Agency by Design Oakland Culmination May 2017

On May 24, 2017 Agency by Design Oakland concluded a one year fellowship with a group of amazing educators. We celebrated at Chapter 510 in downtown Oakland, reconvening in the location where we began the fellowship the year before.

Agency by Design Oakland is a community of educators from over 15 different local schools and institutions that has worked together to think about documentation and assessment strategies within Maker-Centered Learning. In May 2017 we celebrated a year of research, practice, and community at our Culmination Event. Visit abdoakland.org to learn more.

The event welcomed teachers, community members and students. Teacher fellows showcased artifacts, visual documentation, and videos from the inquiry work they completed over the year. Researchers from Project Zero at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education described the research process that coincided with the year and drove the inquiries that educators were trying out in their classrooms. The overarching research questions for the 2016-2017 year were:

• How can learners make visible their ability to look closely, explore complexity, and find opportunity?

• How can teachers qualitatively measure students’ performance within the realm of these three core maker capacities?

• How can we collaborate with students and teachers to design a suite of practical documentation and assessment tools best suited to the development of maker empowerment?

During the event two fellows, Kennan Scott and Robbie Torney, presented Ignite Talks to give the crowd a snapshot of the leadership and work they’ve engaged in at their schools.

Agency by Design Oakland fellow Kennan Scott's Ignite Talk, presented at the May 2017 AbD Oakland Culmination Event celebrating a year of research into documentation and assessment of maker-centered learning. Kennan Scott is an engineering and computer science teacher at West Oakland Middle School in the Oakland Unified School District.

Kennan Scott, Engineering and Computer Science Teacher at West Oakland Middle School, presented on making computer science relevant in the hood. Kennan walked the crowd through the lack of diversity in the tech industry and described how he is empowering his students to see themselves in tech leadership roles. Kennan is also in the process of designing a new Oakland school, Coded Academy, which would focus on coding throughout the content areas.

Agency by Design Oakland fellow Robbie Torney's Ignite Talk, presented at the May 2017 Agency by Design Oakland Culmination Event celebrating a year of research into documentation and assessment of maker-centered learning. Robbie Torney is Assistant Principal at Lodestar, a Lighthouse Community Public School in Oakland. For more information please visit abdoakland.org.

Robbie Torney, Assistant Principal at Lodestar, a Lighthouse Community School, presented his ideas around redesigning schools to create more equitable education. He posed the question: What would school look like if it were built around agency and belonging?

You’re invited to this year’s culmination event, which will take place in the morning of Saturday, May 5th, 2018, location TBD. The current 2017-2018 Agency by Design Oakland fellows have created their own inquiry questions spanning leadership, assessment, curriculum integration, and more.