For over 40 years, the Mayor’s Summer time Youth Employment Program (MSYEP, or the Mayor’s Program) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been offering youngsters with their first work expertise, however 2022 introduced a brand new providing. Collaborating with MIT’s Private Robots analysis group (PRG) and Accountable AI for Social Empowerment and Training (RAISE) this summer time, MSYEP created a STEAM-focused studying web site on the Institute. Eleven college students joined this system to study coding and programming expertise via the lens of “Knowledge Activism.”
MSYEP’s partnership with MIT supplies a possibility for Cambridge excessive schoolers to realize publicity to extra pathways for his or her future careers and training. The Mayor’s Program goals to respect college students’ time and present the worth of their work, so members are compensated with an hourly wage as they study workforce expertise at MSYEP worksites. At the side of two ongoing analysis research at MIT, PRG and RAISE developed the six-week Knowledge Activism curriculum to equip college students with critical-thinking expertise in order that they really feel ready to make the most of information science to problem social injustice and empower their group.
Rohan Kundargi, Okay-12 Group Outreach Administrator for MIT Workplace of Authorities and Group Relations (OGCR), says, “I see this as a mannequin for a brand new sort of partnership between MIT and Cambridge MSYEP. Particularly, an MIT analysis mission that entails college students from Cambridge getting paid to study, analysis, and develop their very own expertise!”
Cross-Cambridge collaboration
Cambridge’s Workplace of Workforce Improvement initially contacted MIT OGCR about internet hosting a possible MSYEP worksite that taught Cambridge teenagers how one can code. When Kundargi reached out to MIT pK-12 collaborators, MIT PRG’s graduate analysis assistant Raechel Walker proposed the Knowledge Activism curriculum. Walker defines “information activism” as using information, computing, and artwork to research how energy operates on the planet, problem energy, and empathize with people who find themselves oppressed.
Walker says, “I wished college students to really feel empowered to include their very own experience, skills, and pursuits into each exercise. To ensure that college students to totally embrace their tutorial talents, they need to stay snug with bringing their full selves into information activism.”
As Kundargi and Walker recruited college students for the Knowledge Activism studying web site, they wished to ensure the cohort of scholars — the vast majority of whom are people of shade — felt represented at MIT and felt they’d the company for his or her voice to be heard. “The pioneers on this discipline are individuals who seem like them,” Walker says, talking of well-known information activists Timnit Gebru, Rediet Abebe, and Pleasure Buolamwini.
When this system started this summer time, a few of the college students weren’t conscious of the methods information science and synthetic intelligence exacerbate systemic oppression in society, or a few of the instruments presently getting used to mitigate these societal harms. Consequently, Walker says, the scholars wished to study extra about discriminatory design in each side of life. They have been additionally fascinated by creating accountable machine studying algorithms and AI equity metrics.
A distinct facet of STEAM
The event and execution of the Knowledge Activism curriculum contributed to Walker’s and postdoc Xiaoxue Du’s respective analysis at PRG. Walker is learning AI training, particularly creating and educating information activism curricula for minoritized communities. Du’s analysis explores processes, assessments, and curriculum design that prepares educators to make use of, adapt, and combine AI literacy curricula. Moreover, her analysis targets how one can leverage extra alternatives for college kids with numerous studying wants.
The Knowledge Activism curriculum makes use of a “libertatory computing” framework, a time period Walker coined in her place paper with Professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital studying, and head of PRG, and Eman Sherif, a then-undergraduate researcher from College of California at San Diego, titled “Liberty Computing for African American College students.” This framework ensures that college students, particularly minoritized college students, purchase a sound racial id, vital consciousness, collective obligation, liberation centered tutorial/achievement id, in addition to the activism expertise to make use of computing to rework a multi-layered system of boundaries by which racism persists. Walker says, “We inspired college students to reveal competency in each pillar as a result of the entire pillars are interconnected and construct upon one another.”
Walker developed a sequence of interactive coding and project-based actions that targeted on understanding systemic racism, using information science to research systemic oppression, information drawing, accountable machine studying, how racism might be embedded into AI, and completely different AI equity metrics.
This was the scholars’ first time studying how one can create information visualizations utilizing the programming language Python and the info evaluation device Pandas. In a single mission meant to look at how completely different techniques of oppression can have an effect on completely different elements of scholars’ personal identities, college students created datasets with information from their respective intersectional identities. One other exercise highlighted African American achievements, the place college students analyzed two datasets about African American scientists, activists, artists, students, and athletes. Utilizing the info visualizations, college students then created zines in regards to the African Individuals who impressed them.
RAISE employed Olivia Dias, Sophia Brady, Lina Henriquez, and Zeynep Yalcin via the MIT Undergraduate Analysis Alternative Program (UROP) and PRG employed freelancer Matt Taylor to work with Walker on creating the curriculum and designing interdisciplinary expertise tasks. Walker and the 4 undergraduate researchers constructed an intersectional information evaluation exercise about completely different examples of systemic oppression. PRG additionally employed three highschool college students to check actions and provide insights about making the curriculum participating for program members. All through this system, the Knowledge Activism staff taught college students in small teams, regularly requested college students how one can enhance every exercise, and structured every lesson primarily based on the scholars’ pursuits. Walker says Dias, Brady, Henriquez, and Yalcin have been invaluable to cultivating a supportive classroom atmosphere and serving to college students full their tasks.
Pupil Nina says, “It’s opened my eyes to a distinct facet of STEM. I didn’t know what ‘information’ meant earlier than this program, or how intersectionality can have an effect on AI and information.” Earlier than MSYEP, Nina took Intro to Pc Science and AP Pc Science, however she has been coding since Ladies Who Code first sparked her curiosity in center faculty. “The group was very nice. I might discuss with different ladies. I noticed there must be extra ladies in STEM, particularly in coding.” Now she’s fascinated by making use of to schools with sturdy pc science packages so she will be able to pursue a coding-related profession.
From MSYEP to the mayor’s workplace
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui visited the Knowledge Activism studying web site on Aug. 9, accompanied by Breazeal. A graduate of MSYEP herself, Siddiqui says, “By hands-on studying via pc programming, Cambridge highschool college students have the distinctive alternative to see themselves as information scientists. College students have been in a position study methods to fight discrimination that happens via synthetic intelligence.” In an Instagram publish, Siddiqui additionally stated, “I had a blast visiting the scholars and studying about their tasks.”
College students labored on an exercise that requested them to ascertain how information science could be used to assist marginalized communities. They reworked their solutions into block-printed T-shirt designs, carving photos of their hopes into rubber block stamps. Some college students targeted on the significance of information privateness, like Jacob T., who drew a birdcage to symbolize information saved and locked away by third celebration apps. He says, “I wish to open that cage and restore my information to myself and see what might be achieved with it.”
Many college students wished to see extra illustration in each the media they devour and throughout varied skilled fields. Nina talked in regards to the significance of illustration in media and the way that might contribute to larger illustration within the tech trade, whereas Kiki talked about encouraging extra ladies to pursue STEM fields. Jesmin stated, “I wished to indicate that information science is accessible to everybody, regardless of their origin or language you converse. I wrote ‘howdy’ in Bangla, Arabic, and English, as a result of I converse all three languages and so they all resonate with me.”
“Total, I hope the scholars proceed to make use of their information activism expertise to re-envision a society that helps marginalized teams,” says Walker. “Furthermore, I hope they’re empowered to develop into information scientists and perceive how their race is usually a optimistic a part of their id.”
