Behind the Scenes: Meet the IOB Team
2023 Update: The Islands of Brilliance team continues to grow! Click here to learn more about our current team of amazing people!
Happy summer to our IOB community! It has been so much fun getting to know IOB families, students, and parents throughout the years. Whether in person or virtually, we've had the pleasure of meeting so many people, seeing so many smiles, and celebrating our students' successes.
There have been a few recent additions to the IOB Team so we thought it's a perfect time to introduce you to the people that use their passion and energy to help make the Islands experience one-in-a-million!
The expertise of the team and what they bring to the “IOB table” is unbeatable. They go above and beyond to provide the most student-centered experiences in our workshops and programs. Team members meet one-on-one with students and families outside of workshops to provide support. Without a doubt, our staff is a special group of people that forms a strong community. We have the best of intentions for students, parents, and families.
I'm Stephanie -- Special Education Coordinator. Nice to e-meet! I recently interviewed my fellow teammates and asked them questions relating to why IOB is so important to them, how working for IOB differs from previous work experiences, and much more. Check it out!
What are some of the best parts of working with IOB students, parents, and families?
Margaret: Quite simply, the sense of welcome and the joy factor. I recently heard from a new parent that this was the first time her son has ever described a learning experience as “great”, that for the first time he felt valued as a member of a team. We get to hear so many positive things from our families. Often, this is the first time students feel a sense of community and of belonging. We know what we do provides such meaning and really does make a difference.
Stephanie: Working with IOB students, their parents, and families is what I love most about being a member of the IOB community. Our environment allows students to express their individuality and learn and develop skills while working on projects that they are interested and invested in, because they’ve chosen the projects themselves. The student quickly leans in to their projects, and the connections made with other students, mentors, and staff, and it is so exciting to be part of this. When participating in an IOB workshop or program, there is a joy factor felt by every single participant.
Charlie: I think some of the best parts of working with IOB is providing a community for the people we work with. We do our best to make sure every student feels welcomed, included, and celebrated, often something that is lacking in the traditional school setting. It's amazing to see how the students are willing to come out of their shells and express themselves and interact with each other once they know they are in that safe space.
How is working for IOB different from any other job experience?
Michelle: Now 15 months into my role here, I can confidently say that there is an indescribable magic inherent in Islands programming that leads to some incredible and unexpected outcomes. And it's not just the students who benefit from it–our mentors, parents, community partners, and funders are also blown away when they experience it firsthand. Our Education Team's careful planning and expertise combined with our philosophy of allowing students to explore and embrace their own unique interests sets the stage for that magic. The team makes my job easier by giving me a powerful and compelling story to tell and I love that I get to celebrate that story by sharing it with as many people as possible.
Amy: The most exciting thing about working at IOB for me are the growth possibilities and knowing that we have a solid foundation and model to rely upon to inform our growth. We have been able to learn so much about how and why the Foundation Workshops make a difference for our students. This learning has shown us how to think about possibilities. Nothing is set in stone, our community is in for the long haul, and we have no limits!
Kim: Being a part of the IOB Team has been simply wonderful. The biggest reason: Seeing firsthand the impact the organization has on the students and families we support. I have had the pleasure of speaking with many parents and mentors about their experiences with Islands and so many of those conversations include phrases like, "We couldn't do it without Islands." Or, "I'm fortunate to be a part of something so awesome." It's such an honor to work at Islands.
Jess: From the moment you start at Islands, you can tell it's unique. There is an innate flexibility and fluidness to the way IOB operates that allows for it to be adaptable and that is probably the most stark contrast to other organizations I've been a part of. It is not a one size fits all approach but rather a meeting people where they're at mentality - which is one of the fundamental reasons students are so much more successful in the Islands environment than anywhere else. That flexibility and adaptability is what drives the student-staff relationship. Unlike other organizations where the participants must adhere to preset expectations and are told to follow certain procedures, students at IOB are met with genuine interest and asked "where do you want to go?"
What parts of the job contribute to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), self-determination, and the confidence of students?
Amy: My job is to be the voice of our students, so I am very into thinking about social-emotional learning, self determination, and the impact of confidence. Every part of my job–data collection, workshop design, family communication, mentor coaching–involves thinking about how something will relate to these specific outcomes for our students.
Margaret: Most of our students come from a deficit model, where they are clearly made aware of what is hard and what they can’t do. We focus on what they can do and what they love. Being able to share their passions leads to a higher level of engagement, which leads to greater success, which leads to increased self confidence, which leads to, well you get the idea. We give them a reason and a platform that works. To quote one of our students, “People knew what I needed, to let me be me." How good it must be to finally feel like there isn’t anything wrong with you - that you just need the right environment!
Matt: Social-emotional learning and self-determination are at the heart of all of our programs at IOB. Since the beginning, I've been lucky enough to be a part of the organization as a design mentor. It wasn't until I started working at Islands that I realized what was really happening in our workshops. Creating a poster in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator is what the students and mentors think the workshop is all about. But in reality, students are developing relationships, learning social skills, building confidence, and changing their own self-image…all through designing a poster around their area of interest!
In our Digital Academy (DA), these skills are taken to another level as the students work collaboratively on real-world design thinking projects. They have designed solutions in multiple areas of STEAM-based learning. Through our workshops, they are developing work-readiness skills which will open doors of opportunities in both future work and academic settings. Twice each year, students meet with the DA Education team members to develop/update their individual plans. In these plans, students state why they are participating in DA, what their goals are, what technical and soft skill strengths they have that will help them meet their goals, and what technical and soft skills they would like to develop further. The growth in skills and confidence we have seen in our DA participants has been beyond anything we could have expected!
What do your individual beliefs and values bring to Islands of Brilliance?
Mark: That’s a great question. I am part of ImagineMKE’s Arts and Public Health cohort, and recently we did an exercise called Person, Role, System. The purpose of the exercise is to make you reflect and journal your own beliefs and values and what role they play in the work you do in the community. The goal is to help you further amplify their effects. If you visit our home in Shorewood in the Spring and Summer months, you’ll immediately know that we are gardeners. There is a lot that I’ve learned working in the sun and soil that shows up in my work at IOB—the preference for organic evolution vs. rigid frameworks, the understanding of providing the right environment to thrive, the importance of patience, the giving of gratitude. There’s a wonderful lesson that you learn—you can’t rush a garden. There are many other values I bring as well—obviously the role of family is so important to me—but I find the correlation between the time I spend in our garden and how I approach Islands to be pretty interesting.
Matt: Wherever I have worked in the past, I have always tried to bring my whole self to the culture of that organization. I believe that when people are empowered to be true to themselves when they are met with kindness and compassion, they are able to do their best work. Islands of Brilliance is a place that meets each individual exactly where they are…our students, our families, and our coworkers. When we drop labels and expectations, when we see each person as an entire individual, we are able to live up to our mission of changing perceptions.
Jess: I believe to my core that kids do well if they can - and if they're not doing well it's because they are either missing skills to meet expectations or the environment placed upon them does not align with their physiological needs. I believe it is the adult’s responsibility to provide those skills and alter the environment to allow success to occur, not for students to have to adapt, to mute themselves or to extinguish their light to make adults more comfortable. IOB demonstrates that shared philosophy throughout their programming and so I know that when I enter into a workshop or Digital Academy meeting I am seeing students and advocating for them in a way that supports IOB mission.
