Last week, our Hardware Friday workshop was a bit weird: Family Night was over, but this was still session one, and on Monday (5/11) started a new four-week session. Despite this weird place, something wonderful happened.
Miriam, Kenwood’s librarian, had another engagement to attend and Amy, Kenwood’s volunteer coordinator who had recently begun working with us, was focusing that day on making some last-minute communications with parents to resolve over-booking conflicts for session two. So after snack and recess, I was pretty much flying solo (Amy was present, and I knew I could interrupt her, but I wanted to keep that to a minimum).
Let’s fast-forward a bit. About halfway through our work time, Miriam came to the library to check in with me. She asked how it had been going, and I said, “Great!” I opened my hands to show her the room, and continued, “They’re all hard at work – those two are working on interview videos, those four are building another zoo with the Duplo blocks, a few are working on LEGO robots, and a few more are out in the hall racing skeletal cars and shooting video of it.”
“Cool,” Miriam said with a nod. “How did check-in go?”
“Pretty good, we came in from recess and got right to it, then got to work.”
I realized that I had unconsciously elided over what is usually the hardest part of Tech Time: transitioning from outside recess, through check-in, to the day’s work. Typically, this can only be accomplished by calling for “voices off, eyes on me” several times, but I was struggling to remember when specifically I had to – no, that couldn’t be right.
I stopped and looked back at the workshop with new eyes for a few seconds before answering Miriam. “Really good, actually,” I said with a slightly quizzical look. “I mean, we came in from recess, I said to sit down in a circle for check-in, and then I had to look at something for Amy but they actually waited patiently and mostly quietly while I did that. At the time, I was just like, ‘Thank the stars!’ But then check-in went well, too. And then I realized that I had to go get the LEGO robots, and set up with the interviewers, and get the Duplo blocks down, and get the tools out in case anyone wanted to take apart a computer or small electronics. So I told them to wait patiently while I did all that – and they actually did. And then – well, see for yourself. It’s been like this since then.”
Miriam and I contemplated this in silence for a moment. “You know,” I said after a few seconds, “we talk all the time about establishing a Tech Time culture, and how to do that, to help ease the transitions and keep order and stuff. But today, for the first time, I really feel like we have arrived. Like, this – exactly this – a bunch of kids working in groups of various sizes, all on their own chosen projects, setting their own goals – this is what I want. This was my flight-of-fancy dream goal when we overhauled the structure for fourth quarter, and it paid off in four weeks. Wow.” Miriam nodded and said something in agreement that I don’t remember, because I was kind of on a cloud just taking a minute to bask in this moment.
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