Teaching Technology: Leaving space for Learning

Recently, I was really saddened to hear of the passing of one of my favorite mentors, Cindy Zimmerman, a former technology teacher at Gateway School.   

I met Cindy in 1999, while helping build and setup a computer lab for middle school kids.  I had just finished a 4 year stint at Netscape, and I had decided to take some time off, build software to help with education, and volunteer teach programming to kids. Cindy wasn’t shy about enlisting my help. She was always enthusiastic about anything I wanted to try–even when what I tried didn’t work so well.

Cindy was the technology teacher for all the kids at Gateway. Students from 2nd grade through 8th grade were taught by Cindy at least  once a week. At lunch and after school, kids were always kids in the computer lab too.

When you think about it, it’s a pretty big ask to make a class interesting to 2nd graders and interesting to 8th graders. The kids were all at different skill levels. Some kids had computers at home, some didn’t. Some kids didn’t know how to use a mouse, while. others could touch type and make web pages. Some kids could even program in javascript.  

Cindy’s lab was always a busy place. There were lots of kids talking, moving around, and peering into each others screens. In her classes, there was usually some loose objective like: “Make a web page about your favorite California Animal” or “Distort your face using photoshop” or “Make something with Lego Mindstorms.” The objective was usually given in the beginning of class and then Cindy said,“Go!”. The objective was big enough and loose enough everyone could pour themselves into the work.

Over the years, I realized that Cindy was a master teaching kids technology. In Cindy’s classroom, it seemed all the kids would be engaged. Looking into the lab, it would be chaotic.   Cindy didn’t teach using the usual mechanisms (like curriculum and lecture), but her methodology was brilliant.

Reading this, you might think that Cindy was just some kind of tech genius, but she it wasn’t that. Cindy’s magic came from somewhere else entirely.  Most importantly, she setting up the lab as a place of “Learning” not a place of “Teaching”. “Teaching” is about curriculum and process. “Learning” is about environment  and curiosity.

Cindy’s lab had a set of rules that ensured a  great learning environment. In her honor, I’m sharing some of the highlights.

Make something, don’t play something. We were learning to use computers as a tool to make other things. You could learn photoshop, you could make web pages, you could even make a game, but you couldn’t come into the lab and play a game.  

If someone asks you a question, stop what you are doing and answer it. This rule was genius. Cindy didn’t know all the answers but lots of the kids did. All the kids knew they would have questions sometime, so they ended up being really helpful to each other.

It’s ok NOT to know something. Cindy was never afraid of saying she didn’t know something. It would give a kid a chance to be the expert. How often have you heard a teacher say, “I have no idea how to do that”?.  But it worked like magic. Cindy was an expert in knowing what was possible, but she left it to the students to figure it all out and share it with each other.

Cindy showed me that leaving space for something good to happen is often much better than trying to make something happen. She taught me that learning is sometimes best when it isn’t taught, but asked instead. And most importantly Cindy showed me that you always need to feel safe in asking questions. Thank you, Cindy. I’ll miss you.