Liberatory Learning with the Maker Educator Network

Maker Ed aims to transform an intentional system of inequity that plagues schooling and outcomes for learners in the United States. The formal education system in this country is rooted in a culture of racism, oppression, carceral logic, and white supremacy that prioritizes compliance and academic knowledge acquisition over identity development, social-emotional learning, and the building of critical consciousness. These roots result in a violent erasure and silencing of folks from traditionally marginalized communities, particularly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). In practice, this inequity shows up in obvious and insidious ways. BIPOC educators are paid less than white educators in early employment. There is a lack of access to meaningful professional development (PD) experiences that center BIPOC voices and narratives. BIPOC educators leave the field in disproportionate numbers to their white counterparts, leading to a near-universal sense of isolation. These gaps in resources and experiences disproportionately affect BIPOC communities and thus further widen opportunity gaps, lifetime earning potential, and other disparities. 

Moreover, there continues to be a lack of support for BIPOC educators who strive to shift their approaches away from the conventional models on which this oppressive system was built. For learning to transform, educators cannot teach to the tests that are not written for or about their BIPOC learners, or that demand assimilation into whiteness. There is a need for PD that centers BIPOC narratives, grows learners’ cognitive capacities, and which honors embodied ways of knowing and learning. Research has shown that learners better engage with and comprehend concepts and content when their bodies are moving. When learners use their bodies with their minds, knowledge retention is 15 times higher than if they’re not. Liberatory, maker-centered learning is more likely to result in the development of skills such as collaboration and problem-solving. Learning environments that embrace making nurture the dispositions, grow the skills, and celebrate the assets of our learners. These spaces foster joy and empathy as well as imagination and a sense of justice. With greater engagement and knowledge retention, learners are more likely to be connected and committed to their own communities, which is the key to our collective liberation from cycles of oppression.

We know that through a focus on unlearning harmful ethics and pedagogy (rooted in white supremacy) and developing a liberatory consciousness and pedagogy, we can shift the way learning and making happens in our communities. BIPOC educators deserve community, resources, and mentorship that celebrate the varied and meaningful experiences that inform their approaches to education. They deserve spaces that center their voices and are focused on their professional learning. They deserve opportunities which allow them to fully realize their calling in education. With such opportunities, they can more freely create joyful and rigorous learning environments for learners, who will finally see models of their own stories celebrated in the classroom.

Over the next three years, we seek to build the largest community of educators committed to hands-on learning and liberation: the Maker Educator Network. In the next five years, our community will grow from 45,000 to 1 million educators, including folks like classroom teachers and librarians; state education officials; families and learners learning at home; seasoned community college department heads and pre-service educators. The Network will include short-, mid-, and long-term opportunities for engagement, which will range from two-minute tutorials modeling activities and approaches to a 30-month commitment in train-the-trainer program for systemic change. We will offer original material and programming, crafted by our talented and passionate staff and in close collaboration and learning with partners across the country. We will create an environment–both virtually and in-person across the country, intentionally facilitated–for practitioners to share, develop, remix, and connect with one another.

Our vision is to develop a framework that maps anti-racist approaches onto hands-on learning, and to orient the growth of the Maker Educator Network with that as our compass. In both our internal and external work, we employ several pedagogical frameworks rooted in making learning more equitable, just, and liberatory. We draw heavily on the following pedagogies as we plan and execute our work with our partners and communities: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings); Culturally Responsive Pedagogies (Gay; Hammond); Anti-Bias/Anti-Racist Frameworks; The HILL Model (Muhammad); Abolitionist Teaching (Love).

Maker Ed serves and supports educators who will shift power to youth to develop their own tools necessary to build the world they deserve. We want learners from non-dominant backgrounds–especially Black, Indigenous and Youth of Color–to know their identities matter. They should see themselves in the books they read, the stories that are taught, and the scientists, engineers, explorers, and creators that we celebrate. When educators of Color don’t have the support they need to address the urgent challenges facing youth and families of Color, a nation of learners suffers. With maker-inspired practices in hand, and an unwavering commitment to justice, educators will create pathways to greater equity, agency, adaptability, and joy for learners and themselves. We believe there’s infinite opportunity for learning in the making.

We know that this approach can be a heavy lift for early career educators, so providing them with a community of support and shared resources is integral to their success. For communities of Color, making has always been a way of life and a part of learning, survival, and creating spaces to thrive. At the intersection of making and learning is where we see the creativity and brilliance of communities of color. This Network is an opportunity for BIPOC educators to reinvest in what they already know: that they and their students come with a wealth of knowledge that should be celebrated. When we invest in their growth and development, making and learning can be used to build a more just world.

Our program staff are all educators themselves–with expertise in community engagement, storytelling, applied mathematics, animation, game design, coding, robotics, 3D Modeling, VR/AR, data visualization, chemical engineering, textiles, gardening, theatre arts, cooking, quantum mechanics, healing arts, and still more. We have decades of combined experiences in facilitating educator learning experiences that are full of joy and laughter, as well as deep and visible learning. 

In our ten-year tenure we have led the field of maker education with programming and resources so educators have what they need to design environments that promote agency, equity, joy, community, and learning. Through a set of evaluation tools, we continue to learn about the important work happening in our broader community. This ongoing conversation has revealed the need for models of the maker-centered approach, access to a range of professional development opportunities that are liberatory and culturally responsive, and deeper connections across the field of practitioners.

If educators feel joy and engagement in their practice, they are more likely to make changes that bring about experiences for learners that are brimming with agency and visible learning. In our PD, we ask our educators to do the same things they ask of their students, which is to bring themselves to the work with a willingness to learn, to make mistakes, and to create with joy. We are committed to that same willingness in everything we do. We put educators in the learning seat and model facilitation techniques that promote hands-on, learner driven, and equitable experiences for learners. Our engagements always combine documentation, assessment, peer-assessment, and reflection. As we push educators to center their learners, we also center the needs of our learners–the nation’s educators. We tailor every program to the needs of the people in the room.

We need to broaden the community of input for the development of the Maker Educator Network. We have fantastic connections with educators in the field, and are always excited to make new friends who can thoughtfully share their experiences and partner with us on the design of this network.

We also know that we will benefit from technical experience of anyone who has a background in developing virtual community spaces, including membership models, open fora, and other resource-sharing platforms. We need to learn from best-practices for moderation techniques, and the technologies that will allow us to thoughtfully, bravely, justly hold virtual space with educators.

Maker education is a liberatory antidote to traditional approaches. Learners comprehend and engage with concepts more deeply when they are making. If learners use their bodies in a classroom, knowledge retention is 15x higher than if they’re seated and facing front, according to “The Promise of the Maker Movement for Education,” from the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research. With greater engagement and knowledge retention, learners are more likely to be connected and committed to their own communities. With impact like that on their learners, educators are more likely to stay in the field, and stay at their school over a longer period of time, especially within their first years of practice. At Maker Ed, we design engagements which combine experience, documentation, assessment, peer-assessment, and reflection while modeling facilitation techniques that promote hands-on, learner driven, and liberatory experiences for youth.

From our experience working with educators of Color, we know that when they have space to share successes and challenges, they build capacity to thrive with confidence in their practice. We intend to co-create with educators to unlearn and grow, be in community, share knowledge and experiences, have fun, and work towards liberation together. Our focus is on educators who are early in their careers because they are more likely to leave the profession within that time period. According to the NEA, “New teachers leave at rates between 19% and 30% over their first five years of teaching,” and educators of Color have a higher turnover rate, especially if they work with majority learners of Color. These educators will benefit most from a space that is designed specifically to support them.

With access to more resources, with a space to engage with and learn from one another, and with a series of facilitated opportunities to push their own practices, educators who work with historically-marginalized learners will level a playing field that was never designed for their success.

We anticipate growing our network from 50,000 to 1 million educators with the help of financial and operational investment from MIT Solve. Educators, or “members” will include “members at large,” who follow and engage with us on social media, with our self-directed resources, or other more unstructured elements of our programming. The network will also consist of “high-engagement” members who actively participate in our in-depth workshops, our professional learning communities, or 30-month Making Spaces program

Educators in our Network will experience liberatory, maker-centered learning in every PD experience with Maker Ed. This will lead to more educators adopting and integrating embodied learning into their practice, meaning they will use a liberatory framework as they plan and can identify how it shows up in lessons; they will involve learners in feedback or invite collaboration/ input from learners; and they will utilize making in interdisciplinary ways in their spaces.

We will design and facilitate liberatory experiences that support the development of maker-centered learning. We will know we have been successful in this when educators testify that they have developed a maker identity: they will see and connect their own funds of knowledge as ways of making; use a reflective practice and engage in an iterative cycle to improve teaching + learning; and grow their own creative confidence in designing and facilitating this kind of learning.

We will develop relationships and connections with educators and among educators. As a result, educators will explore, challenge, & learn together. They will have a larger network of support, and will more frequently ask each other for advice. Educators will pass along resources to other peers, and will joyfully celebrate each other.

We will support educators to expand the depth and breadth of integration of maker-centered learning. Educators will integrate liberatory learning into multiple content areas. Institutions will modify their practices at a systemic level, and collaborate to weave these practices across institutions and regions. Educators & organizations will be able to articulate and share their visions of maker-centered learning.

Educators in our Network will experience liberatory, maker-centered learning in every PD experience with Maker Ed. This will lead to more educators adopting and integrating embodied learning into their practice, meaning they will use a liberatory framework as they plan and can identify how it shows up in lessons; they will involve learners in feedback or invite collaboration/ input from learners; and they will utilize making in interdisciplinary ways in their spaces.

We will design and facilitate liberatory experiences that support the development of maker-centered learning. We will know we have been successful in this when educators testify that they have developed a maker identity: they will see and connect their own funds of knowledge as ways of making; use a reflective practice and engage in an iterative cycle to improve teaching + learning; and grow their own creative confidence in designing and facilitating this kind of learning.

We will develop relationships and connections with educators and among educators. As a result, educators will explore, challenge, & learn together. They will have a larger network of support, and will more frequently ask each other for advice. Educators will pass along resources to other peers, and will joyfully celebrate each other.

We will support educators to expand the depth and breadth of integration of maker-centered learning. Educators will integrate liberatory learning into multiple content areas. Institutions will modify their practices at a systemic level, and collaborate to weave these practices across institutions and regions. Educators & organizations will be able to articulate and share their visions of maker-centered learning.

Our theory of change is focused on making as a tool to create more equitable, just, and liberatory learning experiences for youth. Through targeted work with educators from historically underrepresented communities, teaching underresourced populations, and/or those interested in liberatory pedagogical shifts, we disrupt inequitable educational practices, increase access to maker-centered resources, and increase student agency, criticality, joy, and intellect-building in all learning spaces.

This disruption comes in the form of increasing educator access to professional development that is hands-on and liberatory. Our PD offers historically-marginalized educators the time, connection, resources, and knowledge for them to transform their practice and their learning environments. With more collaborative and joyful environments that are full of learning and agency, we will see greater BIPOC educator retention; more diverse educational leadership; and more pedagogy that disrupts inequitable systems of education. 

When all of these things are true, learners will develop critical consciousness and cognitive capacities. The impact of this community effort will be that youth will report increased engagement, higher test scores, better attendance, more joy, and more commitment to taking action within their communities.

When learners use their bodies as they learn, they identify problems with a critical eye, imagine solutions with an innovative perspective, develop approaches in collaborative fashion, and find entrepreneurial courage to try their ideas more than if they learn by conventional methods. This disposition and these mindsets are the foundation of technological innovation, and making is at their very core. 

Communities of Color have been "making" since long before it was named as an educational approach. Our concepts of making and technology owe more to indigenous practices than any field gives credit. Making provides a rich opportunity for learners from historically-marginalized communities to celebrate their cultures, and the traditions of their peers - and to see the origins of our more modern technologies in the work of their ancestors.

The platform for the online community will be built on Drupal integrated with CiviCRM. Our team is exploring what other functionality the build will require. Early ideation includes Facebook, Slack, online forums, and virtual reality. 

Our professional learning programs blend high-tech and low-tech making. This includes but is not limited to: makey makeys, scratch, laser printing sewing, puppetry, data visualization, carpentry, gardening, and painting. 

Education is not neutral and we have a responsibility to teach the truth. We want to address the intentional system of inequity that plagues education in the United States head on. This system is rooted in a culture of white supremacy that prioritizes assimilation and academic knowledge acquisition over identity development, social-emotional learning, and community liberation. Our approach to DEI is fueled by an urgency brought on by these irrefutable realities.

Our PD is explicitly geared towards BIPOC educators and educators who serve majority learners of Color. The guiding theory of change has undergone a revision that includes the explicit liberatory stance which includes transparent anti-racism and a centering of voices of Color among our staff and constituents. Our hiring practices transparently prioritize BIPOC candidates, and we aim for ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and economic diversity on our staff. We seek to redistribute the resources that fund our organization into communities which reflect our priority audience, like enlisting and equitably paying BIPOC consultants and other partners.

Our board of directors has shifted over the years from majority male, white, wealthy members to majority female members, many of whom have direct experience in the field of education. We make our anti-racist stance public. Our notice in support of the Movement for Black Lives was cited as a strong example of public solidarity in an anti-racist HR handbook written and published by Swarm Strategy x Work In Progress Consulting: https://makered.org/blog/state...

In the development of our organizational and HR policies we seek to embody our values. Concrete examples of this include: investing the savings from our 2020 spin from our fiscal sponsor back into our benefits so that our organization covers 100% for employees; establishing transparent salary bands with an annual audit that reviews cost of living, needs assessment, and salary comps; instituting wellness days and “not today days,” which require no prior approval when a staff person needs rest; frequent office closures for collective rest; promoting staff to leadership positions from within; distributed decision-making and intentional sharing of power; group meeting environments are developed with a priority on access and inclusion; staff-led book clubs for collective learning; and our Executive Director focuses on 2-3 HR policies a year to improve on specifically to foster DEI at Maker Ed. 

We center and involve our priority audiences in our program evaluation, communications, and resource mobilization strategies, considering the impact of our decisions on our staff and the community we serve. Our core value of accessibility influences the kind of making we promote, as well as the language we use to describe our work and mission. We use our visibility and our reputation as a national organization to lift up the amazing work of our community and strive to amplify their voices first.

We intend to offer our most easily accessible PD and resources at no cost to the end users. Too many resources live behind paywalls and other barriers to entry that prohibit educators with limited resources from benefiting and growing their practice. To offset the costs, we will charge a fee for participation in the longer-term PD offerings, which we will promote through our growing social media networks. We intend to offer a blend of virtual and in-person opportunities for educators across the country to engage with us. Our community engagement team has grown, and is investing their time and energy in understanding our priority audience. Also, the diverse modes of engaging with that priority audience will give us credibility and the opportunity to stay in close contact with them to meet their needs more nimbly and effectively.

As a 501c3, we rely on philanthropy and public funds to operate this work. The majority of our private philanthropic funds will ideally be unrestricted, allowing great flexibility in our implementation. We may also secure government funding on the local, state, or federal level to fund specific aspects of the work that will be more precise and time-bound. 

We also require some elements of the network be covered by a fee from our members - typically, institutions like schools or school districts, as well as informal learning institutions like libraries, museums or other community resources that offer educator PD. We will ask educators to partially cover the costs of our more in-depth PD offerings like week-long workshops. We will contract with schools and other institutions for PD that takes place over time (6 to 18 months). We will require a membership fee of institutions that participate in our Making Spaces program.

These various sources of revenue will cover staff time, infrastructural costs, materials, and some travel expenses that we anticipate will help us to further grow our Network and further develop our reach and impact. We are investing in a growing resource mobilization team to help further diversify our revenue sources, deepen our relationships, and flesh out a pipeline of funders. 

Based on early prototyping of certain pieces of our network, we are pleased with the revenue generated. As our engagement team refines their strategy before full launch, we have had strong attendance and frequent interest in our fee-for-service work.