The Simple Studies Story
By Sarah Frank, President and Founder
I grew up in a very standard middle class neighborhood. I was surrounded by the same kids from kindergarten to 8th grade. They all had the same background but that was my norm. It was all I knew. In 8th grade, I decided to attend a magnet fine arts school an hour away. The school, Blake High School, is a title 1 school: definitely different from my normal school environment. What most people didn’t understand was the sheer caliber of the arts program: 2 hours of your major every single day. The magnet program draws people from all over to practice the communicative, visual, and performing arts. Blake is an explosion of arts and culture; there are so many personalities and perspectives that are so unique and interesting and inspiring. I had lived in a bubble and attending Blake was me popping it.
However, there is also a lot of poverty and it opened my eyes to a concept of education inequity. Lots of kids can’t access the resources that were considered normal to have where I grew up.
Fast forward to junior year: when it came time for AP exams, I made study guides. It was open book so I figured, why not? After sending out a bunch of my study guides to help my peers, it occurred to me that it would be super cool to have a platform where anyone could access them.
I was elected student body president that same spring. Over the summer, I wrote up an online contingency plan, a way for my school’s student government to remain active with remote learning. The biggest part of this plan consisted of an AP resource website, a website where student government kids would make study guides for our student body. A free resource, one that my Title 1 school would definitely need. Words don’t describe how excited I was about this idea.
At my board meeting, I shared the idea. Half the board voted no and I felt crushed. How could they not like it? After 5 minutes of being sad they rejected the plan, I decided it was a blessing in disguise. I could just do it myself!
I began working right away. I called it Simple Studies and decided the initiative would revolve around providing students with all the resources they need to succeed. I took to social media and posted several times daily. I reached out to other organizations to do partnerships and shout-outs. I built the website myself and uploaded the first set of 5 AP study guides. I built my team by reaching out and word of mouth. I held applications for board when it was time to delegate, then created sub-board teams. We expanded into core classes, electives, and IB. We added a blog about getting through high school, applying to college, and everything in between. We created a study buddy program to match students up for any class and recruited over 200 people to be on our team. I put in so many hours to make this organization the best it can be and I’m happy to say it has spread like wildfire.
Our website is located at https://simplestudies.edublogs.org! If you would like to join the team, you can find all of our open applications, study buddy matching, and social media here: https://simplestudies.carrd.co.
Comments