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This is the fourth in a series of blog posts authored by Remi Kalir, External Evaluator of the Mobile City Science project, and the first about MCS programming facilitated by the New York Hall of Science in Corona, Queens. Read Remi’s previous entries (here and here) about the Digital Youth Network facilitating MCS in Bronzeville, Chicago.

Introducing MCS in Corona, Queens

Located in New York City’s Queens borough, the neighborhood of Corona is a bustling cacophony of culture adjacent to Flushing Meadows, site of the iconic 1964 New York World’s Fair. In a city defined by generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe, Corona is currently both the largest and most densely populated immigrant community in all of New York City. In early March, MCS programming launched in Corona thanks to an established partnership between the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) and Global Science Academy (GSA),* a public high school about two miles from NYSCI’s sprawling campus on the grounds of Flushing Meadows. The partnership between NYSCI and GSA is rooted in the work of Queens 20/20, NYSCI’s initiative to “engage children and families in creative STEM learning, develop resources for teachers and students, build out-of-school STEM opportunities, and support STEM learning for high school and college students.” Under the auspices of Queens 20/20, the ongoing collaboration between NYSCI and GSA was as an ideal testbed for the implementation of MCS in Corona.

Throughout the fall of 2016 while the Digital Youth Network (DYN) was facilitating MCS in Bronzeville, Chicago, NYSCI staff began their planning process with GSA. Andrés Henríquez, MCS Co-PI and NYSCI’s Vice President of STEM Learning in Communities, worked alongside Catherine Cramer, NYSCI’s Senior Program Developer for Science and Technology, and introduced MCS to GSA’s Principal Edwards. Unlike DYN’s implementation of MCS during the school day via a freshman science course at Evergreen Academy, NYSCI and GSA chose to position MCS as an interest-driven, afterschool program for juniors and seniors. A biology educator at GSA, Ms. Atwal, volunteered to coordinate student recruitment and oversee some aspects of the partnership. Similar to implementation in Bronzeville, whereby DYN staff facilitated MCS curricular activities, Anthony Negron, Manager of Digital Programming in NYSCI’s Education department, took the lead role for MCS facilitation at GSA.

During their planning, the New York team – Anthony, Catherine, and Andres from NYSCI, and Principal Edwards and Ms. Atwal from GSA – identified 21 after-school sessions for Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, spanning early March through mid-June. The 14 Tuesday sessions were scheduled for an hour after school, complemented by seven three-hour long sessions for Saturday afternoons. I visited Corona in late March, and observed the third session at GSA on Tuesday, March 28th, as well as the fourth session (and also the first Saturday session) on the afternoon of April 1st.

Visiting Global Science Academy

Having walked up to the fourth floor of a very large and quintessential high school located in the heart of Corona, I was a bit winded when introduced to Principal Edwards. As he welcomed me to GSA, I immediately noticed a button pinned to his blazer: “I Support Immigrant Families.” The sentiment of his button was amplified by signage posted throughout GSA (Images 1-6): “No Human Is Illegal;” “Immigrants get the job done;” “El Pueblo Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido” (the people united will never be defeated).
 

Images 1-6: Posters supporting immigrant students and their families throughout GSA

GSA is a school-within-a-school, wedged into the upper hallways of a large building that occupies an entire square city block. Having started my career in a New York City public school, there was much that I recognized – uniformed safety officers, cramped hallways, noisy heaters, and the need for a fresh coat of paint. Yet a quick glance around GSA conveys little about the distinctive approach that Principal Edwards and his staff have taken toward curricular design, honoring of student culture, supportive teaching, and transformative learning. Despite appearances to the contrary, GSA is anything but a typical New York City high school.

Founded in 2013, GSA is a public school enrolling approximately 300 students and affiliated with a larger network of international-themed schools primarily (though note exclusively) located in New York City. This network of schools has developed a highly successful model for educating recent immigrant students, many of whom are emerging bilingual learners and have experienced some type of disruption to their formal education (i.e. missing perhaps multiple years of schooling while immigrating to America). To attend GSA, students must have lived in the United States for less than four years prior to their enrollment. GSA students come from 30 home countries and speak 20 different languages. The first graduating class from GSA will walk across commencement stage this June, and every graduating senior has applied to college.

Walking around GSA with Principal Edwards, I heard – more than saw – how language is utilized and celebrated as a valued learning resource for both students and staff. Like Corona, a majority of GSA students are of Hispanic heritage and many students speak Spanish. Bengali is spoken by the second largest group of GSA students. Whether in class or the hallway, students speak their native languages as a means of social support, personal expression, and as a part of academic inquiry. Students also receive regular and high-quality assistance from the school’s paraprofessionals so as to use their developing English language skills to talk, write, and interact with one another. As such, English emerges as a lingua franca among all GSA learners.

MCS Walking Audits

The two sessions I observed at GSA were both related to the MCS curricular activity of walking audits. During walking audits, small groups of learners navigate on foot (or, in some instances, on bike) among predetermined neighborhood locations indicated on a map, and while moving annotate the map with their travelled routes, missing features, inaccuracies, and other notes helpful for wayfinding. Youth might capture digital photographs that can later be incorporated as locative data into designs authored with mapping software. The goal of walking audits is for MCS participants to learn about maps, mapping conventions, and spatial data – all while moving about a familiar locale. Additionally, participants learn that different types of maps highlight, conceal (or blatantly ignore), and display different portrayals of a place, and that such representations convey varied messages about the same place. Not only are walking audits a core curricular feature introducing youth to MCS, similar “walking the neighborhood” experiences are important for adult facilitators when preparing their own place-based and mobile learning activities.

Tuesday Afternoon: Debriefing a Walking Audit

MCS programming at GSA occurs inside an old science classroom that has been converted into the school’s growing makerspace with a row of computers and a few 3D printers. Rather than desks, the classroom features tables arranged in a “U” shape (Image 7). When I entered , most of the 11 youth participants were already present, chatting casually after a full day of school as Anthony and Andres arranged video cameras for data collection (Image 8). It seemed that participation in extracurricular programming was a norm for these youth; as such, Anthony and Andres comfortably transitioned the group into the afternoon’s MCS activities.
 

Images 7-8: The MCS classroom at GSA

The first session I observed at GSA was primarily a single, whole-group discussion among the youth debriefing their first “non-tech” walking audit from the previous Tuesday. Anthony facilitated the conversation, and when I asked him later about including a technology-free walking audit followed by an extensive debrief conversation, he mentioned the importance of youth carefully “taking a look at the neighborhood.” The novelty of mobile technologies like GoPro cameras and Garmin GPS devices might distract youth from making their first nuanced observations of everyday places. When adapting MCS curricular activities to their Corona context, the NYSCI team sought to create additional opportunities to “scaffold the experience more before they [youth] jump into the project.”

Scaffolding MCS meant ample opportunity for youth to share and discuss their non-tech walking audit around Corona, and Anthony structured this debrief via questions about place and data:

1. What did you observe?

2. What type of data could you collect? How would you collect that data?

3. What would be your next steps based on the data you collected? (Image 9)

In response to Anthony’s questions, students first wrote their individual responses on notecards (Images 10-12). These individual responses became rich points of reference for participants’ subsequent conversation about Corona.

Images 9-12: Debrief questions to reflect on non-tech walking audit and sample responses

While walking about Corona, MCS youth had observed local landmarks, public libraries, construction sites, and congested traffic. These observations also included people’s everyday activities – such as commuting, shopping, socializing, and playing – as were patterns like “same people, same things,” “some of the houses are alike or so similar,” and the regularity of public transportation (i.e. frequency of buses along certain routes). When asked about the type of data they might collect during a future community investigation, one GSA student noted: “Anything that catches my attention. I’ll look at it, and I’ll catch that data in my mind.” Another referenced census-like activities, indicating an interest in determining “how many buildings [are in the area] and the amount of people they can hold.” And when Anthony inquired about the types of tools students would use to collect that data, the first response was an enthusiastic “memory!” This student went on to mention notes, videos, and pictures; however, it was unclear if “memory” referred to the faculty of his mind or the affordance of a digital device (perhaps both?).

During this discussion, Anthony routinely emphasized to GSA students that “we’re researchers.” By participating in MCS, GSA students were joining a larger community of citizen scientists, including prior MCS youth from Chicago and other participants in NYSCI educational programs. The agency of youth as researchers resonated in GSA students’ responses to the question about “next steps” following community-based data collection. Youth would use their data and “present to my neighbor” or the “owners of [the] building.” Others suggested they “would use mathematical process to show my data,” and that such data could be used to “analyze changes in a project.” Throughout this debrief about place and data, I was impressed by the ways in which MCS participants repeatedly drew upon established GSA norms for rich discussion (i.e. sharing responses, active listening, building upon one another's’ ideas), as well as disciplinary terminology taught in their STEM courses: (i.e. “make predictions,” “constant rate of change”).

Saturday Afternoon: Thematic Walking Audit

I returned to GSA on April 1st, a blustering Saturday afternoon with overcast skies. Thankfully, days of near-constant rain had blown over, and so despite the cold it would be possible for Anthony, Catherine, and Andres to facilitate a thematic walking audit with GSA students. Originally scheduled for three hours, I learned the session would only last two given coordination with school security (as the first Saturday MCS session, NYSCI and GSA were still working out a few logistics kinks). Nonetheless, the session would address two primary goals. First, participants would be introduced to their MCS backpacks and the many digital and analog tools they would subsequently use throughout the curriculum. Second, they would participate in a walking audit, using various tools to capture media and notes about three locations associated with a theme. I arrived at GSA shortly before noon, and found the school quite active for a Saturday. Principal Edwards was supervising multiple extracurricular programs, and I learned from him that such voluntary activities are quite popular with GSA students. As the session began, he brought over a large container of extra lunches from other activities in case MCS participants had yet to eat.

Perhaps because this was the first Saturday session, only six of the 11 students were in attendance. As with Tuesday, Anthony easily transitioned the group into the day’s activities. Working in pairs, GSA students received a MCS backpack and began to examine various tools. As they unpacked their GoPro cameras, Garmin GPS devices, micro SD cards, and other tools to record and store data, Anthony facilitated a discussion about “best practices” for data collection with various devices. For example, because participants would be wearing a GoPro camera on their head or chest, it was important that they attend to hand movements (so as not to obscure a recording) and their body position in relation to other people and points of interest.

After familiarizing themselves with data collection tools, MSC participants began to plan their community walking audit. Anthony, Catherine, and Andres had identified four themes pertinent to both youth interests and Corona that would guide the afternoon’s walking audit: learning opportunities, physical health, transportation, and job opportunities (Image 13). The three student pairs selected one of these themes, identified three locations around Corona related to their chosen theme, and then drew a map indicating how they would travel from GSA to their locations (Images 14 and 15). Two pairs of MCS youth chose to investigate physical health around Corona, and one pair selected the theme of transportation.
 

Images 13-15: Community themes for walking audit and participant maps to plan and guide investigation of themes

The team investigating transportation departed GSA accompanied by Catherine, one of the physical health teams was joined by both Andres and Principal Edwards, and I tagged alongside Anthony and the second team exploring physical health (Images 16-18). During the next hour, my team walked to a health clinic and nextdoor pharmacy, a dental office, and a pediatrician’s office. The fact that most of these offices or businesses were closed on a Saturday afternoon did not deter MCS participants from capturing digital artifacts and taking substantive notes. Moreover, our entire walking audit featured rich discussion about a variety of issues related to health and wellbeing, such as affordability ("if there are few clinics, cost is really high"), religion and culture, access to healthy and affordable food, and the proximity of health services to public transportation. A closed clinic prompted both students to speculate on the limitations of access, as "maybe people need medicine at various times." The youth also noted the importance of culture in medical care, and commented disapprovingly about a local hospital “where you need translation every 15 minutes." And as concerns the relationship of healthcare to transportation, while it could be "odd to see medical centers in residential areas," that happens a lot in Corona, and "a lot of medical centers [are] near the subway station." The thematic walking audit effectively introduced MCS youth to mobile device use and demonstrated how these tools could afford place-based data collection. Moreover, the activity helped develop youth interest in local issues as frames for continued data collection and (counter) mapping activities, particularly given the fact that two different teams selected physical health.
 

Images 16-18: MCS youth participating in thematic walking audit

Brief Concluding Questions

It’s been a few weeks since I returned from New York City and my visit to GSA and NYSCI. As I reflect upon my observations, and consider my responsibilities evaluating this phase of the broader MCS project, I would like to close this blog post with some questions that I hope are useful to both MCS facilitators and researchers, as well as others interested in place-based and mobile learning:

• How does the facilitation of mobile learning honor youth interest and also draw upon language and culture?

• How do mobile learning curricula like MCS leverage participants’ language and cultural practices as valued resources alongside digital devices and associated media practices?

• How are youth language and cultural uniquely beneficial resources to the development of techno-civic literacies?

• How does the collaboration between NYSCI and GSA, which is rooted in the broader Queens 2020 effort, help support the everyday STEM practices that are central to MCS implementation?

*Global Science Academy (GSA) and the names of its staff and students are pseudonyms.

This is the second in a series of blog posts authored by Remi Kalir, External Evaluator of the Mobile City Science project. The first post – which provides context about MCS and Remi’s role, as well as some guiding questions about project implementation – can be read here. A big thank you to DYN staff for providing helpful feedback on the writing of this post.

A Sketch of MCS

Bronzeville, Chicago: “What’s the temperature out here?” I’m standing among nine high school freshman and four adults, including Principal Lawrence and a staff member from Evergreen Academy, as well as Tené Gray and Jim Sandherr who are Digital Youth Network (DYN) educators.* We’re a block away from Evergreen at a small park. I’ve tagged along with this group from a freshman science class that is participating in the Mobile City Science (MCS) curriculum. Another six students, with two other educators from DYN, are across the street from Evergreen in a large parking lot. The student, Bryant, who asks me about the temperature is cold – hands deep in his pockets, hoodie on, he’s eager to start walking around again to warm up. I pull out my phone and confirm that yes, indeed, it’s pretty cold – a brisk 37 degrees on a cloudy morning. Perhaps none of us should be surprised; it is December in Chicago.

After a few brief instructions from Tené, the nine students break into four groups and begin a GPS drawing activity (Figure 1). Within each group, students activate handheld Garmin GPS devices, reference paper maps to walk pre-planned patterns around the park, and consult both tools and one another to record location-specific digital pathways of their drawings. As DYN implements MCS in partnership with Evergreen, this place-based curriculum has adapted to explore three themes pertinent to Bronzeville – change, diversity, and uniqueness. Student drafts of their GPS drawings are symbols that represent these themes – a cross, heart, spiral, crown (Bryant’s drawing), the letter “E” (for everyone), the letter “P” (for peace), and a circle with three arrow symbols (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Student drafts of GPS drawing activity, with yellow sticky-notes added to identify the symbol and/or corresponding theme.

I follow one group, and then another around the park, taking photographs, listening to their conversations, jotting observations in my notebook. After about ten minutes, three groups have finished their GPS drawings and pair up with an adult to return to Evergreen. In the park’s center, near a large tree, two young women continue to walk, a concentrated focus guiding their steps, intent on accurately capturing their drawing via a GPS route. This is, I come to learn, their third attempt to create an elaborate spiral originating from the tree and featuring multiple concentric loops (Figure 3). Jim, a DYN educator, and I watch their technology-enhanced walking-as-drawing. When they finish, and turn back toward Evergreen, the two young women smile beneath their large jacket hoods and celebrate with an enthusiastic high five.

Figure 3: Detail of spiral pattern as “unique” symbol for GPS drawing activity.

My Visit to Bronzeville

I recently visited with DYN staff and observed their implementation of the MCS curriculum at Evergreen Academy, a high school in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Unlike a more traditional and comprehensive secondary school, Evergreen is a high school with strong community connections. Approximately 200 students attend Evergreen, a school defined as much by a distinctive arts- and technology-infused curriculum as it is by the architecture of its facility. To describe the social and physical aesthetic at Evergreen as unique would be an understatement.

My two-day visit with DYN included multiple opportunities to observe and learn more about the MCS curriculum as implemented in Evergreen and the Bronzeville neighborhood. Specifically, I was able to: a) serve as a participant observer during two MCS sessions in first period freshman science at Evergreen; b) engage DYN educators during two debriefs that followed both sessions at Evergreen; c) conduct an interview with Evergreen’s Principal Lawrence; and d) attend a DYN staff meeting about the scope of their partnership with Evergreen, DYN’s work throughout Bronzeville, and the role that place-based curricula like MCS can play – in the words of DYN’s Caitlin Martin – in helping them “to study a hyperlocal environment” and “to partner with community organizations.”

The purpose of this post is to identify and describe three areas of adaptation that are defining the implementation of MCS in the context of a school-community organization-research partnership. This “first take” is meant to provide a useful sketch in the hopes of sparking subsequent conversation, analysis, and reflection among everyone involved in the MCS project. Additionally, this list of adaptations is one response to a question raised in my first post for this Counter Mobilities blog, “How will curricular resources be adapted to meet local needs and contingencies?” My recent participant observations, interviews, and fieldnotes suggest it is pertinent to understand how DYN is simultaneously adapting MCS across three different levels of activity, from more macro school relations, to the level of the curriculum, to more micro-level individual and group practices. First, DYN is adapting MCS to a formal school context, and one that is quite unique given the partnership with Evergreen. Second, DYN is adapting curricular structures and activities for more meaningful implementation. And third, DYN educators are adapting their professional practices of planning and facilitation.

Adapting to a Formal School Context

MCS has primarily been developed for, implemented in, and researched across less formal and out-of-school contexts. Much of what may be assumed about activity in such interest-driven learning environments – from participation incentives to the more flexible use and amount of time – are not necessarily a given in formal school contexts. At Evergreen, multiple dynamics well beyond the singular control of the school, or the school’s staff, or the students have collided in a challenging mix of unpredictability and improvisation. The following circumstances are defining this first adaptation of MCS to a formal school context:

• Most Evergreen students do not live in Bronzeville and commute from surrounding Southside neighborhoods to attend school. The freshman participating in MCS are new to Bronzeville within just the past few months and, as such, are less familiar with this neighborhood than with the many communities within which they live. Commuting to Evergreen also impacts student attendance patterns.

• Principal Lawrence identified a freshman science class as a promising context to implement the MCS curriculum. This class began the school year with a substitute teacher, who was subsequently replaced by a full-time educator, who has since also left and been replaced by Mr. Curtis, a long-term substitute. This turnover has made it difficult to establish effective classroom norms or a robust and routine science curriculum. Amidst this dynamic environment, DYN educators have embraced the opportunity to provide a consistent and structured academic experience during these students’ first period of their first year in high school.

• In other contexts, MCS activities might be perceived as an attractive alternative to a more routine freshman science course (i.e. lecture- and textbook-based learning). At Evergreen, DYN educators have an impression that students perceive MCS as “school” given that, in this context, there is no regular science curriculum.

• MCS is scheduled for three days of the week (Tuesday through Thursday mornings), with DYN educators and Principal Lawrence noting a disconnect between this programming and classroom activities on Mondays and Fridays. It has been suggested that DYN create complementary programming and/or resources that connect activities throughout the week and provide Evergreen students with more responsibility over their learning. Doing so might further establish MCS as the de facto science curriculum for this class. Mr. Curtis, for example, likes that MCS is “interactive” and build students’ technology skills.

• The scheduling of MCS during the school day’s first period is problematic for consistent student attendance.

• As is the case with many high schools, tardy student arrivals often interfere with first period class time. MCS introductory discussions at the beginning of class are problematic since not everyone is present, resulting in repeated instructions, and frequent regrouping of students based on when they arrive and what they have done.

Adapting Curricular Structures and Activities

The MCS curriculum is defined by a collection of mobile and place-based learning activities, including walking audits, geocaches, GPS drawing, asset mapping, counter-mapping, and youth-led design charrettes. As Tené told me, all MCS activities have been “heavily adapted to this context” (i.e. Evergreen) through the creation of multiple lesson plans by Elaina Boytor, Caitlin, and Tené through iterative cycles of unit sequencing and lesson planning, modification, critique, and revision. Many of the aforementioned activities – like geocaching and GPS drawing – have become stand-alone “units,” with up to three class session “lessons” aligned to a given unit. DYN’s lesson plans – which build upon the organization’s existing resources and staff expertise – are all pages long, and include details about equipment, set up, facilitation goals and instructions, and transitions among different stages of the lesson, as well as notes about how data will be collected and archived for researchers at the University of Washington. Although not unlike previous efforts by DYN to implement programming in local schools, MCS has required a substantial effort “breaking down” activities given both the previously noted school-level constraints and the conceptual features of some MCS activities (like creating a symbol to represent a theme that students will walk as a GPS drawing).

DYN staff have also created many original student handouts, activity scaffolds, and facilitation routines to ensure the successful implementation of MCS. For example, during my first day at Evergreen I observed a series of small group discussions designed in response to Tené and Elaina’s concern that students needed to better synthesize their prior experiences investigating throughout Bronzeville with their data and the focal themes of change, diversity, and uniqueness. Elaina had created a poster-size matrix that prompted youth in each of three groups to connect what they “heard,” “saw,” and “felt” during community-based activities with their selected themes. DYN educators were also attentive to facilitation strategies that would successfully support students in voicing connections among their experiences, data, and themes. For example, during the small group discussion that generated information for these posters, Dimress, another DYN educator, drew upon her deep knowledge of local Chicago neighborhoods and an encouraging demeanor to elicit from students substantive comments about crime rates, business development, and gentrification in historically black neighborhoods (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Matrix developed by DYN staff to help youth synthesize among their experiences with place-based investigations, data, and focal themes.

The adaptation of MCS curricular structures and activities is an iterative process that continues to focus active partnering between DYN and Evergreen. In my conversation with Principal Lawrence, I learned of efforts to make MCS more culturally relevant, to establish more “immediate” connections to student interests, and to provide more frequent opportunity for students to “see the outcomes” of their participation. These suggestions extend Principal Lawrence’s involvement shaping curricular adaptation, her guidance in the creation of complementary activities for Monday and Fridays, and her hands-on assistance during class sessions (for example, she participated in GPS drawing as noted in my opening vignette). In addition, and given the expertise of DYN’s team, there are ongoing efforts to possibly pair MCS activities with blogging, video production, and other creative outputs. According to Tené, this may provide students occasion to use both MCS technology and data as a means of reflecting “on the bigger picture.”

Adapting Practices as Educators

DYN educators like Tené, Elaina, Dimress, and Jim are routinely adapting their individual and group practices to both implement MCS while meeting the needs of Evergreen students. I noticed that DYN staff carefully attended to two categories of professional practice: a) planning and b) facilitation.

In regards to planning, DYN has taken advantage of individual team members’ specialized skill sets to launch MCS. Tené is a former Chicago Public Schools educator with years of professional development and facilitation experience at DYN. Dimress and Jim have experience facilitating out-of-school learning experiences, and Elaina and Jim have served in formal research capacities during other DYN projects. And in addition to the fact that all DYN staff are rather tech savvy, Tené, Caitlin, and Jim have substantial curriculum development experience in both school-based and informal settings. This breadth of experience results, as I observed, in many impromptu and productive moments, such as when Jim and Elaina realized it would be useful to document – for their own team – the correct microphone and digital audio recorder settings in order to more efficiently prep students and leave the classroom (Figure 5). When I later asked Jim about this moment, he noted that “it [MCS technology] requires a lot of different literacies” that educators need to know well in order to subsequently support students.

Figure 5: Elaina and Jim document correct equipment settings prior to GPS mapping outdoors (note their hats and layers!).

I also learned that Elaina had reorganized MCS equipment as the initial backpack-per-student plan (with each backpack containing one of every device for a set roster of students) was a mismatch with Evergreen’s inconsistent student attendance. The resulting system features backpacks that contain one type of each device (i.e. a backpack for Garmins, a backpack for audio recorders). To further aid their planning, DYN purchased large bins and set up an itemized system separating into categories various drawing, educator research, and student learning materials, and then reorganizing the system as implementation progressed (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Reorganization of MCS equipment and materials for both implementation and research.

Another important planning feature has been DYN’s creation of device-specific stations. This setup is a time-saving practice that eases students into particular roles, allows for smoother check-out and check-in of equipment by device type, assigns responsibility of one device to one student for fieldwork, and distributes technical know-how amongst the facilitation team (if an educator is less proficient with a particular device they can then assist students at a different station; Figures 7 and 8).

Figure 7: Garmin station prepped for student participation in GPS drawing activity.

Figure 8: GoPro station prepped for student participation in GPS drawing activity.

Finally, DYN educators are regularly adapting their facilitation practices, both in-the-moment and also upon reflection. On my second day at Evergreen I wrote the following in my notebook, “There’s a lot of improvisation despite all the detailed planning because of who has arrived by 9:15.” In this instance, Tené, Elaina, Dimress, and Jim were organizing and reorganizing on-the-fly about a dozen students into groups based upon both their participation in the previous day’s preparation for GPS drawing and also their prior experience using certain devices during MCS activities. While the class did successfully participate in GPS drawing, as noted in my opening vignette, this example speaks to broader (and perhaps unavoidable) tensions between preparation and implementation, and between intended design and enacted activity. In one of our debriefs, Tené emphasized the need for ongoing and iterative planning and professional development to address emergent problems and design working solutions, including lesson planning, the creation of complementary resources, and a review of facilitation strategies. Despite their experience, DYN educators find themselves in a situation akin to that of more novice educators engaging with new students, at a new school, while trying out a new curriculum for the very first time. This is challenging and rewarding work for DYN educators whose short-term facilitation of MCS is also the piloting of longer-term relationship-building with Evergreen and the Bronzeville neighborhood.

*Except for the organization Digital Youth Network (DYN) and their staff (who agreed to be identified), all names in this post – such as Evergreen Academy, its staff and its students – are pseudonyms.