Project Invent and Every Student As An Innovator

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Alright, let’s jump in. You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Shani, and today I’m joined by a few special guests from Project Invent, Design Thinking and Invention programs to empower every student as an innovator. Jordan Moreno is Partnerships and Recruitment Manager at Project Invent.

Alexis Lopez is an educator and fellow for Project Invent. An angel is joining us as a student who recently participated in a Project Invent cohort. Hey all, thanks so much for joining us today. How is everyone? Hey, Shani.

So excited to be here with you. So excited to have you all. Alexis and Angel, so great to see you. Jordan, you’re the Partnerships and Recruitment Manager for Project Invent. How did you hear about Project Invent and what stood out to you?

I have been with Project Invent for about 14 months now, so I just had my one-year anniversary, and I remember a year ago it was the heat of quarantine, and I was looking for an opportunity to make an impact, especially in the education system, which was hurting more than many other industries at the time. And I saw a job posting for Project Invent, and it had these words like design thinking

and invention and community partnership and local impact. And I think at the time, the thing that Project Invent really tries to do is let every high school student know that they can make a difference in their community. And that was really important for students in the context of virtual learning. Being in a virtual classroom and at the same time hearing on the news the world is ending

and there’s climate change and there’s a global pandemic and all of these things. I was looking for a way to start to change that narrative, and Project Invent was a great way to do that, and that’s really what we try to do every day, is give students opportunities to apply their learning in ways that really matters, solve problems that they can see, that they are impacted by personally, and start to come to terms with the fact of the

world is designed, it’s designed around me, and I can be part of that. I can design the world around me how I want it to be, and I don’t have to wait until I’m in college or until I’m a professional. And in fact, this year we’re actually expanding Project Invent to middle school for the first time.

So we’re going to have kids ages 11 to 18 designing technology to positively impact their communities, which was a really powerful thing during COVID and still now continues to be. And Angel and Alexis are great examples of that. Yeah, you’ve been there 14 months, which I’m sure it seems like a short time, or maybe a long time, especially since you did it during quarantine.

But I’m sure you’ve already felt maybe so many impact that you’ve been wanting to make. What is some of the impact you’ve been able to achieve thus far with Project Invent? This year we are in about 65 school sites. So sometimes it’s a high school, sometimes it’s a community center like Alexis and Angel are calling in from.

And in each of those communities, they’re addressing all different kinds of challenges. So we just had our big pitch events. They’re kind of shark-tinky, but a lot kinder. And we had students pitching. And Angel and Alexis will tell you about theirs, but we had things like one team of students

worked with a man living with MS in their community who was a guitarist, but he was losing mobility in his fingers and they built him a device to help him maintain control and dexterity around the guitar. So that was a really local problem that they addressed. Then we have students thinking about forest fires.

How are we supporting our fire safety professionals with the technology that we can build in our high school classroom? So again, that’s like a much bigger and wider reaching problem. So the impact across the board is that students are identifying passions that maybe they knew about, maybe they didn’t know about, and they’re going to carry that passion forward and direct

their energy towards, direct their energy and their talents towards making the world a better place. And that’s the kind of the mindset we hope that they leave the program with and take that into college and into their careers. Yeah.

And Alexis, you’re like boots on the ground with the students every day helping to push those passions. And even the midst of all that’s going on, you still signed up and said, I’ll do it. I’ll add one more thing. So it must have been something very important to you.

But first, I want to understand, how did you even find your way to education and how did you get into this innovative space to want to be involved with Project Invent? Yeah. So I kind of started out my educational journey when I was doing my undergraduate degree. I had a really interesting work study opportunity that I had put in front of me with a local

STEM after school nonprofit in Baltimore. So kind of twice a week, I started doing STEM teaching assistant at a classroom in Baltimore. And it was my first kind of introduction to working with youth with an under resourced or underserved community. So being in that role and developing relationships with the kids in the program taught me so

much and really opened my eyes up to the viability of neighborhood or local STEM programming in an after school enrichment environment and also really kind of injected me with so much passion and ability to kind of understand how much of an impact a positive adult mentoring relationship can have on a young person. So while I was there, I was working with fifth and sixth graders, and we were doing all sorts

of fun STEM projects. And we were kind of picking them up directly after school, walking a block or two to our community space and had them there until kind of late in the evening when they got picked up by their parents. And I saw, I started to see so many different things happening around me in this after school

environment. And I started to think, what could we be doing better as educators and as community leaders? How can we elevate these programs and really reach more students and reach them better and maintain and build better relationships? So I started seeing these different things and got really excited about the opportunity

to bring STEM education into my career path. At the time, I was studying biophysics and mathematics, and I kind of was in between these two, do I get a PhD? Do I get a master’s? Do I just go into industry and find something else that kind of works alongside that?

And doing STEM education really fit that niche for me, because I always had a really strong desire to teach and be an educator. So that’s kind of what started. And then I kind of meandered my way along. I was a fellow at a game design company for young girls for a period of time, which was

super fun. I also was an informal educator at a science museum that was for children. And then kind of on that same route, I found this position here at the Gold Crown Best Byteam Tech Center and really thought that this was an interesting and exciting thing to partake in.

And now being at Gold Crown, I’m actually the College and Career Readiness Coordinator, but still about two to three days a week, I’m in our clubhouse maker space doing projects, having fun. Angel actually comes in and he has a kind of entrepreneurial project he’s working on where he’s designing t-shirts with our Adobe Illustrator programs, actually building those designs and

then printing them out at our final cutter and making products for him to sell. So just kind of an example of the entrepreneurial mindset we get in all the time with our young people. And then aside from that, we have the C2C program that we run here, and that’s where Project Invent fits in.

So we have a cohort of 16 to 21 year olds, and we’ve got about 20 this year. And a select group of those sign up to be part of the Project Invent team. And this year we had seven Project Invent team members, Angel being one of them. So that’s kind of the long story short of how I kind of got to be here today. Yeah, no, I love when teachers go on like similar pathways as students because it helps for them

to understand a student’s journey as they’re navigating their way through their educational space. And so it’s just really helpful when the teachers can relate and you’ve had such a variety of experiences, which I’m sure has helped with the confidence of being in the innovative space, but still doesn’t necessarily make you maybe feel like an

expert in that you’re still kind of learning every day. So how did you overcome that hurdle? What were some of the strategies that you were able to, I guess, kind of learn for teachers who maybe aren’t comfortable in that space, but want to go out and be part of innovative things? Innovation doesn’t know any boundaries.

So whether you have a background in social studies, English language, arts or anything within STEM, it is a really great opportunity and bringing innovation into your classroom is such a fun thing to do. And you don’t have to have a STEM background to be able to bring that concept to you and your practice and your students.

So one of the things that really was important to me when I came into this role and started working with Project Invent was co-learning. So coming in and saying, yes, I know a little bit of Python. I know a little bit about microcontrollers. I kind of have a basic understanding of circuitry, but here’s what I can do.

Here’s my base knowledge. Where are you at as a student? What do you want to learn? And let’s figure out a path to get to that really amazing product engineering design process that we want to provide for all of the youth in our programs.

So with that kind of framework in mind, you’re really able to step in as a mentor and as a teacher and educator and guide students along a path where you’re learning along with them. And that has so much interest and engagement on the student side, because they’re really able to connect with educators in a way that is a little bit different from the traditional classroom and really provides a strong basis for developing relationships with students.

And so many of our youth are kind of craving relationships at this time because we’ve had such a separation into the virtual education sphere. So being able to help them learn through a relationship is super important. And so many students love to learn in a social environment as well. And Project Invent provides so much of that.

So kind of jumping into the, I would guess maybe to address the hurdles. So this year was particularly challenging because I had some students come in who were solid works experts. And then I had some students come in who had kind of no baseline knowledge of any kind of the technology that we were going to be using.

So I had to really find a level playing field for all of our students to really learn and gain something, develop their teamwork skills, communication skills. So I would say one of the biggest things this year was I kind of had a lot of students coming in with greater knowledge than me in many areas and also kind of managing how they can mentor some of the other students who don’t have knowledge in those content areas.

And also communicating the benefit of them mentoring students and communicating the benefit also of how, yeah, they might be an expert in this area. But have you ever thought about programming with Python in this area and still finding ways that they can be active learners and engage with the project and not feel like it is below them in a way or not feel like it is kind of a busy work sort of task.

So that was a really fun challenge that I had to overcome this year. And I think we did a really interesting job with all of the youth and they all kind of gained new technology skills in different areas, which was really exciting. We’ll be back to the podcast in just a second. But for now, we want to talk about teachers to better amplify the voices of teachers in our

community. The Getting Smart team has drafted a teacher pledge, which you can find in the show notes. We encourage all educators to record themselves reading this pledge and then send it to me, Mason at gettingsmart.com. For each recording we receive, we’ll add it to an upcoming podcast episode. Now more than ever, it’s important to highlight the essential and profound commitment that educators make to young people each and every day.

Let’s listen to today’s pledge. Hi, my name is Rachelle Dene-Poth and I am a teacher. If the children are to be well, it starts with me. Not me alone, but a whole community. I’m only a voice, one advocate, one protector, one guide.

I cannot do it alone. I need others by my side. Children are the future. Their success and failures affect us all. By committing to serve all kids, not some kids, but all kids, we will rise again from this never-ending fall of education, of the same education, of choosing who can and can’t learn, who should or shouldn’t earn based on their zip code, their race, their diversity, their life.

We say all kids can learn. The ones that catch on easy, the ones who struggle to read and write. I am a teacher. I repeat, I am a teacher. I don’t pick and choose the kids who I get to teach. I pledge to be committed to the students that walk through my doors and I will serve them no matter how far the reach. I pledge to see all the differences in my students and celebrate each and every one.

I pledge to instill pride in who they are and help them see who they will become. I pledge to stand up for them and show up when they’re in need. I pledge to march with them hand in hand, let my actions be what they see. I pledge to make learning come alive and give them experiences they’ll never forget. I pledge to make learning not feel like a solo act, but always a duet.

I pledge to know what my students want to be and treat them with care. I pledge to nurture the whole child and not just a body in a chair. I pledge to be a teacher for that’s what I am and will always be. I am a teacher and learning isn’t about me, but we. Interesting.

Angel, how did that feel for you as a student, for your teacher just be like, look, I don’t know, but I’m going to learn alongside you. How did that how did that make you feel? To be honest, hearing it from a teacher is like, OK, so what’s next, right? So if you don’t know, I don’t know, how do we move on from not knowing to knowing?

And I think that was what really formed that relationship between a mentor and a mentee, right? So I came into Project Invent not knowing anything technical about programming, engineering, and all those STEM aspects, right? I mostly focused on business, finance, and going into Project Invent, it was like stepping out of that comfort zone and saying, Alright, I learned solid works and you said you don’t know, so let’s learn this together, right? And just having that mentor learning with you is like, hey, I’m stuck on this, I’m stuck on this too, let’s work through it and find a solution, right?

So I think it was like having a friend more than a teacher, right? Like working towards the next step instead of saying, oh, I’m here, try getting up here type of stuff. Angel, I love all that you’re saying, just that collaboration between the mentor and the mentee, the teacher, the student, it’s really what we want teaching to be and you’ve just captured it. If I don’t know and you don’t know, how do we get to learning?

How do we get to knowing? It’s just so powerful and that relationship doesn’t stop there. You’ve also, Angel, been able to kind of take it out into the community and partner with others in your community to create kind of this ecosystem of learning. And so for you, Angel, what has been the benefit of that community based learning? And how have you been able to bring that into your project head project event?

Yeah, so starting off, it’s been kind of, you know, I came here by myself and I met new people from different high schools and, you know, we all saw a common need and knowing that we all have, whether that’s technical aspects and knowing some of the things that we’re doing. And so we’re all working on something and not knowing something. We can find a solution together, right? So it goes back to that collaboration. And we got to collaborate with the Denver Children’s Hospital here in Colorado, or Colorado Children’s Hospital.

And it was, honestly, it was really great and amazing being able to work with a hospital that focuses on kids, right? We’re still technically kids and, you know, seeing their needs and finding a way to address them is something we can stand behind and we can say, you know what? I know what it’s like. Some people know what it’s like. And let’s find a solution and solve it, right? It was pretty cool partnering with their learning center, especially the therapy center. So as I was growing up, I had speech therapy issues and I hated it, you know, therapy, right?

And so because of COVID, everything went online. And so we had to find a solution to make it easier, not only for teachers, but also for the students and have them engage and participate and actually enjoy it. And so our therapy that we were focusing on was Dilexia. So, you know, finding a solution is simply just making it easier for teachers, educators, and, you know, the students themselves to enjoy the therapy and learn something, whether that’s remote. I think that made a difference in those who really need it in our community.

And Alexis, I want to come to you to hear about the community-based benefits as well. But before I do that, I want to ask you, Angel, there’s probably no way you can go work with children in a hospital and not feel changed internally. So I really want to know, how has this experience changed you? That’s a really deep question. It’s a great question. You know, it starts off by stepping out of that comfort zone and, you know, I’m not the best with children.

And I was always like, oh, these kids are younger and they don’t understand what I’m doing. But I was surprised. Many of them were extremely smart. I would say probably even smarter than me. And the fact that, you know, you see them struggle in something, you were like, I’ve been in your shoes in this aspect or that. And like, you shouldn’t have to go through this.

Yeah, it’s part of life. But if I can make it easier for you, I’m going to try it, right? And I think that’s why we, you know, through all the adversity, we stayed resilient throughout it. The engineering group and I, because, you know, there were situations in which we were, oh, let’s do this instead of this. But if we can really make that difference, I think that’s worth going the extra step and finishing it. Okay, Alexis, now I understand why you signed up to say, okay, I’m doing this. I’m taking this back to my class.

And as you see Angel doing this amazing thing in the community and your other students, what has been the benefit of that community based learning from your perspective? I think community based learning has so many benefits. But one of the really big things that I’ve seen impact our students so deeply is how they’re able to cultivate empathy for other people. A lot of folks can come in and really have a lot of challenges in their own life and in their own community and can really get bogged down by those challenges that they’re seeing in their own life. But when they come in our doors and we work on project and event together and interface with our community partner and understand their challenges and their needs,

a lot of those other individual challenges are kind of, I wouldn’t say go away, but are validated in many ways in that they see and understand other people are also going through it. Young people say, so I think it really opens up their eyes and is able to help them understand that even though they are facing such big challenges outside of these walls, they’re still able to come in and make a difference in their community for other people who are facing different challenges. And it builds so much emotional intelligence as well. I think one of the things that I’ve seen over the last school year with our students is folks like Angel are coming in and their awareness, their situational awareness and their emotional intelligence have really improved and strengthened since being able to empathize with users,

understand how to integrate feedback into their work and also gathering feedback and communicating very deeply with their own team members as well. There has been so much personal growth in that area. So I would say from the student side, those are some of the biggest benefits, but it also just means so much to be able to connect with other people in our community and see what work they’re doing and they can see what work we’re doing and we can collaborate and elevate our students to get the best possible opportunities and also connect other members in our community who want to work with these kids. Jennifer, who we started the partnership with with Children’s Hospital Colorado for our community partnership piece of our project and vent team, she found us through her son’s basketball game. We had actually come to our facility many, many times of the years and just happened to find our clubhouse in the back one day. So she sent me a cold email and said she was really excited to learn about our career program.

And she has so many wonderful people on her team who are interested in learning more. And it just sparked so much joy between us because she was really able to find something she felt passionate about and supporting in her community. And she felt we were really passionate about trying to help her and her team find new ways to improve some of their learning services. So it was really such a big win win on a partnership level. And I know Jordan, you probably see that a lot as well with so many different partnerships that come in with project and vent. So it was really great, not only from the student development perspective, but also to give back to our community and to collaborate with really amazing people. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing about those essential skills that students have been able to develop and sometimes they can’t name them. But when, when we’re able to see them and articulate them, I think it’s really, really important. And, um, Angel, you, you felt that you felt that empathy that collaboration that those you building that problem solving muscle with your team, but I’m also going to say that maybe it has increased your confidence as well.

Just on the project and then website, it says that 91% of students who participate built an increase sense of confidence as a result of being in the program. Angel, is that true? Can you, can you tell us about maybe how your confidence was able to increase as a result of this program? Yeah. So if it wasn’t true, I probably wouldn’t be doing this right now. But yeah, as you can see, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of what helps you grow in the way that confidence with talking to community partners, stepping into the Children’s Hospital, talking to patients, talking to kids in your clubhouse that are younger than you or older than you. And, you know, talking to your mentors, the fellowships, it all requires a percentage of confidence. And once you, you know, you feel that ambitious ambition to become more confident, you feel unstoppable. Right. And I thought that way through our project, right. So we made this actual tool that can actually make a difference in our community and in our world. You feel like, I what else can I do, right?

Like, what’s next? I want to do something else. There’s more problems and honestly, confidence, confidence boost is there. And I’ll do another run next year to get more. How many people is contagious? Yeah. And just to chime in, I know Angel doesn’t want to to his own horn, but since doing kind of project invent and getting involved in the clubhouse, he keeps hitting me up every couple of weeks with a new business idea, and a new engineering product idea that he has and he’s so excited to be able to pursue those and it just really I’ve seen so much spark in him since doing this project and he won’t probably say it himself but he’s really a budding entrepreneur and starting to really do so many wonderful things with his mind and how he can kind of build up businesses to create solutions everywhere. And I think you came to me a couple of weeks ago, he works with his dad and a car dealership and just texted me in the middle and I was like, Alexis, I have this amazing idea. My dad is having all of these issues tracking cars in our parking lot, and I have an idea for how to build a solution.

So it’s been really cool seeing that energy come out of this project. Yeah, I love that how Angel how your mind is consistently like prototyping and have you have the entrepreneurial mindset and I mean, that’s so grazed. We really foster curiosity in younger students and then sometimes as students get older they forget how to imagine and be curious so I love that project invent gets them the space to do that and even for you Alexis I’m sure it’s giving you the space to start to be creative again and I’m curious how did you even hear about the project event fellowship like can you walk us through that what like what the fellowship is. Sure, yeah, so I was actually introduced to project invent through our umbrella organization the clubhouse network, which kind of works in conjunction with the best by foundation. So project event, I think, was tied to our organization through some of our leadership, kind of at a higher level.

And I think Connie actually met Connie the project event founder actually met with my director a couple years back at a conference and my director was just absolutely blown away at the work that she was doing with project invent. So that was kind of the initial introduction, and then about a year and a half ago. So at the beginning of the 2020 fall semester, we were selected to kind of work with project invent through these two organizations best by foundation and the clubhouse network. And we started off that relationship with really a little bit of actually let me back up a little bit. We started off by really getting to know a lot of the team members. And my coordinator colleague actually did the fellowship the previous year and he went through all of the summer training and got to meet a lot of interesting people across the country. And he absolutely loved it. So with his feedback in mind, we were really excited to jump on the opportunity. So I kind of found the fellowship in a little bit of a different way than many other educators, but it has been an exciting and really fun time, nonetheless. So with the fellowship comes a lot of kind of a summer intensive training, professional development course, or time that you’re able to really dedicate to learning how project invent works and how it can work for you and your students.

So that was a really fun and engaging opportunity. And then throughout the time that I’ve done project invent, I’ve had the really cool opportunity to see its growth and see how big your team is kind of growing and getting new awesome team members. So I’ve been able to see how much the organization has changed in a really cool and exciting way. So I would say the fellowship for me is really kind of hinged upon connecting with the team at project invent. And they’re really wonderful and supportive in any way they can. They have done a lot of really cool initiatives this year like office hours, for example, there’s a lot more resources for educators there to be able to pull up. And so it’s really a lot of, you know, our Arduino code, for example, and prototyping resources. And the curriculum is really expansive as well. And it provides a lot of flexibility for educators to go in and take a lot of the base of the curriculum, but also put your own individual teaching spin on it to really tailor it to your students in your community. And so I think that’s really a great way to get to the curriculum and thinking back to some of the slides on the slideshow. And they were just such a hit. I remember going through some of the design thinking challenges and slides and everything.

And I was touched with the learning process and loved the kind of steps that we took to get to the prototyping and design phase. So my fellowship experience has been really cool in that way, and that it provides a lot of flexibility for me to adjust the curriculum or learn new things and incorporate new things into our project invent team. Yeah, this, I mean, it’s obvious, all the great things that’s happening as a result of product invent and why people should get involved and Jordan, how can people get involved? Where can people go to learn more? And what’s next for project invent? Yeah, I think I’m so glad Angela and Alexis all have to share all of your stories with the team because they’ll be so excited to hear your reflections. But I think they that what they just shared as a great example of what we’re really hoping to do, which is the word invention can be scary. It sounds intense and oh, only people with PhDs and a connection to the patent office can be an inventor and that’s kind of what we’re trying to break down and break that make invention an exciting thing and accessible thing for everyone. And because we believe that any young person can be an inventor, we also believe that any teacher or educator can be an invention teacher.

So that’s what we’re trying to do. And like Alexis said, a lot of our resources, the curriculum, a lot of the design thinking activities, if you’re looking for Arduino support, we have a whole YouTube series. All of those resources are available for free online. Again, because we’re just hoping that more and more people get the chance to experience the magic of invention. If you’re an educator, whether you’re in an afterschool enrichment program, or in a high school or middle school classroom, if you’d like to join us for the whole journey which includes those things Alexis mentioned like office hours and chances for your students to present and other opportunities. We like to make it as real as and as meaningful as possible for the students of things like, hey, students go present your invention to a team of Google engineers and see what they think so that when you’re ready to go manufacture or build this thing that it’s, you know, gold. So all of those things are sort of wrapped up in the fellowship and we are actually currently accepting applications. Any educator in North America who teaches at the high school or middle school level is welcome to apply.

And if you’re accepted, you’ll join us for summer training this summer and then get started next fall. So all of that’s available at projectmen.org. All right, thank you. And I’m going to give you the last word. As we think about those students who are too afraid to walk into a product event space because they don’t feel like that the confidence or they don’t feel innovative enough are curious enough. Why should they do this? What can you say to those students to encourage them? There’s a lot of things you could say.

In simple terms, you could say just do it right. It’s something some teenagers wear on their shirts right, Nike and all that stuff. For me, it’s you either put in the work for your dreams because the dreams don’t work unless you do right. That’s what I would say. So if you want something, you kind of have to go and get it right.

And there’s no better way than starting to get those small things with all the help you can get. And that’s where going to the clubhouse or after school activities and stepping out of your comfort zone and just showing up. It gets you one step ahead and it gets you moving. And as long as you keep moving, you’ll eventually end up moving forward. Thank you. That was good and just show up.

That’s it. Start small and show up. Well, thank you to all of the guests. Angel, Alexis, Jordan for sharing about Project Invent and it’s truly been a pleasure. And we’re excited about all the great things that are happening. Good luck to all of you. Good luck, Angel, as you continue down your entrepreneurial journey. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to the Getting Smart podcast today. We want this podcast to be actionable and insightful and a great way to learn about what’s next in learning. In order to stay on the cutting edge, we need people in the field to tell us what they’re hearing, what they’re wanting and what they’re needing to learn more about. Got a topic or a guest in mind? Send your recommendations to me, Mason at GettingSmart.com. And if you like what you’re hearing, don’t forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or subscribe wherever you listen.

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