When Graduating High School Late Is a Good Thing

Leslieanne John wanted to avoid the low-performing, often dangerous high schools in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y., where she lived. But when she didn’t get accepted into any of the other schools she applied to as an eighth-grader in 2011, she decided to take a chance on a new school. Called Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-Tech for short, the school had opened in a nearby neighborhood the year before.
John found the vocational school challenging and her fellow students smart and competitive. Her father encouraged her but warned that as a young black woman hoping to enter the technology world, she had to work four times as hard as anyone else. He’d had to quit college with only a few credits to go when she was born, but he knew his daughter could make it.
John did. Besides receiving her high school diploma, graduating from P-Tech also earned her an associate’s degree in computer systems technology from the New York City College of Technology. 
“Seeing my dad’s face when the confetti dropped, that was enough for me,” she says, recalling her graduation last June. Now 20, John works in organizational development at IBM and is studying for her bachelor’s degree part-time. A lot of her middle school friends already have children; a few are incarcerated. 
P-Tech’s unique model brings together high schools, community colleges and corporate employers who collaborate on the curriculum. Fusing classroom instruction with workplace experience, the program also offers internships and mentoring. Meant to be completed in six years or less, P-Tech was designed by IBM, where nearly all graduates who do not go on to four-year colleges are first in line for any open jobs. The end goal: to provide kids from low-income communities a direct route to the middle class.

IBM’s Stan Litow (left), founder of the P-Tech model, honors Gabriel Rosa, a 2015 graduate who now designs website interfaces for IBM’s Digital Business Group.

So far, P-Tech in Brooklyn has graduated 81 students; 14 have accepted jobs from IBM, and almost all of them are pursuing their bachelor’s degrees while working. Nationally, those with only a high school education earn an average of $30,500 per year. For P-Tech graduates working at IBM, that number jumps to around $50,000, according to Stan Litow, president emeritus of the IBM Foundation and the founder of the P-Tech model. 
IBM built the program to be easily replicated by school districts in other states and around the world. The company offers online support and curriculum guidance for those interested in developing the public-private partnerships necessary to the model’s success. There are now more than 80 P-Tech schools in six states as well as in Australia and Morocco, with corporate partners in fields spanning healthcare, manufacturing and agriculture.
The 2016 graduating class gather for a photo with IBM’s Stan Litow at P-Tech in Brooklyn.

Rashid Ferrod Davis, P-Tech’s founding principal, rushes through the well-maintained hallways in a blue tracksuit, pausing only to pick up dropped paper towels on the floor. He says the hardest part of his job is going home each day, as there are many afterschool activities to attend, not to mention an education model to perfect.
He explains that a longer school day, with some teachers working an early shift and others a late shift, provides more time for freshmen to focus on English, math, and career readiness in longer blocks. It’s a cohesive curriculum — for example, a math class might include elements of writing and teach presentation and business skills.
A recent report by the College Board noted that P-Tech in Brooklyn had a completion rate four times higher than the national average for associate-degree students. More than 80 percent of its alumni are currently working toward their bachelor’s degree, compared to 55 percent of New York City students who graduate from traditional high schools. That’s good news, considering that by 2024 an estimated 16 million new jobs will be created that require at least a two-year degree.
John, who finished the six-year program in just four-and-a-half years, says P-Tech introduced her to a side of herself she didn’t know she had. “The last thing on my mind was how hard I needed to work,” she says now. “But being around peers that were also very competitive and very intelligent sort of pushed me and the rest of us to get everything done as quickly and as best as we could.”

For These Students, Gaming Isn’t a Way to Kill Time. It’s a Way to Success

It’s late one night when two teenagers — one an aloof perfectionist; the other, a troubled target of bullying — find themselves inhabiting the same strange dream. Though they’ve never met, the strangers share a heartbreaking connection: the recent death of a mutual friend. In their shared lucid dream, they walk under an indigo sky, trying to figure out where to go next while simultaneously coping with feelings of anger, sadness and fear after the loss of their friend. Soon, the teens encounter a giant lantern. It surges toward them, chasing them down a hallway and through a door.
It’s a nocturnal sequence that seems straight out of a mind-bending Charlie Kaufman movie. But the creator of this inventive world isn’t an established filmmaker; she’s Rebecca Taylor, herself a teenager living in the Bay Area. And the premise isn’t the plot of a blockbuster; it’s the basis for a video game about the stages of grief, called “Lucid,” that she’s helping develop. A high school senior, Taylor spends most weekends writing code with other young designers, storytellers and programmers at Gameheads, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to training underserved youth the foundations of video-game design.
The yearlong curriculum, targeted to those between the ages of 15 and 24, seeks to open Silicon Valley’s enormous possibilities to low-income communities just across the San Francisco Bay, says Damon Packwood, the executive director of Gameheads. “The ubiquity of computing is akin to the printing press — it changes us culturally and permanently,” he says. “But if you have just one group of people that is part of that change, it doesn’t benefit us all.”
Packwood stumbled upon the model for Gameheads while he was teaching a web design class at another organization. To get his students interested in the subject matter, he suggested designing a website around gaming. But the students wanted to cut to the chase and learn how to build games themselves. “It’s a language they already understand,” Packwood says of the young people he mentors. Interactive storytelling, he adds, “is the medium of the 21st century.” By switching the focus of his class to video-game design, he found it was much easier to get kids excited about technology.
[ph]
That unique focus makes Gameheads, which currently serves about 60 students, the only tech boot camp of its kind in the Bay Area. While most other programs prioritize software development, an in-demand skill set to be sure, Packwood believes putting all the emphasis on what’s job-worthy is misplaced. Gameheads, on the other hand, is open to a wider range of roles, welcoming animators and sound engineers alongside programmers.
Since most of the Gameheads attendees are still in high school, Packwood says his main goal is seeing his students go to college. He has helped Taylor and the other students apply for financial aid, draft college essays and figure out where to enroll. (For her part, Taylor is readying applications to several schools in the University of California system and plans to study computer science once there.) And after they obtain their degree, about half of the grads consider joining the industry — a possibility many hadn’t considered before their time in Gameheads.
Taylor once suspected that because she didn’t have an “in,” she wouldn’t ever be considered as a serious job candidate by game studios. (One look at classic cult movies like “WarGames,” “Tron” and “The Last Starfighter” reveals why: White men predominate in the popular imagery of who creates electronic entertainment.) “I didn’t think it was possible,” says Taylor. But after working with Packwood and other mentors, who come from Sledgehammer, Ubisoft and other studios, her views changed. “I don’t really see it as much of a daunting task, only because a lot of my mentors are actually people of color who work in the game industry,” she says. “It seems very possible now.”
Just as Packwood had hoped — and predicted — the games being crafted by such a diverse population of young people defy genre. Teens like Taylor, whose gaming interests aren’t necessarily represented on Best Buy’s shelves, are more interested in playing “Life Is Strange,” an adventure about a high school girl who can rewind time, than first-person shooter games. “I think the industry has had enough of ‘Halo’ and ‘Call of Duty.’ They need something fresh and original, something that’s meaningful,” she says.
Taylor hopes “Lucid” is that type of game. By design, it necessitates two characters, so that one person can’t play it alone. The two players have to work through the grieving process together, like an interactive therapy. (When Packwood first heard the premise, he asked who gave the group the idea; it came from their own experiences, they told him.) “When I see friends of mine that are going through grief, they shut themselves out of the world. So why not have people try to get over it together?” Taylor asks. “I want people to know that games are more than just something you do when you’re bored. Games actually have the potential to save a life, maybe.”
Like Packwood and his cohort know, most successful game developers are the ones who can build new worlds. At Gameheads, he’s helping his students do just that: They’re carving out a space, both on their computers and in Silicon Valley.

Homepage photo of Gameheads participants courtesy of TJ Ransom

______

This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
 
 

This Millennial Is on a Mission to Unleash the Next Generation of Techies

In the next four years, economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the country will add more than 1.4 million new technology jobs. Yet, based on current graduation rates, there will be only 400,000 computer science majors to fill those jobs. NationSwell Council member Jessica Santana sees that gap as an opportunity for the 1 million children who attend public school in New York City. At the nonprofit she co-founded, New York on Tech (NYOT), students from more than high schools (and counting) learn the digital skills employers desire. NationSwell spoke with Santana, herself a product of the city’s public-school system who has worked in the tech industry, about how the next generation can diversify tech’s booming business.

What’s on New York on Tech’s curriculum?
From September through June, the program provides about 152 hours of training, which consists of markup and programming languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python. But we also realize that not every student wants to be an engineer, so they learn about project management, quality assurance, digital media — all these different career opportunities. Afterward, our students get the opportunity to do paid internships over the summer with some of our corporate partners; this year, those included The Bank of New York Mellon and Warby Parker. They get to apply their new skills in a way that’s professional, in a way that gives them the social capital to keep on getting internships after the experience.

About 85 percent of the tech workforce is white or Asian, and 74 percent are male. Do the students you meet express that they don’t see role models in tech?
At the beginning of our program, we survey how many students know somebody in the industry or participate in a technology extracurricular program. Last year, about 90 percent said that New York on Tech was the first time they ever did anything technology-related as an extracurricular program. For many, they’re the first [in their family] to go to college. There’s a huge disconnect in where they can access career advice. So while they don’t formally say they lack mentors, the information we collect shows they do.

On the other hand, it’s also important to know that some students in our program don’t realize they are the only African-Americans and Latinos in technology. We intentionally place mentors of color from diverse backgrounds into their lives, so they won’t feel alone in their journey. If we come from the school of thought that they can’t be what they can’t see, then it’s our job to make sure that we recruit mentors intentionally.

Only 1 percent of New York City students are receiving computer science education. How should public schools be teaching the material?
There’s an opportunity for schools to explore how they teach 21st-century skills outside the actual computer science curriculum. To be a real technologist, what’s currently being offered [in computer science classes] in under-resourced schools is insufficient to move the needle on diversity in the tech workforce. Schools need to ask themselves whether their lessons are industry-aligned, that they’re actually going to prepare students for jobs, as opposed to just meeting educational standards.

Tech is so often associated with Silicon Valley. How does New York’s scene, on the other coast, differ?
The biggest difference between the valley and here is that New York City has diversity. Over there, it’s very homogenous. But here, there are so many pockets of diverse talent that can be employed. Most of the engineering departments stay in Silicon Valley, so you’ll notice there are a lot of opportunities in New York in sales, media and business development, a lot of non-technical jobs, too. It’s not the biggest industry yet in New York. Do I think it has the potential to get there? I’m not sure, to be honest. FinTech (or financial technology) is huge here, and we’re seeing a move toward tech in fashion and food as well.

Jessica Santana, with her mother, at their local Univision station, where Jessica anchors a segment on technology.

How did you personally get involved in this work?
I’ve always been a technologist. I got a MacBook in eighth grade through PowerMyLearning, which was founded by fellow NationSwell Council member Elisabeth Stock. My parents were very strict. When my friends couldn’t come over, it was me and my computer. Having access to that first computer ignited a curiosity in me that wouldn’t have been possible for my friends, who didn’t have machines of their own.

I was a first-generation college student. As soon as I graduated with a master’s in information technology and started working in the industry, I was making four times my parents’ household income. When I realized that, in one year, I was going to make what my parents were making combined in four years, I asked myself, “How did I get here?” That question quickly became, “How do I get others here?” Because going into a technical program was an avenue out of poverty for me. I see how transformative it is for students, who came from communities like mine, to have these skills.

Was it tough for you to break into the tech industry?
When I was still working in the industry proper, as a technology consultant, I learned that the things that made me different made me powerful. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. Oftentimes, I was the only woman, the only person of color, the only woman of color. As I matured, I started owning that difference: the fact that I was a Latina with curly hair and an accent who wouldn’t let those things stand in my way.

What are you most proud of having accomplished?
To this day, the greatest thing I’ve accomplished, honestly, is graduating from high school. Then being able to go to a four-year college completely transformed the way I saw opportunity, the way I set goals, the way I thought about business and the way I saw myself as a global citizen.

Forget Outsourcing. This Nonprofit Trains Domestic IT Personnel For Free

Most of you probably know what it is like to call for tech assistance and be transferred to a person in another country. Even though the representative on the phone is helpful, the language barrier can be difficult and frustrating.
While jobs in technology are high paying, skill-based and needed by more and more companies, many of them have been outsourced for years — ultimately, making life more difficult for the customer, while drastically cutting costs for the company. However, some businesses are becoming dissatisfied with overseas staff and are beginning to reverse that trend. Jobs are migrating back to the U.S., opening room for domestic staff.
Where there’s a demand, there needs to be a supply, and that’s the mission of the nonprofit Per Scholas. As more and more IT jobs are coming back to the U.S., Per Scholas is offering free IT training for minority and low-income adults.
It all started in New York City in 1995 and has since spread to Dallas, the Washington D.C. area, Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio. The schooling is free and most of the students who take the classes are either unemployed or working part-time, so the promise of a reliable career outweighs the training, which is unpaid.
Students can enroll in one of three main tracks. The first is a 13 week class that sets them on the path to working at a help desk. Upon completion of the course, students will be equipped with industry-ready credentials. A second option is to become a network administrator. Slightly more time consuming, this course spans 18 weeks in length. The shortest of the three is only eight weeks long and prepares students for software testing.
Over the past 19 years, Per Scholas has expanded into areas beyond New York, and helps, on average, about 80 students in each city each year. The company continues to look for areas in which to expand based on three determining factors: (1) the ready availability of IT jobs in the area; (2) if there are already other similar companies in the city; and (3) if there are enough available funds through donations and government grants to function for three years.
This is a big year for Per Scholas, as it will be starting a partnership with Doran Jones, an IT consulting firm. Through it, a new Bronx office will now be training 150 IT testers.
Despite all of this success, Per Scholas is not keeping it all to itself. The company encourages other nonprofits and cities to adopt similar practices and offers three key steps.
1. Form your solutions and practices based on the employers’ hiring and training needs.
2. Involve stakeholders from the non-profit, government, private sector and community organizations in the process. Make sure they are ready to play a part.
3.  Creativity and flexibility are key. Search everywhere and everything to find potential students.
As Per Scholas works to boost American jobs and improve the lives of hundreds, Executive Director Angie Kamath describes their work in the most basic terms to Next City. To her, the organization, “symbolizes the impact of a profitable business model that changes the face of a low-income community and gives low-income individuals access to the middle class.”
Not bad for a small nonprofit competing with the global workforce.
MORE: Can Google Crack the Code for More Female Computer Scientists?

This Program Shares Its Wisdom About Producing Minority Ph.D. Science Students

It goes without saying that the folks at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) know a thing or two about supporting and encouraging minority and low-income undergraduate students in continuing their studies and earning science Ph.D.s.
Impressively, over the past two decades, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC has produced 900 graduates who have gone on to rack up 423 advanced science degrees and 107 medical degrees.
Compare that to Penn State, which was recently named one of the top 40 schools for educating black students who eventually earned advanced science degrees. Despite the recognition, the public university earned that status by producing just four (!) degrees earned by black science students out of about 3,000 STEM students total.
“The data is shocking,” Penn State Chemistry professor Mary Beth Williams told Jeffrey Mervis of Science Insider. “Clearly we have to do a better job.”
So the people behind UMBC’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars Program will mentor faculty and staff at Penn State and the University of North Carolina in an attempt to increase the number of minority students enrolled in science Ph.D. programs. Over five years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will dedicate $7.75 million to the effort.
Clearly, UMBC has figured out a formula that keeps minority and low-income students on track to become scientists: Close monitoring of academic progress, a summer program for incoming freshmen, scholarships, research opportunities, and a close cohort of talented students who foster a sense of teamwork with each other. Its current four-year class of Meyerhoff Scholars includes 300 students, 60 percent of which are underrepresented minorities.
Williams said she plans to study these lessons carefully in the program’s implementation at Penn State. “My goal is to clone it as much as possible. It’s been successful for 25 years, so why mess with it? The more you change, the more you’re inviting failure.”
The president of UMBC, Freeman Hrabowski, is proud of how the scholars program has grown from its initial class of 19 African-American male science students in 1989. “What Meyerhoff has done is get us to think about our responsibility to students who say they want a STEM degree,” he told Mervis. “And what helps underrepresented minorities will also help the rest of our students.”
MORE: When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
Correction: June 5, 2014
A previous version of this post misstated the funding for this program. It is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, not the UMBC.

This Woman Proves You Don’t Have to Be A Hoodie-Wearing Male to Make It in Today’s Tech World

When Angela Benton, CEO of Black Web Media, looked around Silicon Valley, she didn’t see many faces like her own. Statistics support her observation: A survey of 150 Silicon Valley companies by the law firm Fenwick & West found that almost half of them had no female executives.
Benton would look around at the tech companies she was working for and think, “Wow, I am the only African American and the only woman in my department. It just can’t be only me!” she told Myeisha Essex of the Chicago Defender. Seeing the lack of diversity drove this 32-year-old African-American coder and entrepreneur to start Black Web 2.0 and the NewMe Accelerator.
Through Black Web 2.0, a website Benton launched along with Markus Robinson in 2007, she keeps others informed about African-Americans involved in technology and new media companies, with the goal of making people interested in these fields feel less alone. NewMe, an accelerator founded in 2011, helps women and minority entrepreneurs find the mentorship and capital needed to start new businesses. So far, NewMe has helped raise $12.9 million for the start-ups it works with.
“There are great entrepreneurs who don’t necessarily look like the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world,” Benton told Essex. “I don’t think the [tech world] is behind necessarily, I think they are working on patterns. So if everyone who is successful looks like Mark Zuckerberg, they are going to continue to fund and support more things that are like that. What a lot of people think, especially when they think about entrepreneurship, it’s very risky. When you start to talk about investors and capital, people are investing in things that are most likely to succeed. So when they are doing that they are taking notes from other things that have been successful. So it’s really like this self-perpetuating problem, at least until we really break through.”
MORE: These Girls Had Little Chance of Becoming Scientists, Until They Connected With An Innovator Who’s Improving Their Odds