Big Thought // Dallas Business Journal

Big Thought had a test run of sorts for how to structure its traditional after school program around COVID safety precautions.

Big Thought is an educational nonprofit that works to close the opportunity gap for youth in marginalized communities through learning, experiential and support programs. The organization set up an emergency child care center for frontline medical workers where they built models and protocols that will be used during the school year in many of the programs.

They’ve even planned how to keep children engaged if a household has a COVID diagnosis, said Byron Sanders, president and CEO of the organization.

Kits are sent out to students and a virtual option of the program is in the works to create a stop gap for children who may have to quarantine.

“It’s being able to be adaptive and turn on a dime so that we’re meeting our partners in delivery, which is our school systems and institutions, but then also the families directly and making sure that they are centered in this entire time,” Sanders said.

Sanders spoke with the Dallas Business Journal about the issues his organization is facing:

There’s a lot to be said about COVID and how it’s changed the way everyone’s working, but I think y’all are in a really unique situation in that some of your programs are also tied to what schools are doing. Talk to me a little bit about how you’ve had to roll with those punches.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s been a learning experience. Certainly, there have been challenges but the challenges have come in having to learn on the fly. I’ve been really proud of how our team has responded.

But the biggest way is, to your point, we have to flex with our partners in our school districts. With every change that they had, that changed our plan.

I don’t blame them at all because they’ve had to respond to emerging data, emerging evidence, and also emerging guidelines from TEA. For us, our response has been, ‘be ready to go no matter what the climate is’ because we have to be able to be there for our families — regardless — as best as possible.

COVID has also exposed or exacerbated problems that were already there. How has that played out in education gaps and inequality in North Texas?

This digital divide is far more layered than I think anybody ever thought it was. We would talk about it, but we never really settled into just how big of a problem it is.

There’s the obvious thing — if you don’t have internet connectivity, then that’s a problem. … But, we also think about devices. Do you have the actual hardware?

What we’re finding is that one computer in the household is not enough, especially during this period of time. Which is why several school districts are really going above and beyond to step up and do these one-to-one device programs to the best of their ability.

Before COVID, what were some of the largest inequalities specifically in North Texas that y’all are trying to help close the gap?

With our communities, typically communities of color—Black communities, Hispanic communities—there are a lack of resources and access to opportunities.

One of the biggest things that we’re here to do as an organization is to stand in the gap for opportunities; to have these experiences and build these very interesting and important skill sets.

The reason why that’s so vital is because…the No. 1 named skills are creativity, critical thinking, problem solving — things in those thinking domains. Technology is shifting the workforce so rapidly. By 2030, 85 percent of the jobs that will be available don’t exist today.

As we’re trying to build an equitably equipped workforce for the future — for today’s third graders, or today’s fifth graders — it’s hard for us to predict exactly what the workforce is that they’re going to be stepping out into.

If we don’t have that information and we’re trying to project to the best of our ability, what should we be doing right now? We should actually be building the creative, critical thinking, critical doing assets.

Well, where did you get to do that? You certainly don’t do it in a standardized test. And you don’t do it in the traditional chalk and talk. There needs to be a partner alongside our traditional learning environments to create those out of school time, out of class time opportunities like coding camps, STEM camps, theater, service learning projects and opportunities.

This interview is edited for brevity and clarity.