Sandrine Faust

Sandrine Faust, who comes from a family of educators, is democratizing education and changing power dynamics between students, teachers, and parents through platforms that enable peer-to-peer tutoring among these groups. Sandrine’s interactive website and phone help-lines allow for constant access to a wealth of resources and learning tools that help 1,000 children per night with their homework and turn them into peer educators. This engaging, inclusive, and thoughtful platform targets kids who are at-risk of dropping out.

Sandrine has created a powerful solution that helps kids stay in school and increases their confidence levels by providing children, parents, and teachers with the pedagogical support they need. As a teacher and the daughter of educators, Sandrine knew that to democratize education in Canada she would have to address three closely linked issues: The lack of incentive and support structures for children and youth to understand the value of education; many parents lack of confidence or preparedness to help their children with their homework; and low morale among teachers.

Sandrine therefore set out to create an online platform that gives children 24-hour access to educators—including 50 teachers, their peers, and parents—who make themselves available to answer homework questions. Entering her website is, in essence, the equivalent of dialing 911 to get “emergency” support for homework. The teachers engaged in this initiative are active school teachers—this ensures their full awareness of the curriculum and also allows them to anticipate the types of difficulties faced by students. Moreover, because all questions can be answered by anyone in the online fora, Sandrine’s platform also turns students into peer educators. This reversal of roles not only boosts their confidence and teaches them new skills, it also helps to test and master their knowledge, while increasing the pool of “service providers.” All questions answered by students are reviewed and approved or edited by trained teachers. Parents also participate both by answering children’s questions and receiving advice from the vibrant network of parents that participate on the platform.

Because many low-income students do not have access to a computer or the Internet at home, Sandrine installed interactive terminals in afterschool programs, libraries, and low-income housing to render universal access to her services. By creating and promoting a free, accessible, anonymous, and interactive system to assist students with their studies, Sandrine is preventing many students from dropping out of school. Her goal is to reach all students who need assistance, beginning with the province of Quebec. Sandrine’s initiative is already being replicated in Ontario.

It is now a broadly accepted fact that education can dramatically increase one’s lot in life. Without a high school diploma, today’s Canadian youth are not eligible to undertake postsecondary education, thus greatly restricting their earning potential. Yet according to the Ministry of Education, in 2008 almost 30 percent of Quebecois youth below the age of 20 failed to obtain their high school diplomas. The majority of these students (i.e. approximately 40 percent) report that they are simply not interested in pursuing an education. About 30 percent drop out due in large part to poor self-esteem and the difficulty of keeping up with the curriculum and/or adapting to the school system. The remaining 30 percent leave school for other reasons, such as health problems or anti-social behavior. Lacking proper support either at school or at home, students lose confidence and motivation. Although children and youth are told that education is important, because most do not have access to homework support resources, many become discouraged and conclude it may not be as valuable as adults make it seem. They therefore opt to get a job as early as possible, without fully understanding the long-term sacrifices their decisions entail. Ontario’s students are slightly better off, but the fact that 21 percent of the youth do not graduate from high school remains alarming. The factors connected with students dropping out of school are many and complex in nature. Not to be overlooked are the socioeconomic status, the family dynamic, the parents level of education, and health issues. Many families are ill equipped to help their children as they may not have the knowledge, language skills, or required time to do so. This issue is particularly acute in low- income or immigrant communities where families cannot afford the long-term tutoring many times needed in high school. In addition, teachers are often left to deal with these systemic issues on their own in the context of their classrooms. This has a significant impact on teacher’s morale and ability to teach effectively. They rarely have the opportunity to work one-on-one with children and are barely ever thanked for the important work they do. Moreover, many teachers and school administrators have failed to embrace the digital revolution in their classrooms. This means teaching styles often do not correspond with what children need or want nowadays, thus causing an even greater disconnect between students and teachers.

Student drop out rates affect society as a whole. As a result of under-exploring and under-developing the individual talents of each student, the contribution each could potentially make to society becomes significantly limited. In addition, approximately 30 percent of high school dropouts fail to find employment, and when they do, they receive on average $3,000 less per month than a high school graduate. As a result of poor education, many end up relying on social assistance from the government, costing Canadians around $4,320 per person per year and thus failing to offer them long-term solutions to increase their quality of life.

When Sandrine joined a new television program called Allô Prof created in 1996, the program was meant to help students do their homework by calling teachers who would answer their questions. In 1999, the program was reaching out to a small number of viewers and only 50 calls were answered every evening. As a result, Tele-Quebec, the network host, decided to discontinue the program. At that point, Sandrine, who began her involvement with the show shortly before it was taken off the air, saw an opportunity to develop a province-wide initiative to support students all across Quebec through the use of new technologies. She took leadership of the organization and radically shifted its mission and mandate with the clear goal of democratizing access to education and reducing high school drop out rates. Sandrine is on her way to giving all students in Quebec free, easy, and rapid access to homework and school-related support. She gained the support of parent and teacher’s associations as well as school boards who put pressure on the Ministry of Education of Quebec to allocate a portion of its budget to her program.

The first thing Sandrine did in 1999 was to develop cyber-classrooms using screen-sharing technology. Allô Prof now handles around 1,000 calls (75 percent through web conferences and 25 percent over the phone) each night from youth all over the province. From a pool of 50 paid teachers, 20 are available every night to answer students’ questions. During a typical call, which usually lasts between 4 and 30 minutes, students are referred to a teacher with a specific subject expertise. All teachers are well equipped to handle students’ questions since they work in schools during the day and at the call center at night. Although the cyber-classes have allowed Sandrine to make the whole process more efficient, she decided to keep the original phone help-line to ensure that students, who have limited access to the Internet, are shyer, or need more hands-on support can readily obtain the help they need.

In 2001 Sandrine continued innovating by developing online forums, which have been critical to democratizing the roles students and teachers play in the field of education. There are currently six forums active 24-hours a day, and each supervised by one teacher. Anyone may post a question on the forums, and everyone is invited to answer. This sometimes means younger students find themselves tutoring older students. While Allô Proft teachers review every single post, the forums allow students to give back to their peers by supporting them. In addition, the exercise of explaining a concept to a fellow student deepens their understanding of that same concept and as a result, increases their confidence. The forums now have 45,000 participants. Sandrine has thus successfully multiplied the number of people involved in supporting others while also creating a vibrant community of peer educators and challenging the role of teachers as the sole or primary knowledge-holders. This success motivated Sandrine to launch a volunteer mentoring program in 2009, engaging high school students to help those in elementary school under the supervision of a teacher. Volunteers receive school credits for each call successfully answered.

In 2008 Sandrine created a library of online videos, mathematical games, and other resources to answer recurring questions about specific concepts students struggle with. In that first year, 75,000 downloads of these videos were registered. She created this online library of resources after noticing that many of the phone calls or cyber-class requests they received came from the students not experiencing the most difficulties. The library therefore allows the more pro-active students to find answers on their own, while Allô Prof phone lines and cyber-classes free up teachers’ time to respond to the student’s questions most in need of help. The virtual library is also used in class by teachers to explain specific concepts and to encourage autonomous learning.

A large number of teachers in Quebec are using Allô Prof materials not only because they are of high quality, but also because the technological element keeps their students engaged. They often use Allô Prof mathematical video games—which help students learn their multiplication tables, for example—as rewards. Allô Prof has a critical affect on teachers as well. Those who are employed by Allô Prof find a renewed commitment and love for their work because they notice outcomes immediately, and being thanked at the end of each phone call is critical. The entire classroom also benefits when students attend class better prepared to absorb new material as a result of getting the support they needed while doing their homework the previous night.

The program primarily targets youth when they are at home. However, the recent adoption of this program by Ministry of Education of Quebec as the national service for homework support has enabled Sandrine to bring Allô Prof into municipal libraries, after school programs, and low-income housing units. To maximize her impact, she has focused the organization’s expansion to low-income areas where the high school drop out rates are particularly high. The lack of technology in some of these new spaces inspired her to commission the creation of beautiful Allô Prof booths, thus giving students access to its services regardless of the “digital divide.”

Over the next five years Sandrine expects to grow the number of calls answered from 270,000 per year to 1 million. By then, she aims to be working in all regions of Quebec, giving special attention to regions impacted by socioeconomic difficulties. By establishing local partnerships, working with key stakeholders, and raising the program’s profile in each region, Sandrine intends to better tailor the program to suit local needs. Furthermore, Allô Prof will become a stronger ally for parents who struggle to balance the demands of their professional and family lives. The province of Quebec has set itself the goal of seeing 80 percent of its youth over 20 graduates from high school by 2020. Sandrine is determined to turn Allô Prof into one of the main strategies to achieve this goal and began replicating her program in francophone Ontario through a sister organization, SOS Devoir. Sandrine intends to systematize this approach to facilitate the replication of her model by partnering with other organizations across Canada.

With her father the director of a school board, Sandrine grew up knowing and appreciating the value of education. She pursued a B.A. in business, quickly followed by a second B.A. in education for people with learning difficulties. Sandrine soon realized that if teachers truly focused on student’s needs, they could contribute to significant changes in student performance and confidence.

When Sandrine started working at Allô Prof as a young tutor to a group of students in grade six, she was overwhelmed by their level of disengagement and the difficulty she had convincing them of the value of continuing their education. Yet she received instant gratitude from many students after giving them the support they needed to keep trying. At the time Allô Prof offered little more than a telephone service for children transitioning between primary school and high school. When the TV show ended and the future of the program was jeopardized, Sandrine felt it was an opportunity to harness the power of the advent of the Internet to foster social change. She took the leadership and redesigned the mandates and programs. Sandrine has since been motivated by the goal of offering every youth the opportunities they need to develop their full potential. She refuses to accept common comments affirming that low-income youth are “destined” to have fewer opportunities. Sandrine’s nickname, “The Tornado”, highlights the energy she puts into making change happen and into engaging a wide variety of actors in her campaign for education—the media, government, teachers, parents, and many more. Sandrine is expanding her programs beyond Quebec and envisions international reach.