the right thing. He brings in all these philosophers. I like that book a lot to think about duty and how to do the right thing. It's not always easy, but you got to try. Those would be my three.

David:

Oh, that's excellent.

Paige:

That was the one with Kristen Bell, right?

Raj:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That show is amazing.

Paige:

She's adorable. I love her.

Raj:

She's great. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

David:

See, that's the generational thing. I don't know. Raj, this has been great. We don't want to keep you any longer, but Paige and I have an open invitation. Since we did meet with Gavin, the chef in Minnesota, after you get through your marriage, we'll host you and your new wife to dinner in Minnesota in Gavin's restaurant. Please go. It'd be great. All right, well, thank you so much.

Paige:

Thank you so much for coming on.

Raj:

Thank you.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data, and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review, and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.