I attended an information session on MeshEd, a startup company that creates and implements supplemental curricula for middle school to early college students. From their talk, I was able to understand the following about the company: they create action labs where students build a portfolio detailing their experience and reflections from the courses, including courses on the arts of the podcast, sustainable fashion, and food science. They provide these course free-of-charge for students by partnering with a wide range of schools and nonprofits and receiving federal funding. Their courses, which stress authentic learning, inclusivity, being present, empowerment, and mindfulness, are built to be relevant to students from all backdrops and are customizable for students with different learning needs. All teachers are trained in culturally responsive teaching and work closely with curriculum builders and other staff to adjust. The company as a whole has goals to improve professional development and to find and/or create better tools for measuring data, or as they phrased it “measuring what’s meaningful to humans.” They want to provide students with meaningful opportunities to create projects that will make them stand out in college admissions while also being fun and educational.
I wanted to attend this session because I am interested in the process of curriculum building and how to maximize inclusivity and accessibility in doing so. During the session, I asked the question of how MeshEd designs and implements programs to be inclusive and accommodating for students and their different needs. I was interested in their response, much of which is reflected on earlier, but I’m curious what research the company has to devoted toward improving this.
MeshEd was also advertising internship positions during this call. In the 8–10-week internship, students would be trained then get hands-on experience with curricula-building and teaching in either the Bronx or CT locations. This does appeal to me given that I think it would be very beneficial to get to see both the building and implementation of lessons, and I think that the age group would be interesting to gain experience with give that most of my experience in teaching is with elementary/intermediate school kids. I do plan on applying for the internship as it would give me the opportunity of seeing a different application of the Education Studies major I am working on, and I plan to reach out to them with more questions before doing so.
