DIANE LEVITT: When I
was in middle school,
I played the viola.
I played the viola very badly.
And they didn't take
the viola away from me,
because I wasn't
going to Julliard.
They wanted me to learn
viola because they
knew I would leave them and
enter a world full of music
and that I would understand
music differently,
because I had made it.
That's exactly the
reason why we want
students to navigate technology
with that same fluency
and purpose.
The city of New York,
1.1 million children
in the public schools,
the opportunity to help
empower schools to lift
children out of poverty,
to prepare students
for full citizenship
in the digital age, that is
a very, very powerful lure
for a person like me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Cornell Tech is a
graduate school.
And yet we play an essential
role in the tech ecosystem
in New York City.
The mission of Cornell
Tech's K-12 work
is to catalyze computer science
education in New York City's
elementary, middle,
and high schools.
We have adopted PS/IS
217 on Roosevelt Island.
Principal Beckman
said, you know,
what we really need
is a specialist who
comes in once a week, somebody
who can talk to teachers
and help drive better
classroom experiences.
MEG RAY: What's unique about
the Teacher-in-Residence program
is that we're not just
parachuting in a curriculum.
We're not just training
teachers for a week
and then letting them go.
We're looking at what is
sustainable in schools?
What will be there in a year
from now, five years from now,
10 years from now?
It's about equipping that
school to incorporate computer
science into its culture.
We are working with
teachers directly.
Our biggest emphasis is
coaching in the classroom.
DIANE LEVITT: We
don't think there's
any substitute for the
kind of relationship
you build between a
teacher and a coach.
MEG RAY: Teachers need to
learn a lot of new material.
And it's been just
wonderful to see
the commitment of the teachers
that I've worked with.
Kids are very
capable of creating
complex projects, programming.
When I'm in classrooms,
what really excites
me is when I see
students who really
wanted to give up
in the beginning,
but have learned that
they can problem solve.
They can get to the end.
They can create something.
And they feel empowered by it.
It's really exciting to see
them doing this rigorous work.
SPEAKER 1: You're
sort of learning
what the computer is,
like, capable of, what
it's not capable of.
SPEAKER 2: There are lots of
different types of computers.
SPEAKER 3: There's more to
technology than I thought.
SPEAKER 1: The computer, it
doesn't have a mind of its own.
You have to create
the mind for it.
SPEAKER 4: What
does debugging mean?
SPEAKER 2: Fixing the problem.
SPEAKER 1: Something
that I really
like is challenges, because
they really push my mind.
DIANE LEVITT: As
soon as we decided
that having someone in
a long-term relationship
with the school was going
to be the factor that
made a difference there, we
started to see real change.
I'm very proud that PS/IS
217 went from zero computer
science four years ago
to computer science
in every classroom every week
in the K-5 and several times
a year in the middle school.
We're certainly
the only university
in the country putting
these kind of resources
into the K-12 space
in computer science.
Our goal here is to figure
out, is this something
that can be broadly applied
throughout the country?
I want students to be able to
build something digital that
has meaning to them so
that every time they
interact in the digital world,
they have that same sense.
I was there.
I made this.
I know how they did that.
That's what I really
hope for kids.
[ROBOTIC MOTOR]
