It’s a wonderful, important idea that is an enormous PITA to manage. It’s a labor of love.

Emma, Kirrily – thanks for the reinback. :) I will try to breathe and think some more before proceeding – I hadn’t thought of the points you raised before. Yay, wisdom!

Jef – I’m technically based in Boston, but spending the fall in DC, will almost certainly be in Raleigh this summer, and travel a ridiculous amount in any case… but now that you mention NCSSM, things are starting to brew in my head. (I’m an IMSA kid, so yay for NCSSSMST schools!) I want to explore the “cash injection” thing just because I’ve never done that before, but this… may be a better option. Or the combination of the two may be. Hm. Thinking.

Yaakov – I think about it this way: the power of Linux is that it gave people a chance to hack *their* computer, because they owned their computer, their OS was open source, and at that point, it didn’t matter what their boss or the computer lab or whatever ran or did, because they could do stuff with *their* computer.

You own your brain; your mental operating system is open source to you. And yet… most kids act as if their mind was in a mass-administered computer lab with the teacher as sysadmin. I can empathize – I did that for a long, long time myself. I still do. It’s a hard balance to find, but I think the key is that realizing that there /is/ a balance, and the setting’s not hardwired – that you can and should control that balance for yourself.

This isn’t about anarchy or FIGHT THE MAN! or anything like that. Sometimes it’s great to drop into thin client puppet mode because the teacher can admin you through something far better than you could do yourself; sometimes you need to branch and do things in your own sandbox, oftentimes you need to be somewhere in between.

A lot to ponder here – thanks, everyone. Please keep the comments coming!

I really think you should take a chance with the ‘hack your school’ name. You can spin it like the ‘pimp my ride’ sort of thing. It’s about time people stopped being afraid of the word hack and learn what it really means and how it can benefit people. Teaching kids to think of being hackers to make things better for everyone is something that should definitely be done in high school. How else will we teach students to be devious and cunning in a public school curriculum? Do you have it in you to take this risk?

You are based in Raleigh right? If you are looking to be a mentor instead of a cash injection with a high school girl over a semester or a year, we might be able to start you out with a female student at NCSSM.

-jef

I think your ideas and enthusiasm are fantastic, but drawing on one of the old mantras from extreme programming, I’d encourage you to strip it down to “the simplest thing that could possibly work”, and it’ll both be more sustainable, and more flexible/hackable if you do want to add to it later.

Let’s take a look at your scholarships:

1. help the student.
2. help the administration / assignments.
3. help the teacher.

Which one are you most passionate about? Now take a step back… which one are you most willing to give your money to UNCONDITIONALLY? I personally think this is really important. If the award is given with conditions it will not have the same impact. The student, administration, teachers or even you could get burnt out with all of the conditions that are placed on the award. The award ceases to exist. Everyone is sad.

But .. if …

“I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you. and I am I. And if by chance we find each other. It’s beautiful.” by J.S. Pearl

I think what you’re describing is AWESOME, but is it a scholarship? or is a mentorship, an internship, or something else again?