TED Community » Shannon Marsh

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About Me

I have worked with the Kauffman Foundation, Teach For America, The Kansas World Trade Center, Seattle-area elected officials, and various education and social policy agencies. I'm currently living in Asia due to husband's job and am investigating mobile careers to match my interests in arts, education, social policy, event planning, startup guidance and international understanding.

Location:
South Korea, Seoul
Current organization:
Teach for America
Gender:
Female
Areas of expertise:
Education Reform, Education Policy & Research, Social Policy , Arts Management, Event Planning & Production
I am:
Connector, Educator/Teacher, Event planner, Job-seeker, Musician, Public servant, Startup, World traveler
My website links:
LinkedIn
Universities:
University of Washington, University of Kansas, University of Alaska Anchorage
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More About Me

I'm passionate about

Improving the world, whether through a smile or a systemic change in the systems that hold us back.

An idea worth spreading

Great idea I heard recently- instead of having high school students opt in to AP/honors courses, change to create an opt out system. Traditionally these classes have a drastically skewed demographic as low-income and minority students often don't think of themselves as honors students. By opting in all students who earn a B or higher in prerequisite courses, students begin to change opinions of their abilities and more students achieve higher levels of education.

Talk to me about

Organizing TED talks!

Comments

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  • A comment on Conversation: What does it take to make the youth take charge and feel responsible for their own initiatives?

    Sep 15 2011: I'd say responsibility is key. In working with my students, it's always been handing over the reigns to them that has helped them really immerse themselves in a project. (Caveat- it has to be something they care about!) Nothing is more thrilling than having the power to really create something and knowing it won't survive without their help.

    As far as finding students to get involved, the "good for the resume" hook is often helpful but more often it's painting a picture of what the event might be (and challenging them to make it even more awesome) then letting kids run with it that has worked in my experience.
  • +1

    A comment on Conversation: Time based online volunteering portal.

    Sep 15 2011: I've been living abroad and have tried several times to engage in online volunteering of this sort and found it both really exciting and difficult to put into practice. Several English teaching classes for especially women in impoverished areas have never gotten off the ground (volunteers have gotten all set up and either no students are assigned, or never come to the chat area, etc). Others that mentor students or peers have had similar problems, but I have hope that it can work!

    I think that volunteering online takes extra work since you are not getting the person-to-person connection, but it holds great promise!

  • A comment on Conversation: How do we reform education?

    Sep 15 2011: I've been in the classroom and in the education research world, and it's awesome that the tools Ramona describes are finally being built! Many of the nation's biggest school districts are working to individualize learning through technology but have had varying levels of satisfaction with the programs already available.

    Unfortunately for the school districts that don't have funds for purchasing technology have to do other things to try to work with their kids. From what I've seen, the other part of the solution is human- creative teachers and administrators who work to ensure that the environment and material is personalized, exciting and has a real life appliction.

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