Addressing the root issues

Most students' struggle with academic (e.g. math and literacy) and job specific training can be traced to underlying issues - they might have difficulties with learning, have low persistence, be happy with low-level "C" work, or lack belief in themselves. When schools respond by pushing harder and harder on academics rather than addressing the deeper issues, it often backfires.

CSM is the first educational technology to directly address the underlying issues simultaneously within math instruction. Once students are better learners, more persistent, have higher expectations for themselves, and develop self-efficacy, the rate of learning accelerates dramatically not only in math, but in other classes as well.

Addressing the issues across the community

DC cannot afford to ignore the decades-long legacy that has left many adults with skills that limit their opportunities. Moreover, many of these adults are parents of school-aged children, and extensive education research links children's academic success to their parents' math self-efficacy. When a parent expresses that they are bad at or dislike math, this can have dramatic negative effect on student math success.

Furthermore, Excel Together DC addresses the community as a whole. Self-efficacy is not just an individual characteristic, but one that suffuses a community - it's hard to follow ambitious, aspirational goals when your family and friends are resigned to just getting by. Excel Together aims to reach a tipping point in a community where aiming high is the norm.

Strengths-based instruction

CSM is fully strengths-based and positive:

• when a student successfully learns a skill, they are told the percentage of 4-year college graduates and all adults who could do the skill -- often under 50%. For students with challenges, hearing this once or twice an hour can be a life-changing experience.
• in most traditional math classes, students having learning difficulties feel exposed -- often, their only path forward is to raise their hand and ask the teacher for help. In CSM, if a student is stuck, the course simply moves them to another skill, bringing them back days later to where they were stuck. After a few attempts, the student is usually able to figure out how to learn the skill on their own.
• CSM is constantly monitoring student progress and behaviors, and every 10 minutes, CSM calculates 2-4 strengths for every student related to their learning strategies, their persistence, their attention to detail, etc. When an instructor comes to visit them, there is always something positive to say.

Giving students freedom to take chances and make aspirational decision

There is a strong trend in secondary school career guidance to make students choose a career path early in high school (Next Step Plans), after which the student's courses are then strongly tracked: CTE, liberal arts, STEM, etc. In contrast, we believe that most at-risk students have only limited comprehension of their purpose or passion, have little understanding of the world of work, and may be limited in aspirations due to previous educational struggles.

CSM allows all students to experience academic success -- at college level math! This changes their self-image, so that they're ready to choose their next steps after high school from a position of strength and self-efficacy, leading to more aspirational career choices.

Moreover, career guidance often overstates the importance of a single career decision, so that students believe that it is, other than perhaps getting married, one of the most important decisions of your life. This often, however, gives rise to decision paralysis or emotional shutdown, especially with students who either feel lost, or who think that their options are both limited and unattractive. In contrast, Career Strategies teaches students that career choices aren't forever -- most people have a complicated career path filled with stops and starts, backtracks and right turns, and that's OK, as this is how most people learn about work. Choose a career path and give it a chance, and if it's not working out, Career Strategies explains effective methods to jumping to another career.

Finally, Career Strategies is designed to give a positive framework for thinking about yourself, your worth, and your potential for success. Whether or not you have the right credentials, there are people "on your team" (family, friends), things that you do exceptionally well (skateboarding, music, repair cars), ways that you connect with your community (family, church, community center), things that demonstrate your responsibility (babysit/take care of children, run your apartment), etc. Having people list their assets rather than focusing on deficits is a central activity in Career Strategies.

Careers for diverse communities

Career aspirations are strongly influenced by a student's community and its needs and values. The math taught by CSM can help a student prepare for being a doctor or lawyer, but is also the math that helps an artist handle the business side of art, an auto mechanic to service modern cars, a plumber to pass through an apprenticeship, a student to aspire to be a pharmacy tech, or a home-oriented parent to take care of their family.  And Career Strategies is non-judgmental about career and life choices, whether college, work, armed forces, etc. -- it is about making informed career decisions with confidence, wherever those decisions lead.

Conclusion