learn 2 teach, teach 2 learn

breakthrough

connecting technologies

heart

& for

earth

social & invention innovation

in our community

reflections of mel king, director

The breakthrough and innovation I think about in the work we do with youth and others in Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn is the connection between what I call the technology of the earth and the technology of the heart. What is interesting is each word contains the letters of the other: And there are common aspects of both words: each contains the words art, hear and ear.

heart

earth

technology of the earth

When I think about the earth, it obviously has art, ear, and hear. I see this in the approach to technology that is the art of dealing with the metals, minerals and all that encompasses the planet that we life in. tech.nol.o.gy [n.] The
purposeful application of information in the design, production and utilization of goods and services, and in the organization of human activities.

The art is this technology, what we use to get and shape the resources from the earth in a way that advances our human development, allowing access to things that would improve the quality of life and our ability to relate to the planet. constructionism:
people learn best as they design & make things and for the greatest learning to happen people must share both their design process & what they make with others

The word ear in earth is symbolic of the listening that it would take in order to hear the possibilities of using technology in ways that make things work better for humans and the planet.

The approach to emerging technologies that we use in our Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn program comes out of the constructionist model that Seymour Papert and David Cavallo from the MIT Media Lab have built their education programs on.

My personal understanding of constructionism comes from when I was eight or nine years of age and I made a kite. I remember running down my street and watching the kite go up. I was ecstatic! You could not tell me anything! It got me to understand certain dynamics of running and what it took to get the air to go underneath and lift the kite. Soon, what I learned got me into model airplanes where I started with an ROG, a rise off ground, which had a bamboo stick, a propeller, a rubber band and some wheels. I could go on, but the sense of understanding from the construction and the building moved from the act itself into the understanding.

learn. Our youth learn five

different technologies by building projects that are open-ended enough to be personalized.

build. Youth become makers

as they work in teams to design, tinker with & complete projects that solve a community issue important to them.

teach. Then, youth teach

younger children through handson projects.

service. Free summer & after

school STEM programs are offered in the Boston neighborhoods most in need of educational resources

Perhaps more important was the significance of this process in helping to shape my belief that I had the capacity to do things and to make things. Hands-on building was not only a way to work on my understanding of technology and science; it was also a way to help me develop confidence in my own ability to learn and create.

technology of the heart

My experience offers an example of the technology of the heart. The art is the technology that is needed to bring out the best in us, to enhance our relationship with each other so that we can share in the gifts that have come from the earth, including the gift of each one of us. Sadly, there is a history of militaristic technology that has all too often brought out the beast rather than the best in human beings. Yet, the word ear that is in heart is symbolic of the historical listening that has also taken place, the attempts to acquire technologies of the heart that get people to hear and relate to each other in very humane, caring and appreciative ways. Father John Harmon once said that to really listen means to be willing to change. For me, technologies of the heart are an affirmation of the humanity of others. We have witnessed people working to develop the technologies of the heart in some of our religious practices.

We also have evidence of this in the documents people have created to guide their relationships, such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are efforts to develop the technologies of equitable access to decision making processes and blueprints for making sure every human being gets what they deserve.
Some technologies of the heart in Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn: Social innovation aims to catalyze cultural community change Bringing together youth teachers from across the neighborhoods, family roots, & schools in Boston Multiple levels of role models who look like our youth High expectations for what our youth can achieve

People have struggled to put into place technologies of the heart --- such as nonviolent civil disobedience --- in revolutions and social movements. The most important aspect of these revolutions and social movements is that they have led to evolutions of the heart and a belief that every person is somebody and has the right to alter the world to make things work for them.

Many of our youth are still struggling because the work of the freedom movement has not yet been completed. In particular, significant Asking two questions at every forces in the media (pervasive negative images session: What did YOU learn? of youth) and their schools (low expectations What can you teach SOMEONE and achievement gaps) present obstacles to ELSE? their developing self-esteem and to the Youth explain and share what possibility of their developing a strong belief in they have built with the their capacity to learn and thrive. Social community at our annual Project historian Lerone Bennet, Jr. describes the Expo. negative impact of these forces on the personal spirit saying, To become a part of these signs and feel them in the deepest recesses of the spirit too often leads one to finally believe in ones unworthiness. It is no coincidence that slogans like Im Black and Im proud! and Black is Beautiful! were important technologies of the heart in the freedom movement; overcoming this sense of unworthiness and believing oneself to be deserving is the first and perhaps most crucial step towards human liberation. Technologies of the heart are aimed, as it says in the Bibles Book of Revelation, at having a world where all the tribes are welcome, all the gifts are shared. And perhaps most important to education are the technologies of the heart that I learned in Sunday School when the Savior said to the disciples, get out of the way and have the children come, and from reading Khalil Gibran, who said that all the children are our children.

bringing the technologies of earth and heart together

So the question that Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn has worked to answer for the last eight years is, how do you bring the technology of earth and heart together? Our innovative idea is to get people to understand that technology and innovation have a social factor and that it is possible to combine having youth working on the earth aspect of building with emerging technology, along with the heart aspect of believing in ones capacity to learn and contributing to a world that works for everyone. The combination has our youth (and us) coming up with techniques and solutions that impact both the earth environment and their hearts. Especially in some of their projects, they try to work on things that can increase the life chances of others because they have become interested in some things that allow for improvement in the quality of life for all.

leadership. What is new and unique is that we now have this program with the
youth where, on the one hand, there is the construction with emerging technology and, on the other hand, there is an approach that we take in terms of leadership development. Youth teachers are playing meaningful roles as catalysts for change in their community and they are looking at the ways in which the technology can be used to deal with some of the issues they are confronted with in their neighborhoods.

constructive criticism and feedback. Youth have developed the

education innovation in the Learn 2 Teach Model beside us. An approach we take is having the youth actively participate in the design of the program and be an important part of the critical analysis of what we are doing. Building the capacity to give constructive criticism and work with feedback are an especially important part of our daily circle-up meetings where: Interpersonal and program direction issues that arise are discussed among the group. In the spring learning sessions, the new youth teachers give returning youth teachers feedback about their teaching and activities. As youth teachers design and build their projects, they present their daily progress in circle ups and receive feedback and suggestions from others.

And then, when they teach the younger children and receive circle up feedback from them, youth teachers begin to understand more deeply that they must be willing to put themselves out for constructive criticism and critique. As one foundation evaluator said, Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn is built on young peoples strengths...Young people have a voice at every stage of the program.

role models. Another aspect of our breakthrough is having the youth very

involved as catalysts for cultural change, where the acquisition of skills and knowledge in science and technology are seen as being as significant in their life as some of the other messages they hear which have them not believing in their capacity to do something. We use multiple layers of role models that create a pipeline of young LETS SHOW OFF people from elementary school to college who are into science When people look at us, and technology. do you believe they see
our knowledge, our accomplishment, our ambition? All they see are the colors, nothing more, from the color of our hair to the skin that we wear. Instead of taking offense, lets show off. . . Put them in a state of convolution. . . For once lets show them that we too can create We too can transcend above the world Lets show off! Lets diminish the misconception of us And the life that we live

We have youth who were in the program years ago at age nine, ten, eleven, and twelve who have now begun to apply for youth teacher positions because they have been exposed to people who look like them, who they can identify with, and who are playing positive roles.

We also ask youth teachers to come up with some rhymes or raps, some poems or songs that say what is important about So lets show off Lets help them not to misconstrue what they are doing. These are But to see the depth in the real you interesting to listen to because they do address the power of written by Jaime, a youth teacher the acquisition of the skills and problem solving along side of a developing belief in a personal capacity to learn and make. One example is a poem written by a youth teacher called Lets Show Off.

relationship to MIT Media Lab & the newest teaching tools and technologies. Our role modeling is multi-level and one important aspect is due
to a long-term relationship with the institution of MIT and especially with the MIT Media Lab.
Our Fab Lab

Through the MIT staff and graduate students, our youth get exposed to the newest technology and that becomes something that they can pop buttons about. And, for instance, being the first to learn Scratch and knowing that they are welcome at a place where the leading edge in the technology is breaking encourages them to think of ways that they can create as well.

In collaboration with the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms and the NSF, we established a Fab Lab at the South End Technology Center @ Tent City. Fab Lab is a place where we have computer-controlled machines that allow people to cut out designs they generate with software using materials like acrylic, wood and copper circuit boards.

While our relationship with the Institute, and in The idea behind a Fab Lab is if particular with the Media Lab and Center for you give ordinary people the Bits Atoms, has provided our youth the right tools they will design and build the most extraordinary opportunity to have access to technology, it things. has also put them in connection with people in other parts of the world. This gives them opportunities to share the creations that they make, as well as learn from what others are making.

One example of what can happen unfolded after a group of female youth teachers built a solar charger for charging cellphones and iPods using the sun. Through our relationship with MIT, this solar charger has traveled from the fence outside our community technology center in Boston to a place with limited access to electricity for charging equipment, Haiti. The solar charger is now not only being used as an education demonstration project; it is being replicated and distributed to other parts of Haiti through a hands-on STEM program for young people.

Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn is a breakthrough

We are preparing the next generation of innovators who are skilled in both the art of technology and the art of the human heart. Our breakthrough is that we get people to understand that technology and innovation has a social factor and we all have the capacity to create things that contribute to us relating to each other and the planet in humane, caring and appreciative ways. 7

Blending the technology of the earth and heart allows us to play a role in both bridging the predicted gap in the number of people able to fill roles in science, technology engineering and math (STEM), and bridging the achievement gap in our schools that discourages many of our youth of color from pursuing STEM disciplines in college. Our youth are already the enthusiastic consumers of technology and science and we believe they can become the inventors and innovators of the future. And we also believe that, because of their experiences in Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn, the things they invent and innovate will play a role in making the world work for everyone. Too often our youth are left behind and we know the rear wheels of the train never catch up to the front wheel unless something different happens. We think our approach makes something different happen. Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn models a process that gets our youth moving in a positive direction, with a positive self-image, a belief in their capacity to create with high technology and a belief in their capacity to make meaningful change in their community.