January 2009

TAF Academy and the DLC: A New Way of Teaching and Learning

TAF Academy, Andrew Miller, Teacher

TAF Academy, founded by the Technology Access Foundation, welcomed its first wave of Federal Way students with a new approach to student-based education. The DLC was there from the start, partnering with TAF to ensure swift and creative access to digital resources and tools for students and teachers.

Andrew Miller, a ninth grade English and Social Studies teacher at TAF, talks about his work and the ways in which TAF's DLC membership has supported this budding school.

Ending a vicious cycle

The whole idea behind TAF is getting under-served populations access to technology. Miller cites "Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing," a 2008 MIT case study of certain schools with high populations of Latinos and African Americans that demonstrated the lack of technology access for those students. He summarizes: "Consequently, technology careers become non-ethnic careers. It’s a vicious cycle. We believe that we need to lead the charge to give kids access to technology in useful and meaningful ways. Make it real to them so that they use it as a good tool for digital literacy and innovation so we can bridge this gap."

DLC membership assures student buy-in

Without the DLC, Miller says that his students would be lost--literally--as they randomly searched all over the internet for information. They wouldn't have a tool to keep them all on task; they would be without storage space or a way to hold each other accountable. And most importantly, they wouldn't buy in to the curriculum if it wasn't digital. "Without the DLC, they just wouldn’t be as excited. It generates a level of excitement, play, and curiosity that I love," says Miller, "The technology is all there and it gives me a way for assessment that is complete."

Student-based learning in a nutshell:

Miller's freshmen are given a task around an essential question that is evaluative, inquiry-based or open-ended. A recent project in his classroom centered on the question: How has the casino industry impacted the culture of the Northwest Native Indian populations? Their next question, How can I stop AIDS from killing my friends, family and community?, allows his students even greater freedom of expression and project choice.

Grouped in collaborative teams, his students must create a product to reflect what they’ve found or to make change—a briefing, a brochure, a pamphlet, etc. "They are in charge of figuring out what they need to find, where to find it, how to put the data together, what to do with the data. They get to choose how the product is produced and what they have to do. So instead of me telling them what to produce, they have to choose to demonstrate what they learn," Miller says.

This type of learning feeds into their strengths; students gravitate to those skills where they naturally excel or have a strong interest. Taking the best of workplace collaboration and style, student-based learning creates community within the classroom. It's not just about the product, but also the process by which the students learn about a subject and themselves.

Learn more about Miller's work with project learning and DLC's Digital Tools.

Technology Access Foundation, a Seattle nonprofit committed to preparing under-served children of color for success in education and in life, was co-founded by Executive Director Trish Millines Dziko. A DLC board member, Millines Dziko and her staff worked for more than a decade to create TAF Academy's personalized public instruction. The small school serves grades six through twelve, focusing on a rigorous Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum, as well as the leadership intangibles that give young people the skills to "create the world that they themselves envision."

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