Skyrock Projects #

STEAM Projects for Students age 7-14 #

After graduating from Tsinghua in October 2020, I was living in Taipei. I had been going to the hot yoga studio there frequently, and one time I was chatting with another person about how I just graduated and was looking for an engineering job. Someone else overheard our conversation, and it turns out they worked for a startup that was looking for engineers! That startup was Skyrock Projects.

What I didn’t expect, is that I would be creating curriculum and teaching students ages 7-14. Skyrock offers an after-school and summer/winter camp program that focuses on STEAM:

• Science
• Technology
• Engineering
• Arts
• Math

Skyrock’s Mission
As teachers of mathematics and science in the United Kingdom and Taiwan for many years, we have discovered that the school’s education methods that focus on textbooks, examinations and theory are stifling the curiosity of children. Let children give full play to their creative potential in an environment where they use both hands and brains to lay a solid foundation for adapting to the challenges of the 21st century. - SkyrockProjects.com, May 2021

What I was hired to do #

I’m not from the UK but I did just graduate with two Master’s degrees, one of which was essentially STEAM for adults. So I got along well with the founders, and I agreed with their vision. I was hired to be the IoT and coding specialist, teaching and developing curriculum for the teenagers. I was also available for any tutoring for private tutoring.

This was great and lasted about 4 months. Then disaster struck.

Covid-19 #

Up until this point, Taiwan had handled Covid-19 pretty well. Masks were worn inside any public place, and there were a low number of infections. In May of 2021, Covid numbers began to go up. With a mostly unvaccinated and aging population, the government recomended people stay at home. This was right before the big summer camp rush (lots of $$ for the startup, the biggest moneymaking season). The summer was booked up with students who signed up to take STEAM summer camps.

Considering the situation, parents didn’t want to send their students to our camps for fear of their child catching the disease. Crucially, there was no clause in the student contracts that said the camps would transition online in case of a government shutdown.

In order to survive as a business, Skyrock had to transition their in-person camps to online camps. The company had to quickly take something they had done in the past, the STEAM box, and iterate on the idea to make a super STEAM box with a whole week’s worth of projects. Now we needed to move our projects which were made for in-person learning to be at-home learning. And I got to be at the center of that transition.

What I actually did #

Besides translating the curriculum I had already written, I also got to flex my acting skills a bit and was the co-host for our recorded videos. These videos were used as part of the curriculum, explaining the main ideas behind each lesson. We also shot some ads for advertising. We needed to advertise because while many parents opted to get Skyrock credit for use in the future, enough parents wanted a refund that we needed cash quickly.

I also was the one in charge of the logistics of packing all the STEAM boxes with the different projects. This included a Master List of over 40 distinct materials in each box. And we had two different boxes (Ocean Task Force and Mars Explorers). This was a hectic, but fun 3 weeks. We ended up packing over 800 boxes in total with gross sales at $2,400,000 TWD (~$80k USD). With other measures like temporary pay cuts for the salaried employees and reduced hours for the hourly the company was able to survive. For now.

Living and Working in Taipei #

Taipei is a great place to live. Convenient and clean subway system. Cheap and delicious food. Nice city parks and nature nearby. Thumbs up.

Some of my coworkers were Irish and as I found out they were involved in running the Taiwan Celts - Asia’s oldest Gaelic Football team (over 25 years!). I played soccer growing up, and eventually one thing lead to another. I got to practice with the team and play in some local tournaments. It was a blast.

Skyrock 2022 #

Created more curriculum for the Winter camps that were flexible for in-person and online learning.

Unfortunately Covid came to the island again but this time it was a “controlled release”, whereby enough of the population was vaccinated to allow relatively normal operations. Parents, however, responded as if there was a lockdown. This was in May, which was prime time for signing up students for the summer camps. No signups mean no money.

This was the final nail in the coffin of the company. It was a huge bummer but they had to shutdown and rebrand. While I was offered a leadership position in the new entity that was forming, I declined and decided to head to the US because I believed in the vision of the company but I needed a bigger salary to start paying my student debt.