Making a very different Romeo & Juliet

Brian Oglesby (also known as the award-winning playwright Briandaniel Oglesby) teaches theater arts at Skybridge Academy in Dripping Springs, Texas. We invited him to share with our readers his unusually collaborative process of writing and producing a new version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—one that speaks from and to the hearts of his young students.
 

In late May, a group of junior high students will perform an LGBT adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at Skybridge Academy. Romeo and Juliet are a same-sex couple. The students helped make this little play, and they are proud of it.

The existence of a rainbow-flavored imagining of the bard’s work isn’t revolutionary. The age of the students, and that this is in a school in Texas, and that the students chose this project—that’s what breaks new ground.

Broken ground will eventually become a familiar path; in a few years, preteens telling these stories will be normal. In the meantime, I marvel at the fact that this is happening.

Two years ago, Skybridge hired me to teach theater after I graduated from UT’s Playwriting program. I didn’t want to simply produce the same old Our Town or Guys and Dolls; those plays don’t speak to the current condition, and besides, I’m a writer, not a director. I wanted to contour the plays to my students, to make something from and for them. And Skybridge’s emphasis on teacher-student collaboration made new work a natural fit.

I use improv-based activities and devising techniques to generate material that I fashion into text so the students become part of the fabric of the plays. We find the space where my skills and interests as an artist collide with their skills, interests, and potential. The students take ownership of the play and, I hope, realize that they can make work of their own.

Early this semester, the junior high students generated a number of story ideas, and one stood out: a king with a rebellious daughter in love with another princess. Energy began to coalesce around this.

The students also responded to adaptations of classics. When I suggested Romeo and Juliet (which offers a robust plot and multiple protagonists), one of my students piped up that we should make Romeo and Juliet a same-sex couple, taking the conflict they’d created and mixing it into the old text.

The students voted anonymously, and the clear victor was this adaptation.

We set to work. Improv-based activities brought about irreverent ideas, like turning Friar Lawrence into a Fryer—a guy who operates a fry shack—and Paris into, well, a Paris Hilton-like figure. Dozens of their lines, including a translation of the pilgrim sonnet, made it into the script.

And we got to talking. We talked about heavy issues like gay teen suicide and LGBTQ history. Some of the students can’t invite grandparents to the production, demonstrating the generation gap. This gap is a tension in the play itself, as Juliet’s father wants him to marry a woman. We talked about how few stories exist for young LGBTQ people. We talked about how what we’re doing just isn’t done.  

Two years ago, a project like this would have scared the hell out of me. Heck, in December this project would have scared the hell out of me. I’d be afraid of being accused of promoting the “Gay Agenda.” If the students hadn’t suggested this project, it wouldn’t exist.

Part of this is Skybridge. The students know that our school is a safe place for LGBT people. We all make sure we’re using correct pronouns. I’m out and proud, as are a number of their classmates, and I teach an LGBTQ+ Stories class.

Part of this is generational. There is no “new normal” to the current crop of young folks; there is normal and there’s the “old normal.” Same-sex couples are being crowned prom kings and queens, and more than 50 percent of the upcoming generation recognizes that gender isn’t binary. And when you co-create with young people, the work reflects this reality.

Young people will replace us. Some of their values will change as they get older; and some of their values will change the world when they get older. This reality will find its way into the mainstream, and there will be more LGBTQ stories about, by, and for young people.

And the students have a sense of this. They are proud to be a part of it.

In two weeks, this will be similar to every single junior high play the audience has seen before. Someone may forget a line, of course, and our lighting will be clip lights, and it’s set outdoors. But I can also guarantee that this will be unlike anything they’ve ever seen.

Unless it rains.
 

Brian “Briandaniel” Oglesby

[You and your family and friends can experience this special production yourselves on May 20 or 21. Learn more here.]
 

Reclaiming a lost tradition

Patricia Petmecky guides girls into womanhood through unique rites of passage. Along with Root to Rise cofounder Lydia Marolda, she is leading a special program for young teen girls this summer in the Hill Country. Patricia joins us on the blog to explain why rites of passage are important, now more than ever.

Throughout time, cultures around the world have honored rites of passage. It was commonplace for both males and females coming of age to participate in a series of rites that prepared them for stepping into new identities as adults. The ceremonies all involved a deep challenge and a passing of wisdom from the elders in the community to the individuals in transition.

In Brazilian Amazonian cultures, 13-year-old boys wear gloves filled with bullet ants to prove their strength and will. In Vanuatu boys come of age by jumping off a 98-foot-tall tower with nothing but a bungee-like vine strapped to their ankles. In a boy’s first dive his mother will hold an item from his childhood, and after the jump the item is thrown away, symbolizing the end of childhood. During the Apache Sunrise Ceremony, girls dance for four days and nights to songs and prayers and run toward the four directions. During this time they also participate in and conduct sacred rituals, receiving and giving both gifts and blessings and experiencing their own capacity to heal. Most Apache women who have experienced the Sunrise Ceremony say afterward that it significantly increased their self-esteem and confidence.

In our current culture it has become a rarity to provide young individuals with the tools to transition safely from childhood to adulthood. Adolescents inherently have a strong desire to take big risks to “prove” their new identities as emerging adults. When they are not offered a safe and constructive environment in which to do this, they often create dangerous situations in which they can test limits in unconscious and often physically harmful ways. Seen in this context, it is not a surprise that reckless sexual activity, drinking and driving, gang violence, dangerous drug use, and other harmful behaviors meet these young adults’ deeper needs.

Communities must work together to provide safe parameters for young teens to meet their psychological need for stepping forward powerfully. If we are not there to support them, they will unconsciously create their own “rites of passage” that can be harmful to themselves and the community at large. A young teen once told me, in response to a conversation about rites of passage, “All we get is our parents handing us keys to a car.” She went on to express her feelings of loss and dissatisfaction in the lack of structure in her own coming of age.

As more parents and other concerned adults realize the loss they themselves experienced in not having their own formal rites of passage, we are starting to see programs develop worldwide. Educators and facilitators are now offering some amazing modern rites of passage for both boys and girls in Australia through the Pathways Foundation and for girls in New Zealand through the Tides program. There are even a few in the United States scattered up and down the West Coast.

In 2011 while working with Central Texas high school youth at the Inside Outside School, we (Lydia Marolda and I) saw a need to bring a rites of passage program to the Texas Hill Country. Thus Root to Rise was born. We had our first initiation weekend in the winter of 2011, and it was magical.

Root to Rise gives girls an opportunity to choose a different way toward their own empowerment that is not dictated to them by social media, advertising, or external forces. We come together to honor their own uniqueness and to help them connect deeply to themselves so they may see themselves as powerful, creative, beautiful, strong, loving women who can make a difference in the world. A mother shared these words after participating with her daughter in Root to Rise:

When I picked her up I was struck with the magnitude of this event. I was so grateful for this ritual. The mother-daughter ceremony left me weeping and breathless for its incredible beauty and for the fact that I truly felt I was picking up a different person than I dropped off. The connection she and I felt was palpable. I am so grateful for this experience for myself and for my daughter. It feels so right.

For more information about Root to Rise, please visit our website or Facebook page. We will be offering a $100 discount on this summer’s program to those who register and pay the deposit before April 15.

Patricia Petmecky
 

Architecting a better school

We’re pleased to share this guest contribution from Tim Derrington, AIA + LEED AP. Tim is founder of Derrington Building Studio, a full-service architecture practice in Austin that focuses on relationship-based design, working closely with clients to deliver practical buildings that don’t sacrifice great design.  

Parents considering enrolling their kids in an alternative school tend to look into things like teaching philosophy, location, cost, classroom quality, educational achievements, and specialty programs when evaluating which one is best for their children. While all of those things matter a great deal, what if I told you that the built environment is among the most critical components to your child’s education and well-being?

The success or failure of children’s learning environment influences everything from how engaged they are in the classroom to their level of focus when learning new skills to even their performance. Environment sets the tone for our learning and future growth.

It is surprising, then, to find that most schools in the United States are made up of outdated facilities and failing infrastructure that do not meet modern-day health, safety, and educational standards. Not to mention the often uninspired facilities and dismal portable classrooms that many of our funding-deprived, overcrowded schools find themselves made of today.

So how can we change the state of our schools from designs that are outdated to designs that adapt to meet the needs of modern-day education?
 

The Case for a New Kind of School Architecture

I am an architect, and a few years ago I had the opportunity to design an addition to the Khabele Elementary School campus. It was my first time designing a school and an exciting project for me as an up-and-coming architect in Austin.

Immediately upon getting the project, I started researching precedents, pedagogies, building technology, and many other factors that might influence the seemingly infinite possibilities when it comes to designing a school. I explored the work and teachings of some of our greatest educational thinkers, both old and new—people like Maria Montessori, Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel, and Sir Ken Robinson. I studied buildings that seemed to push the envelope on what a school could be. There were so many ideas and perspectives on what makes a great environment for learning, yet so many failed school designs in existence.

Ultimately, I asked myself how architecture could affect a child’s learning potential and behavior. These were the factors I found to be most important and what I personally recommend every parent and educator consider when evaluating schools.
 

Flexible, Learner-Friendly Spaces

There are few things I can think of that are more limiting to a young mind than predictable, unstimulating environments. There are so many buildings that succumb to the constraints of budgets and building codes and forego the opportunity to imagine wonderful spaces—in particular, spaces that encourage kids to explore, dream, observe and reflect. This happens more often than not and is a condition my team and I strive to change in our day-to-day practice as architects.

What I have learned is that the most successful environments, especially those that focus on learning, offer flexibility and support a diverse set of activities and needs. Schools that have classrooms that can provide for everything from larger group discussions to small-group learning opportunities or individual creative exercises tend to win out and offer the best functionality.

Why?

A more flexible space doesn’t limit the child to one environment. This may seem obvious, but many of our schools today fail to provide flexible learning environments for their students. Students need options and the ability to choose what space they learn best in, which in turn helps increase their level of engagement and learning potential.

Want to provide a focused lesson to a group of 10 students? Need to perform individualized creative projects? Those scenarios call for very different spaces but are nearly always done in the same classroom.

When all of the parts and pieces of a classroom can be easily adjusted to meet the needs of the day, the space comes to life with unique characteristics that make up a better-functioning and diverse space to learn, wonder, and create.
 

Learning That Spans Both Indoors and Outdoors

Among other things, architecture is about striking a balance between providing shelter from the elements and encouraging connection to your environment. This balance has been found to be especially powerful as a learning tool, bringing people closer to nature as an educational space.

In the case of the Khabele school, a visible relationship to nature was especially important. All of the rooms have large windows that offer plenty of natural light and views of trees and the surrounding forest.

Lighting is the most important environmental input after food and water for controlling bodily functions and behavior. For this reason, optimizing natural lighting was a key aspect of the Khabele school design and should be a top priority in any new school development.

In our research, we found that full-spectrum natural lighting not only helps reduce energy consumption but also determines the body’s output of vitamin D, a critical component to a child’s health and development. It has even been found to raise students’ grade point averages and make children less “hyper.”

Beyond just the lighting, we found that windows overlooking the outdoors were crucial.

Outdoor learning environments are becoming more and more popular as a means of involving students in the study of ecology and greener environments. Integrating school structures with natural quiet areas as well as play areas is also very important. We wanted to encourage that connection by providing lines of sight to the trees and play areas outside the classrooms.

My team and I made a conscious decision to showcase beautiful natural material, including stone and wood, to mimic the existing building on campus while also blending in with the surrounding Texas hill country. The importance of infusing a child’s physical setting with a direct, physical connection to nature cannot be overstated.
 

Fostering Environments That Are Welcoming

The main entrance is the first thing every child sees when arriving at school. This entrance has the opportunity to be welcoming and approachable, or unfriendly and withdrawn.

I’d bet you that any parent and their child would want their school to look welcoming, for obvious reasons. A school should be a friendly place that encourages learning. Welcoming entrances also serve the role of orienting children as they move throughout the school’s campus, serving as a visible pillar of the school and giving it a sense of community.

Although Khabele already had a building on this campus, we considered how our addition to the school could serve to better welcome and orient students.

A wooden deck served as the main pathway to the new classrooms, signaling to students and teachers alike that they should enter the space.

The deck was made extra wide so that it could easily accommodate clusters of students moving back-and-forth from class while also being a visible point of reference for students and visitors.
 

Looking Forward: The Future of School Design

Designing the next generation of schools requires having an open-table discussion among students, educators, parents, and architects. With limited research in this area, it is up to us to determine what elements of a school design work best and what needs to be refined in order to create schools that support the growth and development of future generations. Through these collaborations, we can stop letting poorly designed schools limit great teaching moments and take their toll on student learning.

Most importantly, we can ensure that our schools’ philosophies are better reflected and supported by the environments in which they are taught while also encouraging a greater appreciation for the built environment.

Tim Derrington
 

One good question with Mike DeGraff

An iconic scene from the award-winning film Most Likely to Succeed

We’re pleased to reproduce here an interview with Mike DeGraff from Rhonda Broussard’s excellent blog One Good Question. Reading Mike’s thoughts on maker education will help prepare you for the mind- blowing, award-winning film Most Likely to Succeed, which you can view and discuss with Mike and others Tuesday, March 8, at 6pm at the North Door. Read more about the film and event at the end of the interview.
 

Michael DeGraff is the Instructional Program Coordinator at the UTeach Institute. His work includes coordinating the Instruction Program Review process for all UTeach Partner Sites as well as supporting instructors to implement the nine UTeach courses. Michael has been a part of UTeach since 2001, first as an undergraduate student at UT Austin (BA Mathematics with Secondary Teaching Option, 2005), then as a graduate student (MA Mathematics Education, 2007), and finally as a Master Teacher with UKanTeach at the University of Kansas. He was also instrumental in launching Austin Maker Education.

In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?

There was a call for 100,000 STEM teachers in the US, and since then there have been tons of initiatives, and related funding, to respond to the need (some say too much). UTEACH is a very constructivist- oriented teacher education program for STEM teachers that began at UT Austin and has spread across the country. Then we saw the launch of Maker Faire™ to showcase STEAM design in informal learning space. When I went to my first faire 3-4 years ago, I was amazed at how well it fit into what I understood about constructivist education.  I was also amazed that there wasn’t tighter articulation between schools, teacher education programs, and what’s going on in this sector.

In schools, "making" is mostly robotics, especially at the secondary level. School libraries may have makerspaces that are more diverse, but there’s very little happening in teacher preparation for how we prepare teachers for these spaces that are proliferating. No two people have the same vision for what you mean when you say makerspace. Whenever you talk about this, it’s so easy to get excited about the 3D printer, laser cutter and other specific tools. At UTeach, we’re more interested in how it transforms what kids are able to do and how teachers are empowered to teach differently. Not to dismiss the tools, but ultimately, what’s so exciting about all of this stuff is how it connects to this lineage of progressive education dating back to Dewey and meaningful, authentic, relevant work. That’s what’s so powerful to me about this whole maker movement. It really champions student voice in a way that I don’t see in any other movement/innovation/fad. How can we replicate that for every kid? One of the biggest hurdles in education and industry is to get kids curious. Makerspaces can get them to a point where they can start wondering.

The maker world and project-based formal education don’t seem to respect each other enough. The maker world is super auto-didactic, self-sufficient, DIY, vibrant, and very curious. The maker world sentiment is that schools are going to destroy the maker movement by embracing it and standardizing it. It’s not an unfounded fear. Look at the computer labs in the 90s. The way that education works is in compartmentalizing. My biggest fear is that it becomes a space where you go and do « making » for an hour completely separated from (or only superficially connected to) science, math, language arts, literature, art, etc.

The formal education world is coming from a perspective that we’ve been doing « making » well before Maker Faire started in 2006, but have called it other things like project-based instruction. Colleges of Education see the value in makerspaces, but in public education we have to focus on serving every kid.

While the Maker Education Initiative motto is « every kid a maker » colleges of education and educators in general are asking what do we do with kids who aren’t motivated by blinking a light or don’t identify with the notion of making? How does PD play out in these different areas, and what does it look like as these spaces develop?
 

Do you think that schools/universities would be adopting makerspaces if they weren’t tied to funding?

These spaces have always existed in universities, but they used to be highly articulated with coursework.

« Making » in a university is usually housed in the college of engineering, which makes sense for digital fabrication and electronics. You were typically a junior before you got to that level of coursework and only accessed the equipment for specific, course related projects. If you talk to industry, a big complaint is that universities are producing engineering graduates who can calculate, but can’t use a screwdriver and a hammer or connect that academic experience to the real world.

A makerspace is more similar to a library type model so it’s open and you can go in and make when/what you want. UT opened a Longhorn Maker Studio and when I went there in November it was full of kids making Christmas presents (like ornaments, a picture frame, and other highly personal artifacts). There are a lot of class projects, but it’s more about figuring out what they can do with it.  That’s what’s exciting.

Something that I see as very similar to the makerspace idea in the College of Science is open inquiry where students choose what they want to learn more about, design an experiment, and analyze results. In UTeach, one of the nine courses is totally dedicated to this process. Instructors have noticed that the hardest part of the process is to get students to become curious. Get students to develop their own questions that can be addressed by experiments. In education, we have identified content, but the gap is how we inspire students to be curious and engaged and motivated and passionate. It’s so well connected in general to how we get students to think and be self-motivated and have internal drive.
 

One could argue that makerspaces are going the way of MOOCs—only reinforcing the privilege and access of middle-class paradigms and still largely unused in lower-income/marginalized communities. If we really believe that makerspaces improve creativity, critical thinking, and STEM, what will it take for the movement to reach a more diverse audience?

Why I see maker movement as being fundamentally different, is that I see it as hitting on different things, namely on student motivation and constructivist education, with what we know about how students learn best, project-based instruction, and the evolution of progressive education. At the UTeach conference last May, we had several sessions about making in the classroom. It’s important for us is to embed this into regular coursework. Right now, a lot of the robotics and electives are afterschool activities, but in order for this to be truly democratized, we have to make it part of our classes—science and math that every kid takes.  NGSS and CCSS math standards demonstrate value for persistent problem solvers, design cycle, and implementing inquiry. Makerspaces can support these standards for all students.

As part of the maker strand at our UTeach conference Leah Buechley gave the plenary talk contrasting mainstream maker approaches with tools and techniques designed to support diversity and equality.” This is exactly why we, in education, need to systematically develop opportunities around « making » for a more diverse population, which early indications show is working. We’re already seeing that the demographics of youth serving maker spaces are much more diverse than that of Maker Faire.

Mike’s One Good Question: How can we use this space to address community needs? What we’re doing is making things, but why are we making them?
 

Here’s a special invitation from Mike to join him and other education thinkers and doers for a special screening of Most Likely to Succeed:
 

Please join us on Tuesday, March 8th, to discuss our schools, what we want them to look like, and how we can work together to meet the changing needs of our global society. Doors open at 5:30pm, special guest ¡Oh Antonio + His Imaginary Friends! will play from 6:00 to 6:30pm, and the movie starts at 6:45pm followed by a discussion and Q&A. Since the movie is about innovation in education, we are excited to be able to help Travis High School in developing its own makerspace and innovation. All proceeds from the screening will go directly to support providing resources for the space and teacher training related to those tools. Reserve your ticket here.

About the movie: For most of the last century, entry-level jobs were plentiful, and college was an affordable path to a fulfilling career. That world no longer exists. The feature-length documentary Most Likely to Succeed examines the history of education, revealing the growing shortcomings of our school model in todayʼs innovative world. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Greg Whiteley, the film has been named “among the best edu-documentaries ever produced” by Education Week.
See more at http://mltsfilm.org.

Making mud

Meghan Fitzgerald is founder and chief learning officer at Tinkergarten, which began in New York and is now expanding to other communities—including Austin!—to offer outdoor early childhood education classes for children and their parents. We invited Meghan to join us on the blog to share her considerable mud-making expertise.
 

I must admit that, as a former principal and brand-new mom of an eight-month-old, I was a bit uncertain about making mud, and I certainly wasn’t thinking of it as a transformative experience. “Making mud? What’s the point?” I wondered. “Is it worth the mess?” This was before my forest school training and before I started to really spend time with tiny people outdoors.

It turns out the simple act of making mud is a universally powerful pastime for young people (and not bad for us big kids, either). Yes, kids get messy. (Fair warning: They may even try to taste the mud.) But with a few exceptions, kids get completely absorbed in this pursuit. The great news for parents is you can do this virtually anywhere—with the most basic of materials (water + dirt!). Armed with a few tips, parents can help unleash the activity’s rich learning potential. Play in the mud along with your kids, and you’ll inspire immediate smiles as well as a lifelong comfort, even pleasure, in mucking around. That kind freedom spawns unbridled creativity and joy that’s just plain good for the soul. So let them go for it—you can make an outdoor cleanup part of the fun too!

Here’s how we like to approach mud play:

1. Pack a few materials: Unless you’re near a water source, you’ll need to bring it with you. We like to have around half gallon of water per kid so they can play and experiment for a while. Bring a small pail or container for each child so she can pour water as desired without dumping your entire supply.
2. Clear your spot: If you’re in a high-traffic area, check to make sure that there are no obvious hazards (e.g., broken glass, metal, dog doo, trash) where you’ll be making your mud. As you scan the ground, grab some sticks that kids can use for stirring and mushing mud.
3. Pour a little water. Then let them do the pouring: Trickle a small amount of water on the ground, and discover together what happens to the dirt. You can take a stick and even do a little mixing. Then hand a bucket to your kids, inviting them to transport water and see what happens when they add it to dirt. Stand back, and watch them get to work.
4. Dole out the water as you go: Allow (or help) kids to fill up their pails or cups and dump water as often as they like. Playing with water is, in and of itself, a super engaging lesson in cause and effect and physics. We prefer filling a large container (e.g., 5-gallon bucket) and letting kids serve themselves.
5. Play and “ooooooh” alongside them: Let them continue to pour, mix, and make mud on their own, but do the same alongside them. Every now and again, “Ooooh” or “Ahhh” at the mud puddles, rivers, and piles you make. Ask kids if they notice a difference between their mud and yours, giving an opportunity to describe the different muds using words such as soupy, thick, chunky, dry, wet, or sticky. Such a gripping sensory experience is a great opportunity to build language.
6. Make something (optional): If you think they are ready for more, do not interrupt their play. Simply make a mud pie by forming a fistful of mud into a patty and plopping it down somewhere. Gather nature treasures to decorate it (our oldest loves to make pizza mud pies most). Kids will likely get intrigued by what you are doing and want to try it too. If you have older kids (ages 3+), you can make mud faces on the trees!

Why is this activity great for kids?

Playing and experimenting with ooey, gooey mud helps children to strengthen their sense of touch—and we know that the better kids are able to tune and integrate their senses, the more effectively they can learn. Once kids know how to make and manipulate mud, they have a tool for play and building with virtually unlimited uses. When kids transform the shape, texture, or nature of materials (in this case, turning dirt and water into mud), they also engage in a universal behavior pattern called the transforming schema, which supports brain development. Best of all, when you let kids lose themselves in play and give them room to mess around, you offer them the openness and freedom they’ll need to develop true creativity down the line. If all this isn’t compelling enough, research also indicates that playing in the dirt is just plain good for kids’ health. So go on, get dirty!

Meghan Fitzgerald

Leveling with kids about leveling up

Guest contributor Alli Vaughn, parent of an alternatively schooled 14-year-old, is a local developer dedicated to cultivating a culture of inclusiveness and encouraging young people in their journey toward technical literacy. You can reach her at lvlupworkshops@gmail.com, @friendlyfulcrum on Twitter, and Lvl\U/p Workshops.

What if we leveled with students that knowing how to self-teach a new technical skill is at least highly beneficial, if not critical to a future career?

The White House recently released a directive to teach coding in every single K– 12 public school in the nation. That’s going to take a while to implement, and I believe it’s only half of the problem. Knowing how to recall a provided answer is not a highly valued skill in a world where everyone can look up facts and syntax, but understanding how to use what you already know to learn what you need to know is. Ask any programmer if they are still using just one language, framework, or version of anything since they first learned to program. The answer is almost always “of course not!”

The good news is that we can address this. In fact, businesses want us to. They spend a lot of money trying to train graduates about this.

What if I told you that developers often learn new skills by themselves, with only sketchy documentation, and due to the pace of things, manuals are often out of date?

Google “stack overflow” and you’ll be faced with pages of questions from new and seasoned programmers alike collaborating on learning new skills. Look a little closer: There isn’t really one single answer to any of the problems. This is the reality of development!

Don’t believe me? Go schedule a lunch meeting with just about any developer working on anything new, and you’ll get your answer. The good news is that the problem is pervasive enough that tech folks are working on better documentation when they can, but it’s going slowly.

What if the students whom studies show are most hesitant to jump into the upper echelons of technical literacy had a safe, encouraging, and inclusive environment to do so? How might that change the next 10 years?

Projections show that while the total workforce going forward will become progressively more minority-based and female-heavy, neither of these populations is currently on any significant growth trajectory for future technical career involvement, and we lose them in High School. At the same time, reports on future job growth indicate a sharp uptick in the need for these workers in the next 10 years, and current participants are mostly male and Caucasian. Austin is an up-and coming tech hub in Texas, and a rapidly growing tech hub nationally, with no sign of slowing down soon.

Austin, we have a problem. Even though we have a growing workforce now, we won’t actually have enough people to fill the jobs coming down that pipeline! The largest issue is not a lack of initial interest in cool technical stuff (after all, these subjects are very interesting in many ways) but rather a lack of continued interest, and we think it’s at least partially due to the lack of a welcoming culture.

Think about it: Nothing turns a person off like feeling that they don’t know enough, or they don’t belong.

The good news is that recent studies show that the creation of a welcoming culture and community around technical field participation just may be the key to sustaining long-term interest!
 

Spotlight on the Little Program That Could

Taking place this spring at Griffin School and Skybridge Academy, Lvl\U/p’s Intro to Full Stack Development is an after-school workshop series for high school students, adapted from the Rails Bridge Curriculum, and is designed to build confidence by fostering a small-group, inclusive, welcoming environment where students work through real-world fundamentals and processes used by software development professionals.

Many programs here and elsewhere simply aim to teach students to code. It’s a worthy goal, but it’s problematic, and I think there are more beneficial ways to accomplish the same thing. Lvl\U/p workshops turn the code school model on its ear, with a goal of students learning how to learn a new technical skill through discussion, activities, and, of course, hands-on programming. The structure naturally fosters a warm, welcoming environment where not only do students learn the basics of CS and a no-nonsense framework but they also learn about the relevance of technical literacy to their own goals. No matter what their future chosen field, the ability to map that understanding to learning a new technology is an extremely valuable skill going forward.

The pros have been programming longer, but they often need to learn new things each time they participate in a project. I believe kids are capable of learning these fundamentals, and I think they deserve for us to level with them about how important these skills are! Every student’s development journey is unique, as is the journey of each professional developer, but we each have a responsibility to change the culture, together.

Alli Vaughn