At the start of the L train in the upper-class Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, there are 10 city-funded Wi-Fi hubs within two blocks. When the train hits Brooklyn, two miles east, there are another six Wi-Fi hubs being installed in the hip East Williamsburg area. But the numbers start to fall as the train dives deeper into Brooklyn, where poverty is rampant. By the time it hits the neighborhoods of East New York and Brownsville, there are none.
Out here, almost a third of homes don’t have internet access — the gateway to a community’s broader participation in STEM industries and the jobs they offer. High schools, meanwhile, are under-equipped with the basic infrastructure needed for internet access and technology education. Music, dance and the arts, in contrast, are well established in the community.
This disconnect — in the midst of a national trend to move funding from the humanities to STEM — is what led Yamilée Toussaint, a mechanical engineering graduate from MIT, to start STEM From Dance, a program for high school girls that merges the local culture of dance and music with a future in learning complex science and technology concepts.
“Students who would be a natural fit for, say, a career as a coder don’t necessarily know that until they are introduced to it,” Toussaint says. “Through dance, we’re attracting them to a different world that they wouldn’t otherwise opt-in themselves.”
Toussaint, a tiny woman with large hair and a soft voice, created the program five years ago. Normally it spans a full semester, but this year she increased the number of girls she can reach with a summer intensive curriculum focused on circuitry.
During the course of one week, participants practice a dance routine that they pair with lessons on building and coding circuits.
“It was hard at first,” says Chantel Harrison, a 17-year-old participant from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “I didn’t know what it was about, honestly.”
Harrison and a couple dozen other girls are taught to wire battery-powered light circuits. They sew them into their dance costumes to create splashy light effects synced to a song’s beat. For many of them, this is their first introduction to computer science and coding.
And that is a stark reality check. In New York City, where technology often seems boundless — and where there have been huge strides to build up “Silicon Alley,” New York City’s own version of the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley — kids educated in the city’s outer borough’s face significant barriers to a future working in the tech industry.
“If we cannot allow our children to have first-class computer equipment in a first-class city, they’re not going to be prepared to be employed at a first-rate corporation,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams tells NationSwell. “We cannot have a digital divide in our borough and in our city.”
Both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have pushed for high-speed internet access and STEM course integration into the city’s high school curriculum by 2025. But in Brooklyn, a study published in December 2016 by the Brooklyn Borough President’s office found there is progress to be made: Internet access is subpar (the average rating is 3 out of 5) in the district’s schools; there are only enough tablets and laptops for 7 and 20 percent of the borough’s student population, respectively; and 70 percent of schools don’t have an established computer science curriculum.
“The mayor has a very strong goal, but the question is, are we set up to meet this goal based on current investments in schools?” says Stefan Ringel, a spokesperson for Adams. He adds that reaching the 2025 goal will require more investments in infrastructure upgrades as well as in the curriculum.
“There is a lot of talk around getting these students active in STEM education, but I’d say for our program, if we have 12 girls sign up, maybe one has actually been exposed to coding,” says Toussaint, as she watches a group of six teenagers practice a dance routine to Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.”
“We’re not trying to make engineers or professional dancers within a week,” says Arielle Snagg, an instructor with STEM From Dance who also has a degree in neuroscience. “But we are hoping to give them an idea on how they can use technology within this art.”
Snagg, originally from Bushwick — another impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood — says she understands the plight of students who live in these parts of New York. Of those who work (and only about half the population does), just 5 percent do so within the tech and science fields. And getting more women into technology can help a labor force that is desperate for diversity, especially when it comes to women of color.
After a week in the camp, Harrison, who will be a senior at Achievement First Brooklyn High School in the fall, says she gained a new appreciation for the integration of dance and science. “And I’ve gotten better in math — I’ve even learned to love it.”
Next spring, Toussaint will see her first group of students graduate from high school. And though she hopes that many of them pursue technology in college, more than anything she wants them to enter any career with confidence.
“The point is to let [these girls] know that they can do anything, and they don’t have to do one thing,” she says. “They just have to open up their minds a bit.”
Tag: internet access
10 Infrastructure Projects We’d Like to See Get Off the Ground
In his victory speech, Donald J. Trump vowed to “rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals.” The investment is long overdue: The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its most recent national assessment, rated the country’s infrastructure as a D-plus, just above failing. The group estimates that, by 2025, the nation will need a $1.44 trillion boost over current funding levels to meet growing needs.
Since 2009, when Barack Obama doled out roughly $800 billion in a stimulus package, that money’s been hard to come by, largely blocked by partisanship. But advocates hope the election of Trump, who made his fortune in real estate, could launch a building boom. The Republican president, so used to seeing his name on gilded skyscrapers, hotels, casinos and golf courses, could cut a deal with congressional Democrats, who view public-works projects as an engine for job growth.
Assuming Trump can indeed pass a bill, we at NationSwell have a few ideas for him to consider. A big, beautiful wall’s not one of them; instead, here’s the top 10 shovel-worthy alternatives we’d like the new administration to undertake.
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Here Are Your 2016 Inherent Prize Finalists
One of these movers and shakers will be awarded with the Inherent Prize in recognition of their social entrepreneurship. The grand-prize winner receives $50,000, with the runner-up nabbing $25,000. Get to know more about each below, and check back after November 15th to read about the winner.
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Rutgers University Admits Unlikely Student Body, Journalists Use Reporting to Urge Politicians to Act and More
A University That Prioritizes the Students Who Are Often Ignored, The Atlantic
Traditionally, America’s colleges seek to attract the best and brightest to their hallowed halls. Committed to cultivating local talent regardless of status, New Jersey’s Rutgers University is bucking that trend, recruiting low-income, public-school graduates with mediocre GPAs and test scores — the very students that other schools shun.
A Plan to Flood San Francisco With News on Homelessness, New York Times
Can journalists advocate for a cause while remaining unbiased in their reporting? Next month, writers and editors from 30 Bay Area media outlets plan to do just that while collaborating on coverage focused on San Francisco’s homeless problem. The goal: To serve as a catalyst for solutions to the seemingly intractable problem.
This City Is Giving Away Super-Fast Internet to Poor Students, CNN Money
No longer are the poorest families in Chattanooga, Tenn., forced to visit a fast-food restaurant so their children can access the Internet needed to complete their homework. Two new programs are bringing citizens online in the Southern city, where 22.5 percent of the population lives in poverty.
MORE: Only 1 in 5 New York City Students Graduate from College. This College Is Going to Change That
The Surprising Thing That’s Giving Low-Income Students Internet Access
In the evening, when students are supposed to be at home toiling over their homework, the school buses that carry them to school usually sit idle in a lot. But one school district in Salton City, Calif., is putting these vehicles’ downtime to good use.
How so?
By installing Wi-Fi routers inside the school buses and parking them in neighborhoods where many low-income students lack Internet access. For as long as the battery on the bus lasts, the community can use the free Wi-Fi — something that could have huge outcomes, considering that about half of the low-income students in the U.S. lack home Internet access, according to Nichole Dobo of the Hechinger Report.
The only other choice for these kids is to stay at school and use the Wi-Fi there to complete their homework. Darryl Adams, superintendent of schools of the Coachella Valley Unified District, tells Dobo, “I had kids sitting outside my office yesterday because they want to connect to the Internet at, like, 6 o’clock at night.”
When low-income students stay after hours to hop online — missing the school bus home — it creates difficulties for the parents who must come fetch them, as many of them live an hour’s drive or more away.
Thirteen-year-old Jasmine Jimenez says that she’s looking forward to the day when the district might enable Wi-Fi on the bus during its route. “It won’t be a big bug to ask your parents to pick you up,” she said.
School district officials haven’t completely worked out the kinks of the system. So far they’ve only been able to install routers in two buses out of their fleet of 90. Drivers park the two buses on lots in trailer parks and must obtain permission from the owners to do so. But the biggest problem is that the battery tends to die after only one hour of use, an energy crunch which some have suggested might be solved by installing solar panels on the buses.
Still, the Coachella district is determined to try to make the program work. “Come on. We can do better than that as a nation, especially for our low-income families and our disadvantaged families,’’ superintendent Darryl Adams says.
MORE: Every Kid Needs An Internet Connection to Thrive In School. This District Has A Plan to Make it Happen
If Low-Income Families Can’t Settle Their Unpaid Bills, This Cable Company Provides Affordable Internet Access
It’s back-to-school time. And while parents still need to load up on traditional school supplies such as pencils, notebooks and erasers, there’s a more expensive item that’s increasingly a necessity for students: Internet access.
Several companies and communities have provided inexpensive Internet access to low-income families. But when bills mount and are left unpaid, the service is often turned off, leaving kids unconnected and falling behind their peers in technology.
Three years ago, Comcast launched Internet Essentials, a program that gives low-income families Internet access for $9.95 a month and discounts on PCs. To apply, families must have at least one child qualifying for the federal school lunch program and any outstanding bill they have with the cable provider must be settled — the latter requirement leading some to criticize Comcast for punishing the poor.
In response, Comcast recently announced that it will forgive unpaid bills that are more than a year old and allow these families to sign up for the program. It will also waive the first six months of fees for those new to the program, which will get families well into the school year before any money is due.
But as Re/Code, the Washington Post, and others have pointed out, the timing of this magnanimous gesture is questionable as it might have something to do with Comcast’s desire to curry favor with the Federal Communications Commission so that its bid to buy Time Warner Cable will be approved.
“While Comcast should be applauded for trying to bridge the digital divide, they are clearly benefiting from the promotion of this program,” said Hannah Sassaman, a policy director at a Philadelphia community organizing group, Media Mobilizing Project.
In an interview with Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post a few months before the unpaid bill waiver was announced, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said that criticism over the company’s ulterior motive for the program, “makes me sigh. You can criticize us for data consumption caps. You can criticize us because cable bills are too high. You can criticize us because the acquisition of Time Warner Cable will make us too big. I can understand that. But every once in a while, even a big company does a good thing for the right reasons.”
While Comcast’s reason to forgive unpaid bills will never be known, it will get more families online at home and improve low-income children’s chances at being successful at school. And that’s an outcome that’s anything but questionable.
MORE: Every Kid Needs An Internet Connection to Thrive in School. This District Has A Plan to Make it Happen
Nonprofit Helps Grandma Understand What You Posted on Facebook Last Night
Your parents have already friended you, and now Grandma might too. A program sponsored by the AARP and the nonprofit Older Adults Technology Services aims to help low-income seniors get online. Each senior participating in the program in Washington D.C. received a free iPad and classes on how to use it, including tips on protecting privacy online, how to get started with social media, and how to manage and interact with the technology, especially for those with shaky hands or a phobia of pop-up windows. Many of the senior participants found that engaging with social media allowed them to get in touch with old friends, find information about their interests, and diminish loneliness and isolation. AARP and Older Adults Technology Services are running a similar class in Sioux Falls, S.D., and evaluating whether to launch it in other cities throughout the country.
Boston Students Help Low-Income Families Get Online
Students at Northeastern University have formed a partnership with Comcast to help low-income Boston residents access the Internet. Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, which offers broadband access for $9.95 a month to any family with a child who qualifies for free lunch, recently marked its third anniversary, and has helped a million people across the country get online. As a part of the program, low-income families can purchase a computer for less than $150. In the coming year, Northeastern students will staff digital literacy training programs, and Comcast will publicize its low-income broadband access program throughout Boston.