Local Civics aims to empower middle and high school students to become civic leaders and create change in their local communities. This summer I worked as an instructor for the ARISE and College and Career readiness programs, two programs that served New York City high school students. The majority of my time was spent working on the College and Career readiness program in collaboration with New Visions and AMS I and II high schools. The goal of the program was not only to prepare tenth through twelfth grade students for their post-secondary careers, but also empower them to get involved in their communities. The final project the students delivered was a prototype and pitch deck for a social impact venture that addressed a community challenge. Throughout the program I worked with the Local Civics team to build out the pitch competition and worked directly with students to help think through the design process and flesh out their ideas. Additionally, I helped the Local Civics team think through the strategy for growing their virtual programming and school partnerships based on the success of the ARISE and college/career readiness program.

Having focused on entrepreneurship while at CBS, I found what I learned in my two years at CBS to be extremely helpful during my time at Local Civics. Given the focus on social entrepreneurship for both programs, I was able to use not only the skills I learned in my entrepreneurship courses but my experiences as an entrepreneur as well. Drawing upon the lessons from Foundations of Entrepreneurship and Launch Your Startup, I used a variety of frameworks to instruct the students on the first steps to take to build their companies. Additionally, while at CBS, I participated in several pitch presentations and competitions and was able to use these experiences to inform students on best practices for crafting their stories and pitching to a broad audience.

The majority of challenges I faced at Local Civics stemmed from the unexpected pivot to a remote environment for both summer programs. Not only was this my first experience teaching high school students virtually or otherwise, but this learning and participating in a virtual environment was still so new to the students as well. My primary challenge was rapidly learning how to instruct students, but also to ensure they remained engaged throughout the duration of the virtual program. However, I learned some incredible strategies from other members of the Local Civics team, many of them former teachers. In addition to the remote learning challenges, the unexpected aftermath of a hurricane in the last week of the program proved to be a significant challenge. Several of my students lost all access to power and I quickly had to adapt how the pitch presentations would work with students missing and manage how to close out the program with no immediate way to contact the students.

My summer at Local Civics was an amazing learning experience for me. I am passionate about the startup space, so this was an incredible opportunity for me to work at a rapidly growing, early stage startup. I learned a great deal from the leadership team given how highly collaborative the environment at Local Civis is. As I plan to pursue my venture full time post-CBS, I was also so inspired to see the early success Beverly Leon ’20 has experienced with Local Civics and will apply this inspiration and these learnings to my own venture.