Welcome!
You’ve reached this page because someone from Sequoyah School has invited you to speak with our high school students in the Social Innovation Program about your field of expertise or life experience. Thank you for your consideration. Conversations are an essential part of the research journey our students are on. Additionally, meeting with people gives students an important opportunity to hone soft skills that will equip them to collaborate with others toward sustainable change for the rest of their lives.
You’ll find further information below about meeting with students. Check out our curriculum page for info about our program goals. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions.
RJ Sakai
Director of Social Innovation
rjsakai@sequoyahschool.org
Thank you to the more than 300+ organizations and people who have generously taken the time to meet with and host our students. Below are a handful of the non-profits, government agencies, businesses, and colleges that have engaged with us.
Preparing
You might have questions about what it means to have an informational interview with students. Generally, this means no formal preparation on your part, though we realize you might seek answers to certain questions to feel prepared nonetheless. You should feel empowered to ask the following questions of the student(s) who reached out to you:
What kinds of questions will I be asked?
What will be done with my answers?
How did you find me?
How many students will I be speaking with?
How can I get updates about student work later?
Stipends
We recognize your time is important, and we’re grateful for your generosity. Though the Social Innovation Program has a limited budget to support the purchasing of student project materials and learning resources, we strive to value people’s time for what it’s worth. It's important that over the year, everyone who is willing to share their expertise and life experience with students is able to. Providing stipends for people’s time is a crucial piece to ensuring students have the chance to meet with a diversity of voices. We’re able to offer up to a $100 opt-in stipend to people for a 60-minute in-person informational conversation with a team of up to 12 students. We’ll happily discuss compensation for other kinds of engagements (e.g., by Zoom, with individual students, etc.).
If you’d like to pursue this please contact RJ Sakai, Director of Social Innovation at rjsakai@sequoyahschool.org before you confirm your engagement.
Our students
Coming from more than 35 different zip codes in the Los Angeles area, our students bring a diversity of life experiences and perspectives related to social and environmental issues. At Sequoyah School, diversity is a core educational value – including socioeconomic diversity. We dedicate a significant portion of operating revenue to support Indexed Tuition, with 30 to 40 percent of our families paying less than the top tuition level. As a result, our school community includes a broad spectrum of social, economic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
To create an inclusive learning environment where every student can thrive, we ask that you do what you can to create a conversational environment that leaves space for students to willingly share about their lives, but that you avoid asking pointed questions of the group that would pressure a student to publicly share something otherwise private.
Feedback
The feedback we receive from people who have met with our students helps us improve our program’s research and outreach practices and ensures that students’ educational experiences are aligned with the values of our school. Once you’ve met with students, please take 3 minutes to fill out our feedback form.