Throughout my 4.5 years as an out-of-school time (OST) teacher, mentor, and program manager for teens, my greatest and most challenging task has been to stop the incessant and mindless scrolling! At the beginning, this seemed to be the foremost problem affecting my students’ ability to learn, listen, engage, grow, or do anything productive at all. Nothing I did seemed able to compete with the virtual world at their fingertips. And I struggled just to get teens to show up for two hours, twice per week, even when they were receiving a stipend to do so. When they did show up, all my attempts to engage or teach them were stressful and disappointing. Self-doubt crept in as I continuously asked myself if I was fit to teach and mentor young people. I developed a saying: “teenagers will always disappoint you”, which I would share with colleagues (Ironically, I’m now disappointed in myself for ever saying that). I viewed devices, mainly phones, as the enemy. I threatened to lock them up (a measure our local school district has recently taken), I gave warnings and lectures but none of it worked. Some teens even left the program because I was on their case about phone usage and they just couldn’t stop. That is, until I made one single change. I don’t remember exactly when or why I made this change but it set in motion a series of experiments, rules, and research that would completely transform my students’ performance and engagement levels as well as my own confidence in the work I was doing.
I came to youth work as a public artist. I had collaborated with many different communities on murals and other public art installations. When I was granted the position of Teen Public Art Program Manager at The Community Art Center in Cambridge, I viewed it as an opportunity to turn my passion into a full-time career. After all, community collaborations had become a central part of my art practice, it’s just that now that community would be a group of teens.
I had taught postsecondary in the past and experienced burn out as an adjunct professor scurrying between two community colleges. After my previous position as an arts grants coordinator for a state arts agency, I had no plans to return to teaching. However, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to create public art for an annual salary. It was too rare an opportunity! I didn’t mind working with teens, but it wasn’t something that really excited me at the time. I gave myself the impression that perhaps I could just create art and teens would simply be around helping me if they chose to. I was so naive! The field of youth development was nowhere on my radar. I remember telling my coworker how I didn’t really want to teach art, I just wanted kids to show up and grab a brush. Looking back, it’s no wonder why my first year was such a struggle. I had no idea of the journey I would take over the next four years, a journey that would eventually lead me to view teaching and youth development as the most important and rewarding parts of my work. And here I am, preparing to advance my teaching career further into K-12 education.
This brings me back to the one single change that I made: I stopped seeing the device addiction and other distractions as the cause of my students' disengagement. Neither did I blame the students themselves as the cause. Rather, I started to blame the environment and policies that lead to these distractions, and with this, view myself as the one who was responsible. Accepting and reflecting on this responsibility gave me the power to effect change. After all, I was the one responsible for the environment, the methods of teaching and learning, the social atmosphere, and every other aspect of the program. If I wanted my students to succeed, it was up to me to create an environment that fostered intrinsic motivation for healthy learning and personal growth. Once I stopped putting the blame on the students or the devices and began accepting this responsibility things really started to change.
The success I saw didn’t happen overnight after having this epiphany. It was more of a thought process that developed over time. It was an outlook that allowed me to keep trying new things, to carefully observe and think critically about my students’ response. I also began to ask more questions regarding their thoughts about the program. I developed a constant feedback loop that included both the direct feedback I was receiving through verbal communication and the indirect feedback I was receiving through their reactions and engagement levels. I stopped being angry at teens who struggled to engage, or scrolled incessantly, or created distractions by acting out. It was simply their way of telling me they weren’t interested in what I was teaching or couldn’t engage with how I was teaching it. It helped me put my guard down and start to really experiment and try new things.
I have always approached my work with young people by treating them more like adults. It’s important that they know what is expected of them in a professional environment and can learn to manage themselves appropriately. Locking their devices up does not teach them self-regulation, which is critical to success. Plus, eliminating the devices would eliminate the feedback loop, and therefore I may not be prompted in trying to make the work more engaging for them. It’s treating the symptom and not the cause.
So one of the first steps I took was making a rule about devices, one that could be easily enforced without having to lecture anyone or lock up phones. My goal was to, at the very least, get them off their devices while I was speaking to them individually or as a group, or when their peers were speaking. I felt that it was the most crucial time to be attentive because they’d be receiving important instruction or information, and it showed that they were listening and interested in what the speaker was saying. It would be expected of them in any professional environment they might find themselves in. My rule stated that no devices, including phones, tablets, and headphones, can be visible while someone is speaking to the group. This is typically only a 5-15 minute window and occasionally longer so it wasn’t asking a lot. I enforced it by pausing until all devices were no longer visible. They couldn't just put it down on the table because they would likely pick it back up while I was in the middle of speaking. If that did happen, and I saw a device appear, I would halt the presentation until it was no longer visible.
At the beginning of the program, I explain this rule and the reasoning behind it. It’s the first thing we go over because we can’t begin without it, and it’s important that I set a precedent from the start. At first, a few teens stalled things and seemed annoyed, but they didn’t want to hold everyone else up, so they always obliged. After a couple of weeks, they all knew the rule and followed along with no issues. I should note, however, that I’ve made exceptions for students on the autism spectrum who’ve told me that headphones help prevent over-stimulation. It’s important to me that teens feel heard and supported. In out-of-school settings, we do not receive 504 plans or medical information from students. It is up to them to ask for accommodations so I encourage them to have a private conversation with me about their needs.
It was a small step but the first step to having a fully engaged group of teens. I don’t like achieving engagement through rules and that’s not what this is about. None of the success that followed came about by rules. However, this simple exception was important in holding teens accountable. That is, to say: when you show up, you need to SHOW UP. You’re not here to scroll; you can do that at home. Why would you want to come here to do something you could do at home?
The success that came next was much less anticipated and involved the use of machinery, sewing machines to be exact. I had recently learned to sew and had been asking teens if they were interested in machine sewing. I often hear the same story: I tried using my mother’s or relative’s machine but got the thread tangled and quit. It’s a common story and one that I shared myself. However, when I learned on a new machine I found that it was much easier than my previous experience on hand-me-downs. I wanted to share this experience with them so I convinced my boss to purchase ten sewing machines and enrolled ten teens for a semester of “sustainable fashion.” Teens were given a small budget for materials; we visited thrift stores and fabric stores for supplies, and they explored the art of upcycling. First, I taught everyone to sew by making pot holders. Then I invited some experts in to teach a workshop on pajama pants. The remainder of the semester was largely self-directed. Teens could use whatever they had thrifted to create upcycled fashion. We also talked about the environmental impacts of the fashion industry and new sustainable approaches to fashion.
From the start, I could see a level of engagement from my students that I had yet to witness. They flared out pants and overalls, cropped shirts, hemmed sleeves, sewed patches, embroidered, and even incorporated some printing and painting into their creations. By the end of the semester, the level of engagement was so high that we decided to continue the program into the following semester. We finished the school year by participating in a vintage/upcycle market where they could sell their creations.
At first, it was the sewing machines themselves that sparked a higher level of engagement. It took a lot of focus to learn how to operate a machine and students were coming with a great desire to learn. After all, this is something they had attempted on their own and failed at. I’ll repeat, this is something they tried on their own! For a teen to stop scrolling or texting in the little bit of free time they have to make something by hand is fairly rare. So there was some intrinsic motivation to begin with. I mean, this was fashion, it was a practical skill with immediate real world applications. I had several students come into our studio after school adorning their creations, glowing with pride. Fashion design fits perfectly into a teens’ world. To illustrate, picture a high school student walking into school with a big canvas they’d painted. That big canvas is going to act as a megaphone to their world, screaming, “hey everyone, look at me, look what I did!” With fashion, they could be much more subtle about it. They’re wearing clothes to school either way, so it’s really up to them when and whether they want to share that it was something they’d made or altered. And they could take pride in either way.
Many of my coworkers began noticing the difference in the studio. They’d tell me how great it felt in there, that the teens seemed really engaged. It was exciting! We started making jewelry as well and teens were asking to borrow equipment or come into the studio outside of program hours to work on projects.
At this point one may be thinking, upcycling? What good is that? It’s not like it’s STEM. So bare with me while I break it down a bit. Each teen receives a gift card for $100 that they can spend thrifting clothes and purchasing materials. With about three to four shopping field trips within the semester they need to spread their money out to make it last (Managing a budget). Once clothing and materials are purchased, they have to brainstorm ideas for creatively altering their clothing in a way that will make it more unique, interesting, etc., which will increase its resale value (creative thinking). Once an idea is formed, they develop a strategy for creating it and get to work. This typically involves experimentation, learning from mistakes and failures, until they figure it out. If they find the outcome to be successful, they can then attempt a new, slightly different iteration for which they can refine the process. If all goes well, they begin producing similar one-of-a-kind items with more and more efficiency (problem solving). They then have to estimate how much money they had spent creating each item, factoring in their time spent making it as well as a guess at the market value, in order to come up with a selling price. Indeed, they soon discover that being an upcycler selling unique fashions is a tough way to earn a living. The point, however, is not to turn them on to upcycling as a career option just as teaching kids to read is not intended to train the next generation of audiobook narrators. Rather, they are exercising creative and strategic thinking and problem-solving skills, skills that are highly valued by today’s employers and useful for life in general…and they’re immensely engaged in it!
I began to ask students their thoughts on why the engagement level was high. I would approach teens who had been in the program previous semesters so they could give a comparison. To my surprise, they didn’t mention the machine being a factor, nor the act of sewing. They all mentioned the same thing: we get to make what we want, something for ourselves, something we’re interested in. In other words, it was the self-directed learning (SDL) that enabled them to lock in. Although I had taught them how to use the machine and set some parameters for their projects (they were required to upcycle), they could each pursue projects of their own making. As they were pursuing projects independently, I offered optional workshops they could participate in if they wanted to learn a new skill. This required me to teach the same workshops multiple times because once teens saw their peers using the newly acquired skills, the teens who had not joined the first workshop would be asking to learn. This is an important process because teaching a highly engaged learner requires that learner to be intrinsically motivated. For some, seeing a new skill demonstrated by their peers became their motivator.
In a world with AI, Youtube, Google, podcasts, and Pinterest, students who are not participating in a particular workshop can be using these tools to follow their own guided learning plans. That’s when I realized that I was not the only teacher in the room. I had assistants in the tools and technology that could help me teach more than one thing at a time.. I no longer had to require every student to learn the same thing, the same way, at the same pace.
What followed was our summer program, which completely changed the way I think about education. I started the summer asking students what new skills they would like to develop. I also asked them to describe their preferred methods for learning: video tutorials, small group workshops, one-on-one instruction, etc. I utilized cloud-based tech (Google Classroom) to create individual learning plans for each student. I spent my administrative hours watching videos, gathering instructional materials, and practicing hands-on tutorials. Essentially, I was curating tools and resources for each student. Rather than building a one-size-fits-all curriculum for the entire summer, we built the curriculum together, each student in phases as the program progressed. When they felt proficient enough in a particular skill or ability, we discussed what should come next and built the next phase of their learning plan. Meanwhile, I tied everyone’s individual work together into a group project that required students to work in teams. In any given session, you might have seen me giving a hands-on workshop to two or three students, while four other students were meeting as a team to discuss the group project, and six other students were watching tutorial videos or using worksheets to practice new skills. If you came into another session, you may see the same scene but with the students shuffled into different tasks. Regardless of when you came, you would see a room full of students highly engaged in learning and engrossed in their work. You would not see a phone locker. Rather, you would see teens utilizing their phones in healthy ways, and if there was a presentation or they were participating in a team-building exercise, you would not see phones at all.
It was the progress my students were making that told me I was finally doing something right. It was amazing to watch my students’ development over the course of those six weeks. They were able to achieve their goals because they were learning what they wanted, how they wanted, when it made sense in their development. This is self-directed learning.
In the last session of the program, there was a moment that summarized their development in a unique way. We were having a “fun day” and my students and I were gathered around a large table playing a dice game together. All of my students were participating along with a friend who I had allowed to join us for the day. The students were highly engaged in the game and seemed to be having fun but their friend was continuously distracted by another game he was playing on his phone. Every time it was his turn to roll the dice, the students had to holler at him to take his turn. I didn’t say anything about phone usage because all my students were fully engaged, minus this one friend. Since I didn’t know very well, I decided to let that go. Eventually, the students were so frustrated with his lack of focus they asked him to leave the game unless he could put his phone down and focus. He ultimately chose to continue with the game on his phone while his friends continued the dice game. This may seem like a simple thing because it’s just a game, but the social intelligence my students had shown during that activity is critical to succeeding in this world. They were able to overcome the ubiquitous distractions that surround them and exhibit true agency. This is more important to me than any of the specific technical skills they developed. It’s about the process, not the product. In other words, I’m not teaching them what to learn but rather, how to learn; how to engage with the world around them in a way that is aligned with their own values, beliefs, and goals. I believe this to be the fundamental purpose of education and find it readily apparent through the SDL approach.
It’s not perfect, and there are still challenges to address. For instance, although engagement levels went up for every student, some students embraced learning and developing new skills more than others. While a few students seemed addicted to improvement, there were a few who were content to remain at the same level. This just means that while everyone showed improvement, it varied in pace. I’m now thinking of ways to boost intrinsic motivation in order to increase the pace of learning for those students. Pace is still going to look different for each student and that is part of what makes SDL work.
This has caused me to think more about the benefits of an SDL-centered school environment where students move through grade levels at their own pace with assessment checkpoints to advance them to the next level, rather than ascending in accordance with age/time. Perhaps this could work within a system that allows core subjects to be modular and rearrangeable. It would look similar to how college students are able to select their courses each semester while following a framework of course requirements, credit requirements, and pre-requisites.
These are only some of the ideas running through my mind at the moment. When I reflect on my experiences teaching in out-of-school-time programming, I credit them for igniting a great passion for educating as well as a piqued interest in education policy. As I look forward to the coming years working with students in a public high school, I hope to explore some of these pedagogical approaches within the public school system, while learning how current policies help shape the system. I am eager to learn from those around me: teachers, students, and administrators. I just need to remember that if I accept responsibility for the outcomes of my classroom, I have the power to effect change and make an impact on my students’ success.