Community Fellows Blog Posts

In the past few months of my fellowship at Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School, I have gained a tremendous amount of appreciation for the various people who help our educational system function, but no greater appreciation than for the teachers themselves. In my roles of establishing a business and entrepreneurship club and teaching a Senior Economics class nearly every week, I have been tasked with effectively transferring my own knowledge and experiences to students to help them reach an understanding of key concepts. Until this fellowship, I had been on the other side of this relationship my entire life, and I quickly realized teaching is much harder and more complex than I anticipated.

One of the first things I learned I needed to do to succeed in my roles at Cristo Rey was to stop assuming prior knowledge. Many of the economic or general business concepts that seem obvious to me after taking an extensive amount of college business courses were brand new to the students. In some of my first lessons, I found myself running out of time about halfway through the prepared content because of all the clarifying questions I received about basic economic concepts. This forced me to think back and reflect upon what I knew in my own high school days, which has since helped me to create lesson plans for the class and presentations for the clubs that focus on developing an understanding of the fundamentals first, and then using those as a foundation for further exploration.

Once I had changed the content, I also knew I needed to change the way it was presented. I can present about business or economics for an entire class period, but in looking back at what I found most helpful learning throughout my time in both high school and at Santa Clara, three things stood out to me: interactive activities, real-world applications of the material, and guest speakers. There has been a clear increase in participation and interest in the economics class when the students work together on in-class activities and are shown that economics is more than just theory. The club also benefits from putting ideas to action and exploring them in a tangible way. I am currently working on coordinating guest speaker appearances for the students to be able to hear speakers’ experiences and tips. As a senior business major, I’m fairly knowledgeable about the business world, but I also know that the students at Cristo Rey will benefit greatly by hearing from someone who is established in the working world and can provide a wider breadth of knowledge.

Working at a non-profit is an experience unlike any other. My internships in the corporate world were all clearly focused on increasing the bottom line, and while there is nothing wrong with that, Cristo Rey serves a different purpose. Instead of focusing on shareholders or profits, they focus on providing opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t have any, and I’m proud to say I can be a part of that.