The Allen Distinguished Educator program and grants

In February, my teaching partner Tracey Winey and I received the Allen Distinguished Educator award. I want to tell you a little about the program as there are some possible ways for you to get involved! (Hint – there’s money available!)

The program was spearheaded by Paul Allen, and it seeks to highlight and further the spread of innovative education programs in computer science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. The program looks for teachers who are “breaking the mold” in these areas, re-imagining what education looks like in a variety of school settings. There are ADE awardees who teach all grade levels, from large and small schools, from charter, private, and public schools. What we have in common is that we believe in students’ ability to be creative problem solvers – we believe in individualized, project-based learning – we believe a 21st century education is not just about modern tools but allowing those tools to be used powerfully. We’ve created programs that look at learning in different and exciting ways. The ADE community helps us share our work and network with each other and with you.

Video of the ADE class of 2016 at SxSWEdu

Tracey is the media specialist at our middle school, and I’m the computer science and electronics teacher. She has taken the lead at turning our school’s media center into a social hub and makerspace, filling it with engaging technology, a creative spirit, a sense of adventure. I have worked hard to grow the computer science and engineering program at our school, to make programming just another creation tool we use to solve problems and to make engineering part of the everyday culture. We have our separate sandboxes but  we work together on an Electronics class and program called Engineering Brightness. We share a lot more about this program and what we’ve learned from it on the ADE website.

On the ADE website, you’ll find Micro-documentaries, Roadmaps, and Do-It-Yourself guides. A team from the Allen Distinguished Educators program, including a video production team from LearnBig, an e-learning company, came to our school and spent three days with us creating these products. It was exciting for me – my first time working with a professional team of videographers and writers. They listened to our stories and inspected our lesson and unit plans, and turned them into video products I’m really proud of and excited to share. It’s interesting to see an outside perspective of myself as an educator. It’s not the whole story of me and Tracey, but I like the story they told.

Making the DIY guide with the video crew from LearnBig. They do wonderful work.

I’m not a perfect educator or person. Going through the process of documenting and videoing my life as a teacher has laid bare the areas where I want to improve as well as my strengths. I’m really humbled to be in the company of the other ADE’s and suffer from imposter sydrome as much as the next person. I am, however, firmly committed to honoring my students as creative people with an interest in exploring the world around them, playing and solving problems, and I’m committed to learning alongside them – I stay grounded in that philosophy.

You can get involved in the Allen Distinguished Educator program! The grant application period just started for the DIY grants. These grants will award $1000 for you to implement one of the DIY guides on the web site. Tracey and I created the DIY guide about making Arduino-based music boxes with middle schoolers. $1000 would be enough to get a class set of Arduinos so you can get involved in physical computer science! I hope you apply for a project that is suited for you. All of them are rigorous and interesting and innovative for the students and teacher.

Let me know if I can do anything to help you with a grant proposal! And if you’re interested in joining the next class of ADE’s, watch the web site for application information this fall.