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This resource offers a clear introduction to what makerspaces are, their benefits in education, and how they support creativity and innovation. It includes definitions, examples, and helpful links, perfect for educators and librarians exploring how to start or grow a school-based makerspace.

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Research Guides: Makerspaces K-12: What is Making? What is a Makerspace?

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Research Guides: Makerspaces K-12: What is Making? What is a Makerspace?

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This short podcast episode features practical advice on integrating makerspaces into your school culture, especially during times of change or uncertainty. Educators discuss how makerspaces can inspire creativity, build student confidence, and support deeper engagement, making them essential for an extraordinary school year.

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Making Room for Makerspaces As You Prepare for an Extraordinary School Year

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This blog is packed with real-world advice from a school librarian who transformed her media center into a thriving makerspace. It features practical project ideas, grant tips, maker book reviews, and reflections on building inclusive, student-centered maker programs. Great inspiration for any school looking to start or grow their makerspace!

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Renovated Learning is a place where I help educators who are tired of the status quo and who want to infuse creativity into their schools.

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This in-depth, free guide walks you through everything you need to launch and sustain a school makerspace, from layout and materials to safety, equity, and community partnerships. Designed for educators, it’s a one-stop resource full of planning tools, checklists, and inspiration for K–12 environments.

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Makerspace Playbook | Makerspace Playbook

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to a community of people who have a passion for making things, and who want to share that with others by making with others by setting up a Makerspace. This playbook will help you establish a wonderful new resource in your school, neighborhood, or wider local community. It shares the knowledge and experience from the Makerspace team as well as from those who have already started Makerspaces.

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In under 60 seconds, this video gives a quick, positive explanation of what a makerspace is and why it’s important. Great for introducing the concept to students, parents, or community members in a fun, approachable way.

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Vipul Redey makes a powerful case for why all children, regardless of background, deserve access to hands-on, exploratory learning through makerspaces. He shares global stories of how maker education helps bridge equity gaps, foster problem-solving, and unlock lifelong learning. A compelling call for inclusive access to maker opportunities.

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Every childhood deserves a makerspace | Vipul Redey | TEDxYouth@Colombo

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This curated collection from Instructables features hands-on, step-by-step project guides designed specifically for middle school students. From cardboard engineering to beginner electronics and 3D design, each project includes detailed instructions, materials lists, and classroom-friendly tips, perfect for engaging students in your school makerspace.

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Instructables is committed to helping teachers inspire, engage, and prepare students through hands-on projects to make in the classroom. Always free, and always fun, come explore projects for your next classroom lesson!

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Kai XR is a kid-friendly virtual reality platform designed to spark creativity, innovation, and global exploration. It includes guided design challenges, VR field trips, and maker experiences that support STEAM learning and digital storytelling. Great for enhancing your makerspace with tech-forward, equitable access to immersive learning.

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Welcome to the most inclusive & accessible 3D platform where kids can explore, dream, and create!

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This free downloadable eBook is a goldmine of makerspace tools, project ideas, supply lists, and tutorials, perfect for educators building or expanding their space on a budget. It covers everything from 3D printing and electronics to low-cost STEM activities, with clickable links for easy classroom use.

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[FREE EBOOK] Learn About Makerspaces and STEM/STEAM Education.

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What is a makerspace? Learn about makerspaces and maker education in this post for the absolute beginner. FREE EBOOK (PDF) with over 250+ resources that will help you start and run a school or library makerspace. 3D Printing, Coding, Makerspace Projects, STEM education

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This creative, budget-friendly project from Teen Librarian Toolbox walks you through how to set up a faux neon sign activity using EL wire and paint, perfect for teens and tweens. It’s engaging, visually impressive, and a great way to blend art, technology, and design in your makerspace.

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TLT Contributor Riley Jensen shares a simple DIY craft that can help you use up some of those random bottles of paint you have lying around

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This LibGuide offers an excellent overview of how makerspaces enhance student learning across grade levels and subject areas. It includes scholarly articles, curriculum integration ideas, and links to books, lesson plans, and standards, ideal for educators seeking to ground their makerspace in pedagogy and research.

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A makerspace is a place that provides hands-on, creative ways for students to design, experiment, and invent as they engage with a variety of tools and technology.

Makerspaces are multidisciplinary in both approach and in the products created which fuels engagement and innovation. Students will learn how to utilize a wide range of hardware and software as a means to develop their creativity and critical thinking skills.

Combining the frameworks of constructionism, the maker movement, design thinking, and media literacies, the makerspace gives students the opportunity take ownership of their learning and the physical space.

Students will learn by making tangible objects through authentic, real-life learning opportunities that allow for a guided, collaborative process which incorporates peer feedback. From learning how use basic non-digital tools to printing 3D objects, students do not have to be "techy" to enjoy and benefit from using the makerspace.

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LibGuides: Makerspace: Makerspace for Education

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Welcome to the Xavier University Library Makerspace!

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This School Library Journal article shows how one librarian turned her makerspace into a dynamic research lab using a murder mystery game. Students practiced inquiry, collaboration, and source evaluation, all while solving a fictional crime. It’s a great example of how makerspaces can merge academic skills with creative problem-solving.

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In an attempt to make teaching research skills less "dry and boring," this middle school librarian hit on a mysterious new lesson plan, and the strategy has been a huge success.

The crime scene in Ertelt's library.

Photo courtesy of Tobye Ertelt

For a school librarian, "the spark" can come from connecting students to books they love or successfully collaborating with classroom teachers. It's the moment your thinking-and the possibilities for learning-expand.

When I became a school librarian, I wanted to pull students into their learning. About 11 years ago, two things collided in my mind and started my journey. It started with an eighth grade social studies class. Before me, the teacher had created a four-week unit on the Oregon Trail. Because of a new curriculum and time constraints, the unit needed to change. At the same time, I was learning about game theory. Bam! The spark hit me. I took the social studies teacher's Oregon Trail lesson and gamified it. I made a choose-your-own-adventure where the kids focused not only on learning about the trail but also life skills, decision-making, consequences, and teamwork.

After that successful unit, I looked for more opportunities to bring game theory and simulations into my collaborations. The lesson in need of such a transformation jumped out at me almost immediately-research skills. While vitally important, research skills are, unfortunately, dry and boring. I was pondering how to bring a fresh approach to the lesson while enjoying one of my crime-junkie television shows when it hit me: Why couldn't I create a murder mystery in which students use research skills to solve the problem?

First step, find an ELA coteacher as excited as me, who was willing to try. The next day, I started sketching out the lesson, and I reached out to one of the ELA teachers. My starting line: "I have a crazy idea." Instead of laughing me out of the room, she worked with me, and we planned the perfect murder mystery project.

We begin our weeklong unit with a day focused on defining, giving examples, and class discussion on how to evaluate the lesson. We use ABCD (Author, Bias, Content, Date), but you can change the work to fit whichever method you use: CRAAP Test, SCARAB, RADAR. At the end of the first day, we explain that investigators use the same methods to investigate a crime. Then we introduce the murder with me as the victim.

The next two days consist of the students using multiple sources (suspect statements, eyewitness statements, and the crime scene) to solve the murder. The suspects are fellow teachers and administrators. I originally sent an email explaining the project and what they were being asked to do. Since the first year's success, I often have so many volunteers, each class has different suspects. I create silly, nonthreatening motives and personas to answer questions about our friendships, what made them mad, and where they were during the window of my murder. All staff are given their statements in advance and cannot add to them "on the advice of their lawyers."

Eyewitnesses are historical and literary characters played by students. Their statements support or invalidate the suspect statements and crime scene evidence.

At the end of the second day, the teams must make a ClEaR (Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning) statement on who they think is the murderer. From our first year to today, the greatest part of this lesson is the level of student engagement. They are so involved and excited, which gets the staff engaged, too.

The accusation moment is amazing. The holes in their theories become clear, and they see their bias. Almost every year, we have at least one class that completely gets it wrong the first time because "that teacher is too nice to murder someone." In those cases, we allow them a few minutes to reexamine their evidence and make a new claim. After the arguments and revelation of the murderer(s), we have them reflect on what went well and what they missed during their research that led them to their accusations-even if they guessed the correct murderer.

The final two days of the project focus on individual assessment of their understanding of the research skills. Our students use materials from Bespoke ELA and must answer, "Is Lizzie Borden innocent or guilty of murdering her parents?" They formulate an argument using primary and secondary sources. We don't allow technology, so they can't look up what happened to Borden. After they write a ClEaR response, we reveal Borden's fate.

The success of this unit led to many other gaming and simulation lessons. I have cotaught lessons on the Black Death, ancient civilizations, and the Silk Road. Each successful lesson provides a new spark and increases my commitment to creating engaging work.
Tobye Ertelt is the digital teacher librarian at Oberon Middle School in Arvada, CO.

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Teaching Research Skills Through Game Theory and a Murder Mystery

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In an attempt to make teaching research skills less

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This blog features a wide range of hands-on makerspace project ideas with step-by-step guides, videos, and material lists. Projects range from beginner to advanced and span topics like engineering, coding, and design, perfect for engaging middle school students in science and creativity.

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By Amy Cowen on November 4, 2022 4:00 PM
Inspire students of all ages to enjoy STEM when you let them loose in a creative makerspace! These hands-on engineering activities use simple materials and encourage students to brainstorm, problem solve, and innovate.
Enabling Exploration

Community makerspaces are collaborative spaces where people of all ages can get hands-on with science and engineering. With an array of materials available, a visit to a local makerspace is an invitation to play with science and engineering and really see how things work.

You may have a makerspace in your school or at the library, or maybe you have an area of your classroom dedicated to maker activities students can explore or certain days of the week on which you turn the room into a makerspace. With a few materials and a surface to work on, garage or basement spaces can easily be recast as home makerspaces, too!

You don't have to have expensive materials to start up your own makerspace. With an assortment of craft supplies, electronics parts, and recycled materials, you can set up a makerspace full of inspiring STEM that kids can explore. Figuring out what will work with the materials available is part of the challenge and part of the fun!

Bookmark or pin these projects to add to your makerspace!

Update! This post has been updated for 2022!

Free Projects and Activities for Your Makerspace

Try one of these STEM projects for creative hands-on science and engineering with a DIY "maker" flair:

1. Make Cardboard Automata: Plan and build an automaton from cardboard and craft materials.

2. Build a Wind-Powered Car: Add a sail to a DIY toy car and experiment to see how changes to the sail make a difference in the car's stability and speed.

3. Build a Differential from K'Nex®: Use the K'Nex® toy building system to build a model differential.

4. Build A Wall Marble Run: Use cardboard tubes and other simple materials to build a wall marble run.

5. Make an Awesome Paper Lantern: Design and make a paper lantern that holds a battery-operated tealight candle or uses a night light circuit.

6. Flippy, the Dancing Robot: Build a simple dancing robot and use the engineering design process to improve it.

7. Build a Paper Roller Coaster: Build a paper roller coaster and try to add a loop.

8. 3D Print with Sand: No 3D Printer Required!: Use sand and glue to simulate one type of 3D printing.

9. DIY Mini Propeller Car: Make a small toy car with a simple circuit and a propeller.

10. Build a Robot Hand: Use craft materials to design and build a robotic hand.

11. Build a Mini Trebuchet: Use craft sticks, rubber bands, and other craft materials to make and explore the physics behind a miniature trebuchet.

12. DIY Light Up Unicorn Headband: Make a unicorn horn headband with a paper circuit that lights an LED at the tip.

13. Build a Rubber Band-Powered Car: Build a car with an axle made from straws and rubber bands that store potential energy when wound.

14. Build a Popsicle Stick Catapult: Make a small catapult from craft sticks and rubber bands.

15. Duplicate Your Drawings with a Machine: Make and experiment with a pantograph, a device that can be used to make a larger or smaller copy of a drawing.

16. Make a Paper Circuit: Learn how to make simple circuits from paper, copper tape (or aluminum foil), and a battery. (See Paper Circuits Science Projects for additional ways to explore.)

17. Make a Cotton Ball Launcher: Use a recycled cardboard tube to make a launcher that can launch lightweight materials.

18. The Impossible Arrow Illusion: 3D print and explore the "impossible arrow" illusion - the arrow's reflection in a mirror always points the other way!

19. Make Your Own Harmonica!: Explore how a harmonica creates sound waves by making a small one from wooden sticks, rubber bands, and a straw.

20. DIY Mini Drone: Make a basic mini drone. (Add additional parts to explore a series of questions related to drone flight.)

21. Build a Balloon Car: Use a balloon to power a homemade toy car.

22. Study Kinetic Energy with a Rube Goldberg Machine: Use assorted materials to create a set of chain reactions in a machine designed to perform a simple task.

23. Build a Cardboard Scissor Lift: Use craft materials to make a scissor lift and explore simple machines.

24. Junkbots: Robots from Recycled Materials: Design and build simple robots made from recycled and craft materials.

25. Build a Paper Speaker: Make a working speaker from paper and neodymium magnets.

26. Make a Night-Light: Build a working night-light with an intermediate circuit project and design the custom housing, too!

Makerspace Learning in Action

The following STEM videos demonstrate some of the highlighted activities:

Ready for More Makerspace Ideas?

See 16 Next-Level Makerspace STEM Projects for projects and activities to help scale your makerspace for students ready for additional challenge.

You Might Also Enjoy These Related Posts:

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26 Projects to Jump-start Your Makerspace | Science Buddies Blog

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26 engaging hands-on STEM activities that use recylced and craft materials for a home, library, or classroom makerspace

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In this updated reflection, engineer and MacArthur Fellow Saul Griffith revisits what it means to truly equip a modern makerspace. From laser cutters and 3D printers to electric hand tools and storage strategies, he explores how affordable tools and digital workflows have revolutionized making. It’s an honest, practical guide full of personal insight, ideal for educators planning or upgrading a functional, student-centered makerspace.

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Making Spaces is a partnership-driven program supporting schools and libraries as they create sustainable makerspaces. With toolkits, funding guides, and mentorship models, this site is a rich resource for educators looking to build long-term community support and equity-driven maker programs. Backed by Maker Ed and Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

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Making Spaces is a research project based at UCL. Working with makerspaces in five countries, the project identifies and shares equitable practice to support

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This article explores how makerspaces promote inclusion, cultural relevance, and student voice in today’s classrooms. It highlights how shared creative spaces can help all learners feel a sense of agency and belonging, especially when projects reflect their identities, interests, and communities.

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Essentials Magazine - Covering trends impacting the educational products marketplace

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How Makerspace Can Foster Community, Inclusion & Belonging - Essentials Magazine

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Designing a space where all students feel they belong has the potential to restore hope in building communities that foster relationships between all people by learning to have conversation across differences. When students can commit to a space that invites their own full self and where they feel valued, then they can learn how to engage in problem solving strategies through projects that matter to them.

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This short video features college students utilizing a collegiate makerspace, but the message applies across all grade levels. Makerspaces bring people together around shared creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Whether in college or K–12, these spaces foster a strong sense of belonging and teamwork as students work side by side to build, learn, and support one another.

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This article from Edutopia highlights how maker education, especially when blended with the arts, can create more inclusive, culturally responsive learning environments. It shares practical strategies for making all students feel seen and valued, including using identity-based projects and student-led design choices.

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What Maker Education and the Arts Teach Us About Creating Inclusive Learning Spaces

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Making small changes to your classroom, assessment practices, and curriculum can help students of all gender identities feel included.

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This research article explores how makerspaces can serve as powerful access points for underrepresented youth in STEM, especially when intentionally designed with equity in mind. It emphasizes community relevance, mentorship, and culturally sustaining pedagogy to help ensure all students feel empowered to participate in STEM learning.

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This colorful, student-friendly infographic from Making Spaces (M4K) highlights how makerspaces spark creativity, boost confidence, and build community. It visually explains the impact of hands-on learning and is perfect for sharing with students, families, staff, or community partners to show why your makerspace matters.

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In this thoughtful episode, host Jennifer Gonzalez explores the real educational value of makerspaces with guest John Spencer. Together, they discuss how makerspaces go far beyond fun, they build problem-solving skills, foster student agency, and create inclusive environments where all learners can thrive.

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 133 Transcript

Jennifer Gonzalez, host

Most teachers instinctively know that if students' emotions are off-kilter in any way, if their stress levels are high or their social lives are a mess, they won't be able to concentrate on academics. And yes, schools usually hire guidance counselors to support students with these issues, but most of the time they can barely squeeze this work in between all the other things they're responsible for. Research is telling us that children and teens are experiencing more anxiety and depression than ever before, and those numbers keep going up, so clearly the need for social-emotional support in schools is growing.

Many of us do what we can to pay attention, to tune into our students' emotional needs, build relationships with them, create safe spaces in our classrooms, and weave lessons about communication, anger management, self-advocacy, and mindfulness into our academic content.

Still, we're pretty sure this isn't enough.

Some schools are tackling this issue by providing mental health services as part of larger wraparound programs. Other schools are adding on separate SEL curricula, doing book studies, and giving extra SEL training to their teachers.

Another creative approach, which we'll look at today, is to designate a space in school that can meet some of these needs. But in this case, we're not talking about a counseling center or meditation room-although these would be welcome additions to any school. This space does not appear to have anything to do with social-emotional needs at first glance: You'd see a 3-D printer, piles of Legos, books, index cards, art supplies, laptops. You'd see students cutting paper, taping pieces of cardboard together, editing videos. It looks and feels like a makerspace, because that's what it is. But it's more than that.

The Success and Innovation Center is a unique space at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, Maine. Director Dan Ryder describes it as a problem-solving studio, a stigma-free space where students can go at any time during the school day to work on problems they're having inside or outside the classroom. In this episode, Dan and I talk about how he started the center, what it looks like on a day to day basis, the impact it's having on the students at Mt. Blue, and how you can start something similar at your school.

Before we get started, I'd like to thank Public Consulting Group for sponsoring this episode. PCG is a national organization that supports teachers and school districts in providing high quality professional development. PCG's online professional learning catalog is approved for continuing education credits nationwide, allowing teachers a cost-effective and efficient way of engaging in professional development, leading to license renewal and pay increase. PCG's courses range from short 1-hour workshops to in-depth graduate level courses, allowing teachers to create a customized playlist of content to meet their individual career needs. PCG has teamed with leading educational experts to bring you valuable tricks, tools, and strategies for immediate application in your classroom. You'll also receive individualized coaching from PCG's virtual facilitators throughout your course. PCG believes that the learning never ends and they want to help you help your students succeed. Visit cultofpedagogy.com/PCG to find out more and use the code CULT20 to get $20 off your first course.

Support also comes from ViewSonic. ViewSonic transforms classrooms into immersive learning environments. Their education solutions drive engagement, energize and motivate students, and make teaching more fun. From ViewBoard interactive displays and myViewBoard digital whiteboarding software to projectors and monitors, ViewSonic's award-winning solutions are here to help teachers stay connected and collaborate in their classrooms. To learn more, visit viewsonic.com/education.

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast is part of the Education Podcast Network. The EPN family is the home of dozens of different podcasts, and each one is focused on education. Check out all of our shows at edupodcastnetwork.com.

Now, here's my interview with Dan Ryder about his Success and Innovation Center.

GONZALEZ: I would like to welcome Dan Ryder to the podcast. Dan, welcome.

RYDER: Thank you for having me.

GONZALEZ: We, we've talked at South by Southwest much earlier this year in March, and you approached me, and you were really, really excited to tell me about this makerspace that you have that is much, much more than a makerspace. And so we're finally actually getting together to talk about it. And so before we get into the nitty gritty of all of that, tell us just briefly what it is that you do for work.

RYDER: So I work at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, Maine, up in the western foothills. It's where I've worked my entire career. And after teaching English for 20 years, I now, or I should say 17 years, 18 years, I now run the Success and Innovation Center at Mt. Blue campus, which is a combination makerspace and human-centered problem solving space.

GONZALEZ: Ah, see I couldn't figure out how to phrase, I knew it was a combination makerspace and something else, and I thought how are they putting this to students, because you wouldn't call it a social workspace.

RYDER: No and we, we were and we, initially, and we, we got some pushback, some very justified pushback.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: From some folks, and also we knew that that wasn't the best way to describe it.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: The way I typically elevator pitch it these days is it's a problem-solving studio that takes the best principles of human-centered design and the best principles of social emotional learning and fuses them together so that through our space, the act of making and creating can also help with the other parts of ourselves, besides just academic learning.

GONZALEZ: Okay, so let's, go ahead and just sort of rewind a little bit to how this all got started, and tell us a little bit about what your original vision is. You set this up also with a partner, so tell us a little bit about her and her background and how all of this came together.

RYDER: Absolutely. So my friend Becky Dennison is a, is a licensed social worker and working as the college transitions coordinator for our, for our adult ed program here in Farmington. And she had started working on this vision for a success center that would kind of fill in the gaps between what she was doing in college transitions and what school counselors find themselves having the capacity to do in terms of college searching but also just being academically successful but also being a successful person. Because we have 700, roughly, kids in our regional public high school, and we only have three school counselors. Which for some places, that's like, what do you have to complain about? And I appreciate and get it. I understand. But traditionally we've had more than that.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And so when you're looking at students from high poverty, you're looking at students from a lot of what would be first-generation college, if they went to college, you're looking at students who are experiencing a lot, a lot of the risks on, say, like the ACEs scales for like trauma informed, you know, and stresses. We have a large population of kids who are experiencing those things as well as a significant population of your kind of what we would call the new middle class, right? People who have, like, regular jobs, regular careers, regular paying, regular employment -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - and are kind of following what we would call a more traditional track through life.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We've got them kind of in equal measure. So you take like 350 kids with a lot of needs and 350 kids that are kind of going to do okay, split them among three people, it's a lot.

GONZALEZ: Got it, yep.

RYDER: So, and we haven't traditionally had social workers on campus available, limited, limited numbers of support because we're not a super affluent community and we serve kids from 10 different towns, each of which have their own sets of needs and kind of their own, kind of cultural values there, and that impacts everything that happens here with the kids that come through the door. So Becky was seeing this need. I, at the same time, have been working with several different teachers at different times. I'm trying to get a makerspace up and running, because I had started teaching my English classes through a lens of making and creating this, especially through design.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: So I have like a mini makerspace in my room that more and more kids from around the campus were using, and I was totally cool with it, like, you know, I got a 3D printer for my English classes. People thought that was weird, and what we were doing is designing fidgets for kids with special, you know, with stress and anxiety.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And using that experience to then learn all of our English in the context of making, designing, need finding, empathy, research, so on and so forth.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: So what ended up happening was we chocolate and peanut buttered our two visions as a result of getting this access to, or an opportunity to get a Gear Up, you know, Gear Up action research grant.

GONZALEZ: Okay. Is Gear Up like a brand name?

RYDER: It's a fed name.

GONZALEZ: I gotcha.

RYDER: It's a federal grant for postsecondary aspirations work.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Shows up a lot in rural states.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And yeah, they came to, they came to a bunch of schools in our region and said, we have this opportunity to develop a multiple pathways program. You design what you think would work for your students, you pitch how much money from this big pot you think you need to do it, we come together, we come up with what the research question is and so on and so forth, and if we think it's good, we'll fund it and you need to do some deliverables for us on our side and we'll see if we can pilot something that works.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And lo and behold, the Success and Innovation Center was born.

GONZALEZ: So you sort of knew ahead of time that you wanted to combine both purposes into one space?

RYDER: We knew pretty, I would say we knew relatively soon in the process of me being a part of that conversation, because Becky had already kind of started on the Success Center vision, and was kind of working towards that, and then I found out about this effort from the Gear Up folks who heard about a vision that I had for doing a design studio style teen, freshman teen approach to instruction that I had been kind of trying to get off the ground, but kept kind of getting knocked down -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - by, by some of the gatekeepers.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Really liked the idea, they just couldn't figure out how to make the schedule work.

GONZALEZ: What, who thought that these two things would work together though?

RYDER: The little group of people that I convinced would.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So, well, let's go back then to the origin point of that. What made you think that this would work? I mean I'm guessing that you may have had some, even if it was a couple of moments while you were doing just the makerspace in your own classroom -

RYDER: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: - that made you start thinking, there's some social emotional stuff going on here that maybe we want to really, you know, ratchet up. Like, where did you get this idea to layer that on?

RYDER: I'm glad you asked that question. Is that, that's the proper, like, podcast-type response, right? You know, that's a great question. What was happening in my room was kind of, it's kind of opposite of what I hear happened with a lot of people.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: I started the makerspace in my room not because I wanted kids making things, but because I had adopted design thinking -

GONZALEZ: Yep.

RYDER: - as like my lens through which I was doing everything, and we needed to prototype solutions to stuff. We needed to make things, and I needed to have the materials available to me. So I kind of went into making in my classes from that place of, all right, we are doing need-finding, we're doing empathy work, we're really understanding what someone is like and trying to dig deeper and looking at insights and looking at body language and listening to someone's words and how does their diction relate to what they're feeling, and how do our feelings actually align to our actions and what happens when they're out of alignment? I'd been teaching a humanities class with my buddy Sam Dunbar. We founded it here, and we've been teaching it for probably six years at that point. And it, you know, we were combining social studies with English and the conversations and the places we were going were getting into this kind of human condition place, and since we were focused on human-centered problem solving, we were bringing up a lot of stuff. And the projects that started to lend themselves were doing things like designing sanctuary spaces for people. So we read "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson, and one of my favorite projects we came up with was how might we design a sanctuary space for someone else in the room as well as how might we design a sanctuary space for one of the characters in "Speak" who's not Melinda, the protagonist, who kind of has her own sanctuary. And so while we're doing that, we're talking about what makes something safe.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: You know, we're, we're, we're dealing with that, and we're studying Dan Pink's "Whole New Mind," and so we're looking at right brain thinking. And so we're talking a lot about, you know, what it means to be inherently human and what it means, you know, what are these feelings we're having, we're dealing a lot with kids who are struggling with that, and we're seeing, when they start making things, an engagement level that they weren't having before.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And we're seeing kids who typically have said, "I can't," "I don't," "What's the point?"

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We're watching all of that just, like, drop. The number of times kids are going, "Why are we even doing this?" just, like, bottomed out.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: It would be like a couple of kids saying it, and a kid next to him would be like, dude, we're doing this because there are people who don't have anywhere to go.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And we're like, yeah, that's why we're doing it.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. A much bigger reason outside of school.

RYDER: Right? Like, well this isn't going to fix it. And the guy's, and then the next kid goes, shut up, just do it. They stopped asking, you know, why do I have to?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: What's the point? Because it became inherit by adopting that design, you know, that mindset of design and human-centered design. So I was seeing the effects of that on some of my, I call them the rough and readies?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: You know, like, they're great kids but wow, school just has not worked for them for a really long time by the time they saw me as a ninth-grade teacher.

GONZALEZ: Yep.

RYDER: And I was watching this shift, I'm watching them design tiny houses for the characters in "Of Mice and Men," you know, we call them "Mice and Tiny Houses" so that designing these tiny, these to-scale tiny houses that meet the needs of George and Lennie and also Crooks and Candy so that we're not just talking about the surface-level stuff.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We're trying to really think about well, what is it they actually need? And that leads the conversations to what you really need, and then they're building things, and I'm watching just the affect in them -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - go from like defensive posture, right -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - to this openness. And so because I had seen that, I'm like, wait, this place could be about one thing, but it could be a problem-solving studio.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: Right? We can apply it. And we were using all sorts of techniques in talking about this Success Center, we were using all sorts of methods that I was using with design, you know, the design thinking kids.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Like, wait a minute. This just maps over.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So I just brought it up while we were sitting around the table, I'm like, couldn't we do both? You know, couldn't it serve both purposes?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And like there wasn't pushback. It was like oh, yeah, and it didn't hurt that, you know, Becky's husband is this amazing artist who does this moving folk art and his pieces are both beautiful and very provocative and thoughtful and her daughter is going into art therapy.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: You know, like, there's a lot for her to be like, oh yeah.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Yeah, this could work.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. This is, this is reminding me, I'm not sure if you've been in contact with Josh Stumpenhorst at all through the internet or whatever but this reminds of a video that he shared with me once, because he's now I think a librarian, media center guy. He's moved out of the classroom and he was also talking about the SEL benefits of, of running that kind of space, how kids will come in and get a lot of their sort of social emotional needs met, because they happen to be in there. And he's got this video of them trying, they were fooling around, they were trying to stack, I don't know what it was, boxes or popsicle sticks or something, trying to reach the ceiling. It was really emotional after while seeing how these kids just got into it, and like you could hear the bell ringing, and they were just like, screw it, we're staying here. And it was, it was kind of the same point, that you can sort of, when kids get really absorbed in something, in solving a problem together, a lot of the walls can come down, and the defensiveness can come down, so, I guess I'm just, I was just seeing a connection there with that.

RYDER: Absolutely, absolutely.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's get into the logistics of this place, because tell me first off, where is this in your, is it in, in the high school building someplace?

RYDER: Yep. It's right in the high school. We took a faculty lounge -

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: - and made it a student space.

GONZALEZ: Where did the faculty go? "Sorry."

RYDER: So our campus recently underwent a massive renovation.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: But we have these faculty, we have three faculty lounges around the campus, so we had these spaces that were kind of like, do we really need these? Turns out we did, because the building was already too small for a lot of other reasons.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Longer story, but basically we only had a couple of faculty we had to displace, and one of whom was the district psychologist who became a regular fixture, until she took a job in another district, she was regularly in here, which was fantastic.

GONZALEZ: Oh great.

RYDER: She was forming relationships with kids who were feeling more comfortable talking to her, and when she was doing diagnostics and stuff, they're like, oh. I know Ms. Chouinard. This is fine.

GONZALEZ: Okay, so it's in a faculty lounge?

RYDER: Yes.

GONZALEZ: Or what used to be a faculty lounge, okay.

RYDER: So it's got a fridge, it's got a sink.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: You know, it's got a bunch of weird cubicles that we've turned into different kind of workstations.

GONZALEZ: Okay. And when somebody walks in, does it look like a makerspace more than, I mean are there little piles of stuff everywhere?

RYDER: Piles of stuff everywhere.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Because I am a slob. But every day kids come in and try to make it better. But no, you walk in, when you first walk through the door, you see tall, like adjustable tables that we only ever keep up high.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: You see tools everywhere, you see tons of flexible seating. We're down to just one table that's kind of like the original conference table that was in the room. It's on wheels. It can split in half, so it's great.

GONZALEZ: Nice. Yeah.

RYDER: The seats are combination of Target finds with the, these like kind of captain chairs that are soft. I just got a couple of buoy chairs just in the last couple of weeks, seats you could say from Steelcase. Lot of, lots of stools. I love a good barstool.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Because it can move around. Lots of wobble stools.

GONZALEZ: Okay. Do kids just get a pass to show up when they feel like it? Do they wander in before and after school? Is it a class period that they could like, how do kids actually get access to it?

RYDER: The way it's working out this year is Periods 1 and 2 are really open to, I should say we have a four-period day.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Periods 1 and 2 I try to keep it open as a, you need to come down? You know, you can call down, get a pass, I'll write you a pass, you can come in from your study hall. Your teacher can call down or send me an email and say, hey, can so and so come and work down in the SIC? They could use some help on something or they just need a space that's not this classroom right now to work.

GONZALEZ: Okay, yeah. Let's, run through with me the reasons, because I'm assuming you don't have many kids that are saying, "I'm having some emotional problems right now. I need to go down to the SIC." Like, is there usually an alternative reason that they give for going down?

RYDER: Yeah. So the SEL side is like the added benefit and the added bonus.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: And there are kids who come in with that as kind of like their focus.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We really, we really try to brand ourselves and market ourselves to the student body as here's where you go when you're having any sort of problem, academic, emotional, vocational, personal, whatever it is. A problem doesn't have to be a bad thing. A problem can just be like a question you have or something you're working on.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: But it's really for everybody and we especially do a good job of meeting the needs of those kids with a social emotional kind of gap.

GONZALEZ: How, how do you actually, when you say you market it to them, is this something that's done through the school newsletter? Do you have commercials that you've done for it? Like how did you actually roll this out to the students and explain to them what it was?

RYDER: Basically word of mouth.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: A lot of going to classes. So the other thing I do besides having individuals come in is I push out, just like a librarian. And really if you think of how a librarian functions -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - and my wife is an amazing school librarian, so shout out to the school librarians, but if you kind of think of the different ways that a librarian can function where they can push out, do work with classes, classes come down and work there in the library, sometimes it's a one-on-one, sometimes it's a small group, sometimes it's split. Like I based my work and my role on that type of a model. So I try to be everything to everybody.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Which is hard.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.

RYDER: But that's the idea is, is that sometimes I'm going to team up with a class, and sometimes I'm going to work one-on-one and it's really going to be what's available and what's scheduled. And, but there's no, a huge part of it is stigma free, no barrier to access.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: So it's not like well, you're not doing XYZ so you can't go.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Or it's not, well, you know what, you didn't turn this in, so you should go there. It's not a remedial space. It's not a formalized intervention even though I'm often part of an intervention plan with students.

GONZALEZ: Okay. Huh.

RYDER: Because whatever is going on with them, it's not working.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: So we try to, we try to find solutions that meet the kids' needs, hold them accountable, we get the academic rigor in there and make sure that that's not falling to the wayside. And in that process, by just being like a kind of third party that is invested in only the student but not in anything else, we get to have some conversations and meetings and planning around some of these kids where I get to push a little bit and ask, you know, the kind of design questions around well, what is it that we're really trying to achieve here, and what does so and so really need, and who else needs something in this? You know? Because sometimes by meeting the kid's need, we're meeting the parent's need.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Right?

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: And that's okay. Like, let's just own it though.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We don't, we might not talk about that, usually. It's always like, well if we're really here for the kid, and I want to say, that's nice and good -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We're all here for each other, we're here for ourselves.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: We're here for lots of people. Let's make sure that what we're doing isn't going to get undermined because we've got competing needs.

GONZALEZ: Right. If I were to walk into the center one day, if it was sort of a typical day, and I'm guessing you're going to say, there's no such thing as a typical day, but - what would I actually see? What would kids be doing?

RYDER: So I'll give you today as an example.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: I think today, today was a very typical day. You come in. I happen to have a study hall, a small study hall that meets with me on this particular day. So those six kids were kind of in the space that that they tend to habitate, so I kind of checked in with them. I checked in with them and then students from the psychology class down the hall came down. I gave them a little instruction on the collaboration that we're doing, the psychology teacher, Robert Condon and I, are doing a brain anatomy and basic function, "unit" isn't really the right way to describe it, but what we're doing is we're having them create short videos, one to three minutes that explain all the basic functions of the brain and how the different parts of the brain interact.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And they've got to make a video that someone else could watch and understand and learn from, and he's got a set of, you know, a set of criteria in terms of what it has to teach and what has to be in there, and I gave them a set of creative constraints. They can either make it out of clay, they can do it as a stop motion drawing, not stop motion drawing, they can make it out of clay, and they can stop motion video or they can make it out of cut paper, like old classic South Park style.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Or they can do it hand drawn. But the idea is it has to have motion and movement, because no one doesn't want that, it has to be accurate. Needs to have all that information, and it should instruct. People should feel like they're, should, should learn from it and after they get their videos done, we're going to push them out so people can follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Watch out because they're coming next week.

GONZALEZ: Cool.

RYDER: We're going to try to get feedback and see how, how effective their videos are.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So that is going on concurrently. Had another teacher walk in and start asking some questions for a, a project that we're doing, Alicia Wolf, one of our English teachers. She and I collaborate a lot, so she had some thoughts and ideas about something we were doing in Period 4 at the end of the day where a student ended up coming in and creating visual representations of short stories. And she wanted to make sure that we were on the same page, and just wanted to check in with me about some of the kids who, who struggle and need a little more concrete, you know, flow and maybe a limit to the number of options available.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: So that they can focus, right? And, so that conversation happened. What I love about what I do is we're having that conversation, two young ladies who are having a hard time with their video, she said, hey, what if you used one of the Sphero robots? Did you show, and asked me, did you show her the, those new robots?

GONZALEZ: Wow. This is a teacher from a different class?

RYDER: Right. Like that's not one of the options.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: But now you've opened that can of worms, so here we go. So next thing we know, these two young ladies are learning how to code a Sphero, and they're so excited.

GONZALEZ: Oh, that's cool.

RYDER: And they were really struggling with finding any motivation before that. So they're, they're like, I'm going to go buy one of these. I'm like, buy a Sphero Mini. You don't need a BOLT. Like, I got the BOLT and they're awesome, but you don't need one, just get the Mini so if you want a toy, get the Mini. But that was Period 1, right?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Period 2, a student who's new to the school comes in with his special ed teacher and he's got this book full of art, and it's amazing. And I said, this is really cool. What do you want to do, like, why are you folks in here today? And...teacher just wanted him to see what's available.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And we got talking and I said, hey, I got a challenge for you. You like doing really, this goth punk art? I want you to see if you can make it interactive in some way. Like, I've got LED lights, I've got button cells, I've got [INAUDIBLE]. I want you to make that thing light up.

GONZALEZ: Cool.

RYDER: So he started working on that. We were working on trying to make it a switch. That didn't go well. I'm not, like I'm all jack of many trades, master of none.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Same time while that's happening, kids are, other kids are coming in. We, I worked on, students with essays, I worked on this student on a, an entrepreneurial pitch. Like, you know, and that's like a super typical day. Meanwhile there's three kids, I have a student who is homeschooled for most of the time, but she comes in for a few classes. Her dad couldn't pick her up. So I said, yeah, you can hang out in here. She figured out how to use her vacuum former yesterday with me.

GONZALEZ: Wow.

RYDER: So she was working on that.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And like, because we just bought a, a Mayku that's a really simple desktop vacuum former and looking at what we came up with yesterday and planning, like, what we might do later and is, you know. So there's all these different things all happening concurrently and yeah, and that's kind of like the whole day was just this kind of, like, all right let's shift into that mode, let's shift into this mode.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And that's what every day kind of is like.

GONZALEZ: Is Becky there the whole time?

RYDER: So Becky actually got a different job. So that's been an interesting thing since the spring. She got a job as the dean of this great school here in Maine called the Maine School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And it's over, it's about a 45-minute drive from here, 45 minutes to an hour. And she became the dean of their threshold program, which is a really cool program that helps, I'm probably going to get it wrong if I describe it too in-depth, but basically it creates a pathway for students who want to attend MeANS but who struggle with anxiety and other, other conditions that may, or barriers that make it difficult for them to get to campus. And so she helped coordinate teachers that go to their homes and teach them. So rather than it feeling like a tutorial or you're going online, you get an actual MeANS teacher comes to your home and works with you through the curriculum.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So there's not, there is no social, like, pure legal social work happening in this, in this SIC anymore, correct? There's not people doing case work there?

RYDER: There never was.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Background was in that.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: But because of, again, we want to be like really careful, and we also knew that the school was, the district was trying to get into the budget money for a, formal social workers -

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: - and didn't want to create the image that it was already available.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

RYDER: For that reason too.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: So even though the work she was doing was students, she kind of took the social emotional, like, lead, and I took the academic lead when the students were in here. There was this very careful not to step on toes and get, you know, get into somebody else's bucket, so to speak.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: Because, you know, we've got people who are experts and very passionate and very good at what they do here on campus, and we didn't want to upend anything. We really wanted to, from the beginning, wanted to be a support for everyone, including staff. So, you know, you don't have time to talk to all these kids today. Well, we can kind of play triage.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Like, "Hey, what's up? What's going on? Wow, sounds like you really do need to talk."

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Not this: "Hey, what's going on? Wow, sounds like you need to get over it." But not that blunt, but -

GONZALEZ: Yes, yes.

RYDER: "It sounds like you just need some processing."

GONZALEZ: Right, right, right. Yeah.

RYDER: And so we were balancing that out for quite a while. But she got that other job, so I had a great ed tech, Abby Demuzio, in the spring, was amazing. She came on as kind of, as an ed tech who's only here like for certain hours during the day, but acted as that, like, point person as kids came through the door, kids just connected with her. And she had a background in behavioral special ed and day treatment, the day treatment program. So a real, so she had a lot of experience with kids in really high emotional and behavioral need spaces.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: And just knew how to talk to kids in a way that deescalated -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - and also, like, said, all right now. You're deescalated. Now we got to do some stuff.

GONZALEZ: Right. Right, right, right.

RYDER: Which is awesome. And she didn't come back this fall because she's like starting a family, and it's super rad.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So I'm still waiting for our new person to start.

GONZALEZ: I gotcha. So there is a need and a defined space for another person who's got more of that SEL background of some sort?

RYDER: Yes.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And who can come and take the front on tracking data, making sure that, that we're keeping track of who's coming in. I mean I know who's in. You know, I keep a, I have a sign-in. We had, actually had a student make an app for us that has - this year's been a little funky but for the last two years we had this app that a student designed for us for sign-in. So I know who's in here, and I know who has used the space, but keeping track of all the stories -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - of who's working on what and how things are going, that alone is a job.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

RYDER: Because we have so many kids come through.

GONZALEZ: And you, do you need to do that in order to keep your funding?

RYDER: Yes we do.

GONZALEZ: Okay, gotcha.

RYDER: In a nutshell, yeah.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

RYDER: And data is important. Data drives decision making.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So why don't you, if you've got some stories, maybe two stories that you could tell me? Just about the impact that the center has had on a couple of kids, some of the positive outcomes that you've seen?

RYDER: One of our amazing kids, Margot. Margot started coming here as a, we're in our third year of existence, and Margot started coming here right in the first year, and Margot was really struggling with connecting with people, with kind of being in her own skin, like just - from the beginning, school looked like it was not going to go well.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Became kind of a regular fixture here. Started finding opportunities early on to get involved and really took a, really connected with Becky in some really important ways, and, and I got to connect with her as well. And from that moment forward, started just seeing an opportunity. Like, oh, hey, can I clean this up? Sure. Cool. Oh, hey, can I come down and work on this thing? Sure. You know, just kind of being around. Well then one day walks in goes, could we start an anti-bullying group? What? Sure. So the [INAUDIBLE] group was started, which is an anti-bullying kind of take action group is its intent.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: All kind of out of her own head.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So help fostered that into existence. Well, still while struggling with some stuff, struggling with some stuff at home, struggling academically a little bit, but starting to find more successes with these other successes. Well, started, went to a youth leadership group, because started that group, right? So we saw an opportunity for her to attend a youth leadership conference. Went, like got all kinds of crazy excited. Year goes by, goes again, ends up like talking in front of 500 people at this youth, youth leadership event. Like this person who wouldn't talk hardly ever -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - started doing better in school, gets involved in our Jobs for Maine's Graduates program. Next thing we know, like this fall, this kid is walking around feeling confident, is looking at potentially being an officer in that group, just created a product that the teacher wants to share statewide with all the other chapters of the Jobs for Maine's Graduates program, which is just this really cool kind of pathway from, from academic school into career paths. Really amazing organization. And the kid is just like walking around with this confidence, able to talk about whatever the problem is they're bumping into, got up in front of a group of students and like performed a song about their life. Like, what?

GONZALEZ: Wow.

RYDER: And like we were, we were speaking earlier, like to someone else I might be like, so a kid got the, you know, they found their voice. Oh, that sounds typical. Like, right? Like, lots of kids do that, right?

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: But what we were able to do through this space is because we had multiple points of view available to them, and we had different types of resources available -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - we had, you know, I was able to coach through, hey, here's how you write songs, right? Like, here's how, here's how songwriting works, even though I'm not a songwriter, I have a love for it and a passion for it.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Mentor that. Like, sometimes you've just got to love a thing to learn about a thing.

GONZALEZ: Yep.

RYDER: Doesn't have to be great. It could be amateur hour. Who cares? The fact is you made a thing.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: And you made the thing you wanted to.

GONZALEZ: Oh that's great.

RYDER: And I, oh, today that individual in here working goes, so this is the dumpster project that I made, which is things that just don't matter. You make it to get rid of it. You know you make it, great, and then it goes in the, in the hopper. She just goes, "It's not good. I didn't have time to do it well. But I'm disowning it." That is huge.

GONZALEZ: That's not something a withdrawn kid generally will say with confidence, yeah.

RYDER: Right? And comes in, you know, comes in, advocates for herself. There was a degree of helplessness that has, like, just shed, and it's been amazing to witness that. And I could point to probably a dozen students of similar, where you just could see them go from these kind of shell type, like, withdrawn, struggling to find a voice, to at least in this room, feeling like they can assert, you know, say what they need, and then you start to now see it happen in other avenues. And there's a few that I'm really working on trying to, trying to like bolster.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: To get, to get there, but that's that kind of, that's a social emotional learning through the act of doing academic work and taking the time that we can all do and it's super hard.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.

RYDER: It's super hard to find the time, but we can all start having those conversations about how might we take what you have a passion for and an interest in and allow that to be the vehicle through which you're going to learn this.

GONZALEZ: Got it, got it.

RYDER: Right?

GONZALEZ: Yes.

RYDER: Like, you can take the time to do that. It's hard though when you have 36 kids or 40 kids. I get it. You can't do it for every kid every day.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: And once you've opened that pathway to them, they can like find their way to it on their own -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: - in ways that you may not even realize, and then you really are in that facilitator mode that we all like.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. Yep.

RYDER: Right? You're not, "All right, kid, here's one of your five options, let's - " They're showing up going, what if I did this? And that's where this kiddo has gotten to.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

RYDER: And I just, I love it. And really, you know, like every story that I would share, like a potential [INAUDIBLE] about this place, that's the, that's the through line.

GONZALEZ: Right, right. That they sort of figure out who they are and they gain more confidence and -

RYDER: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And it's not at the sacrifice of academic learning. Sure, we've got kids that have, like, used this as an escape, they've used it as an excuse. I mean we, yep. Like -

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: Do kids ever just try to avoid? Yes.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: We've had kids where we've had to be like, wait a minute. You told us you were here on a pass, you know, like - you showed us a pass.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Let me see that pass again. I trusted you. You know. The office calls looking for a student. I'm like, yes, they're right - they walked out, and I didn't see them go.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Like this is stuff that happens.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: It's an imperfect system by, you know, and we've had kids who have struggled, and we haven't been able to help them. We had a student steal stuff. And we had - it's not all perfect, rosy, honey at all.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: We just feel really strongly that what we're doing is filling a space that we otherwise don't think is getting filled on campus.

GONZALEZ: If I'm a, if I'm a teacher and I'm listening to this or I'm an administrator, and I would like to try to set up something like this in my school, you're in Year 3 of this. What advice would you give to somebody in that position?

RYDER: I would say start with thinking about it like a library, because that's a point of reference that is, people understand, right? Especially if you know you have good library culture, you know? There, students are, you know, are encouraged to come in and access resources and your librarian interacts with them and it's very much about, hey, what can I do to be helpful to you today? How can I help you find the thing that you need, right? Because that's what most librarians do is they're really there to help navigate a need.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And help you solve the problem, right? So if you kind of approach it from that point of view, then you start realizing there's a lot of things you don't have to have, those things that are in the back of your head. Like, but we don't have 3D printers. Okay, don't have a 3D printer, who cares. But we don't have $3,000 worth of equipment. Who cares?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Right? What you need, I feel really strongly that one person isn't enough. You really need two people.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: Because you need that person who can, who can take that kiddo that comes through the door and do the deep dive with them and, and even though you can't deep dive every kid every day, you have that time.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: With at least one kid is going to feel that.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: Right? And that's huge. And then you have the other who's kind of acting as the, the facilitator through and is kind of saying like, all right, well, you know, so and so's going to be available later or let's, we'll write a note, let's write an email to them to find out [INAUDIBLE] or you know, how can I be helpful? All right, you really need to talk to the other one. Okay, that's cool.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: What might we do now? Like how can we navigate through this and figure that out? So those are pieces that I think are super vital, because it also honors the kids coming through the door with the help. And then the last piece, and this is truly the last piece, you just need two individuals who lead with empathy.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And they're, that when they're coming through the door, the goal is not to get them to think the way you think or to do the thing you want them to do, the goal is to understand where they're coming from.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: And I don't brag very often, because I'm a, I'm a schmuck, and I screw up all the time, and I'm a hot mess in so many aspects of life. But I do like to think that when a kid comes through the door, even though I have like goals in mind for every kid, I'm more interested in initially hearing what they have to say and where they're coming from. And I say a lot of, "So what I'm hearing you say is - "

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.

RYDER: Right? And that makes me think what if. So if you, if you lead with empathy and you approach a space like this from a lens of possibility, then like you don't need piles and piles and piles of things.

GONZALEZ: Right.

RYDER: You don't need, I mean I, I'm really fortunate. I already had a lot for my classroom. I'm really fortunate. I've networked with a lot of people, so I already had some people to ask, hey, what should we have? And what would be a really good idea? And I'm tuned in with, with the maker ed community, and I'm tuned in with the design community, and I'm tuned in with the ed tech community. So I know about things. So I did buy a lot of stuff to have available, because I could see a lot of different ways we could use them. But really when you break down what I use in the room thing most often, that I use every day, index cards, markers, Post-It notes.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, that's not expensive equipment, yeah.

RYDER: That's not expensive. Like that's the stuff I use every single day. Oh, and I will say Lego.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.

RYDER: I use a lot of Lego, right? And you know what's cool? The Legos I have, 95 percent of the Legos I have in the space were all donated by students.

GONZALEZ: Oh nice.

RYDER: They were kids who were like, had outgrown them and just said hey, like, do you want these? I said, of course I do, are you kidding me?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So, you know. There's a lot with manipulatives and a lot of, you know, just getting kids to realize that if they pause and they plan and they, they think in ways that are not just by staring at a screen, they think of ways that's not just staring at the pages on the book or staring at the, at the worksheet. The solutions are going to start revealing themselves to them as soon as they start working in a way that's more, more attuned to, to how they process information in general.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: So it's a lot of that stuff. That's not expensive.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: You know. I, the expensive part is the people.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. You have documented a whole lot of this journey in your own online spaces, correct?

RYDER: Yeah. Yes.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So where, where can people go to learn more? Because I have a feeling that once somebody decides they're interested, they're going to want to come over to you to, to see it and to ask more questions. So where can they go?

RYDER: So one place you can go is you can go to my website, DanRyder207.com.

GONZALEZ: DanRyder207.com?

RYDER: Yep, 207, like why that number? It's the zip code, or the area code for the entire state of Maine.

GONZALEZ: All right.

RYDER: Because there's only [INAUDIBLE] of us here. So we, we only have one area code. But DanRyder207.com has links to all my different spaces.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And going on Twitter I'm @WickedDecent on Twitter and on Instagram.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

RYDER: And I share regularly what I do there. And I've got a couple of videos that are, there's one that's linked right at the top of my, my Twitter profile, that's pinned right there that really does a nice job of capturing what we do every day. It's a little awkward and weird for me to have it there, because I, I, as arrogant as the kids think I am, humility is like the No. 1 value in me. So it's a little weird to self-promote.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

RYDER: But it's a video that was made by one of our local news stations that I think does a really great job of capturing it. And I have another video too that was made because I received an NEA Foundation and Horace Mann Excellence in Education award last year, and they made this beautiful video that also really captures what we do.

GONZALEZ: Yes, I saw that one. That was a great one.

RYDER: Yeah, it's great. It's really about me, so I think it captures the space somewhat.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: But I think this one that's, that's on the top of my Twitter profile really does a nice job of capturing what it's like for the kids.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

RYDER: And the type of work that I do. So.

GONZALEZ: Cool.

RYDER: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Dan, thank you so much for walking up to me at that happy hour at South By.

RYDER: You have no idea, like, I was so thrilled to finally meet you, because I'll say it right here: The work that you have done has been tremendously influential on my work.

GONZALEZ: Oh, no kidding.

RYDER: Can't even describe to you how many of your newsletters, how many of your posts, how many of your podcasts, have a direct line to something here, and the No. 1 is the single point rubric.

GONZALEZ: No kidding. That's fantastic.

RYDER: It changed lives.

GONZALEZ: Wow.

RYDER: Like -

GONZALEZ: People don't even understand how hard I fought for that sucker in grad school, and I lost, and now I am avenged, yes.

RYDER: Oh, you, you win, you win so large. It really, it truly, I, I taught it to undergrad students at the university here, I've taught it to colleagues -

GONZALEZ: Nice.

RYDER: - I've taught it to, in workshops when people say, so how do you assess this? And I'm like, let me show you the gorgeousness -

GONZALEZ: Oh.

RYDER: You know, and I always point to your, your post from several years ago now, that original one.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.

RYDER: You know this is the one that, this is, it launched a whole different way of thinking about, about standards-based assessment and really and I'm, you know, I'm not just saying this because I get to be on the show today, it really, holy cow.

GONZALEZ: Man, that is so great to hear.

RYDER: I, I feel honored to be able to talk with you today and just to be able to walk up to you at a Carl Hooker event, which is like, you're already like what is this going to be.

GONZALEZ: I was too.

RYDER: Everybody's like, this is Carl Hooker. He's going to say things, and we don't know what it's going to be. But you know it's going to be fun and somewhat insane.

GONZALEZ: It was. It was a fun night, it was a fun night. And hopefully this will now, you know, have a ripple effect and we will see these little centers cropping up in all these schools and kids will be helped and everybody will say, oh, it's because that interview you did with Dan Ryder a couple years ago.

RYDER: Oh gosh, I hope so. That's the -

GONZALEZ: See that?

RYDER: We've got to find her, and I, yeah. If anybody just be sitting on a pile of money somewhere, we are at the end of our grant life. So -

GONZALEZ: Whoa.

RYDER: Yeah. So that's, that's, uh, I'm headed into that work. So -

GONZALEZ: Okay. Well, keep me updated on how that goes.

RYDER: There we go. I'm feeling confident, and I'm also feeling, you know, like it's not bad to have a benefactor. I read "Great Expectations." Nothing can go wrong with a mysterious benefactor.

GONZALEZ: How about I put a button at the bottom of the post that said if you're a benefactor, click here?

RYDER: Yeah, click here.

For links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, and to see photos of the Success & Innovation Center, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 133. To get a weekly email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.

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Episode 133: How One Makerspace is Meeting Students' Social-Emotional Needs

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 133 Transcript Jennifer Gonzalez, host Most teachers instinctively know that if students' emotions are off-kilter in any way, if their stress levels are high or their social lives are a mess, they won't be able to concentrate on academics.

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This episode explores the core principles behind Genius Hour, an instructional model where students pursue passion projects with choice and voice. It pairs perfectly with makerspaces by encouraging curiosity, creativity, and personalized learning. Great for educators looking to connect maker learning with student-driven inquiry.

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Jennifer Gonzalez, Host
Listen to the audio version of this podcast.
Gonzalez: This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 38 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to tell you the story of a school library that increased student use by 1000 percent.
[music playing]
It's a given that technology continues to grow. But this growth has not been without its casualties: traditional school libraries are seeing a sharp drop in student use. In this episode, I'm going to talk to two educators from Ohio who completely changed how their school library was used, and saw truly incredible results.

Before I get started, let me just take a minute to thank those of you who have left a review for me on iTunes. I am absolutely floored by the nice things you're saying over there, and knowing that you're listening and really getting something out of these episodes just motivates me to keep going. If you haven't yet left a review, please take a moment this week to go over to iTunes and leave one. Thanks so much.

Okay, let's get into this fantastic library story.

Last year at Big Walnut Middle School in Sunbury, Ohio, there were some days when fewer than ten students passed through the library doors. Just like in so many other schools, students and teachers had a growing number of resources available to them through tablets, Chromebooks, e-readers and Smartboards, so they no longer had the same need to visit the library that they once did.

Some schools have addressed this problem by converting their libraries to makerspaces. These hands-on environments allow students to to build, create, design, and experiment. When we see makerspaces, we tend to see big Lego tables, coding and computing tools like Raspberry Pi kits, and 3-D printers where students can see their creations come to life.

But Big Walnut principal Penny Sturtevant had a vision that was a bit different from the makerspaces she was seeing. She wanted her library to be a place that was a little less open-ended, a place where students did hands-on work, but as an extension of what was happening their classrooms. Instead of taking her inspiration from the maker movement, Sturtevant was interested in trends she was seeing toward more personalized learning. The new and improved library would be called the Learning Center.

As she began the process of reimagining the space, Sturtevant asked me to serve as a consultant. She introduced me to Ed Kitchen, whom she had recently hired to develop and then run the Learning Center, and the three of us met over Skype and a shared Google Doc to explore all the possibilities, think through the logistics, and formulate a plan. Even in the early stages, we knew that this might be a story I would share here, so that other schools who might not be ready for a full makerspace could see this as a viable alternative.

So how did it all turn out? Well, Big Walnut's brand-new Learning Center definitely doesn't suffer from a student use problem. On an average day, over a hundred students will visit to work on projects, make use of interactive technologies, film and edit videos, and yes, check out books.

Here's my interview with the people who made it happen.

Gonzalez: I am here with Penny Sturtevant and Ed Kitchen, and they're here from Big Walnut Middle School. And this is a school in Ohio, and they have done some really interesting and creative things this year with what used to be their library media center. They had been learning a lot about makerspaces and knew that they could be getting more use out of their current library. And so, we've worked together quite a bit last year and over the summer and they have made some big changes, so we're going to talk about this with them. So, hi Penny.

Gonzalez: And so, thanks so much for talking to me about this and sharing the story of the evolution of your library, and we're going to be sharing some pictures and videos on the website so that other people can see how it all works. I'm going to let you guys take the mic for a while and tell me a little bit about the story of how all of this got started.

Sturtevant: I'll talk about the administrative piece, and then I'm going to pass it over to Ed and once we got to the opportunity where he took it from there. Last spring, about a year ago this time, I was approached with the knowledge that our library was not being used. We have a beautiful space. Our building's just now five years old. Rarely were kids in it, rarely had it ever changed from that traditional books, come in, sit quietly, work at the table, and leave. And a number of kids we were seeing in our library had declined significantly to where days when the library was closed, no one noticed. So, what is the challenge? It's one of these integral spaces historically that's big, has a lot of potential resources, it's not being used; what can you do?

Given some time just to think, a little bit of reading-I'll be honest, I probably could have afforded some more investigation, but I came up with the idea of developing the library into a space that teachers could use. How can they use it as an extension of their learning? And was fortunate enough that our administration said, "We have a person we're willing to dedicate to that process." They were willing to make use of this and brought Ed on board, and together we began to talk. And Ed's background in technology and working in a variety of ways, he really helped me to get excited about just what I said - that idea of creating a place that was an extension of the classroom, which we felt was a little twist off of what traditional makerspaces tend to be, and that was the purpose we felt we had here at the middle school. So, Ed came on board with that, and from there he took the place and began developing it - what he thought could support the classroom.

Kitchen: Yeah, so at the beginning of the school we have a large space. If you want to look at it, it just says "The Library." So, books, a few computers. So, we had to really adapt to what our staff would want, and with that being the extension of the learning, extension of the classroom, into what we were going to call the Learning Center. So, my first job was really to kind of mainstream on what did we want this to look like. So, as we looked forward and really looked at our staff, we wanted to make it a collaboration space. So, the design of it, as we'll get into it later, is all about collaboration pods.

Being a classroom teacher for 22 years, the last three years have been with the technology coach in our technology department, and looking at all this 21 st century learning, I was really able to get a sense of what is kind of out there. So, we brought in some equipment, which we'll talk about, to kind of really engage the kid, engage the student into not just a library, not just a common space, not just a meeting space, but really an extension of the classroom. So, the process took a little longer than we thought, because as you start to look at things that are out there, there isn't a lot. When I say that, there's more makerspaces than what we're calling common learning spaces in schools. So, we took that idea and just ran with it.

Gonzalez: So, that's a good thing for us to get clear right off the top of this, is that you all are calling this the Learning Center. You would not refer to it as a makerspace.

Kitchen: Not at all. I think, as I've been around the country presenting on different aspects of 21 st century, the big word was the makerspace, getting your hands on things, doing 3D printers and so forth. And what I think was neat about Penny's vision here is it's an extension of the classroom. So, as we'll talk about later, it just gives the teachers more opportunities to look at ways they do their classroom, the way they do their projects. So, we set that up in a way that we wanted it to be a true learning space, a learning environment.

Sturtevant: We look at makerspace-our high school has a setting called the innovation center, ours is a learning center. They're all creative learning spaces, but the purpose of those spaces is different. The purpose of a makerspace is for a kid to come in and, in my mind, explore, and there are things there for them to do. That's somewhat similar to what our technology teacher is doing: having different areas for those kids to explore and grow in different places of his technology class within the technology standards. This was for every classroom. Every class would have a place to go beyond their classroom walls physically and in a manner and means that you cannot often do within the classroom. Or individually, as students need, or in groups as they need to go and develop their projects, their presentations, or work together to grasp whatever standard, whatever learning target is needed out of that classroom.

Gonzalez: I would think that teachers would be able to grasp the concept of what you're doing, maybe even more readily than what's happening with makerspaces right now. I'm imagining a lot of teachers would see things like 3D printers and Raspberry Pi kits and saying, "I'm not really sure how I could even make use of that. So, you all have fun, but I'm still going to stay in my classroom." And you are really trying to extend the classroom with other resources.

Gonzalez: So, let's talk about what's actually in there. What do you offer to teachers in the learning center?

Kitchen: So, I think that was the hard part - what do we put in there? We don't want to make it a technology center, and we don't want to make it-in lack of a better word, we don't want to make it a Starbucks, Panera Bread, that type of learning. I think we want it somewhere in the middle, because today's kids, they want that. So, really, we have a couple different things. One is we have two interactive flat panels. So, they're 65 inch and a 70 inch. We have two TVs that the kids can hook up with their Chromebooks or mobile devices, we also have an interactive projector, we have a green screen room, we have three cameras that they can use throughout the day, within that specific period, we have an iPad that can go along with the green screen room, that we use an app for green screening and video. We have ten Chromebook computers, we have five or six desktops that are still being in use in ways they'll use through digital video editing or other apps or other programs that will need desktops. And we also have a lot of movable furniture. Really, we have ten pieces of furniture that will be moved in different configurations throughout the week.

The one thing that I noticed when I do some research and look around is you can't have things that are in one spot. So, if you put things in fours, they're going to stay in fours. So, everything we have there is movable, whether it's the chairs, the interactive boards, the flat panels. The only thing, really, that you can't move are the TVs - they're mounted on the wall. And we also have an interactive projector that kids can get up and interact, too. And the last thing, which is probably one of the more interesting pieces, is really the start of it-and we'll probably talk about how it's used throughout the day-it's an ID system. When the kids come in, they scan their student ID, which goes to a spreadsheet that then the teacher and the classroom can see what time they checked into the learning center.

Gonzalez: What did you end up deciding to do with that? Because I know that we kind of went back and forth for a while with some ideas of how that could work, but we never found any really great seamless system. What did you end up doing?

Kitchen: So, I convinced our photography place to put their bar code on the bottom of their student IDs, and that bar code was just their last name and first name - it was that simple. So, when the kids got their picture taken, they downloaded the program which they already had on their computers, and then they put on the bottom of each kid's student ID just a long code, a bar code that has their last name and first name. So, now when they walk in, all they do is scan the bar code, it spits out their last name, first name.

Gonzalez: Okay. And then, so, where does that information go? Because you were doing this partly because you all wanted some data on who was using this and how long they stayed. Do they record exits also?

Kitchen: No. We talked about exits, but I think right now our big push is we just want to have data on how many people are using it, what times they're using it. It was really a design too from the standpoint of the teacher: How do I know that John Smith came down to the learning center at 10:52? Well, all you have to do is check in a spreadsheet. So, I have a live Google spreadsheet that it goes into and I created a timestamp that automatically timestamps when they scan their bar code.

Gonzalez: Got it. Okay, so they come in and scan, and the information goes into a Google spreadsheet. And how did you actually connect those two? What was the software program that you used to actually make - because you've just got the regular, like a library bar code reader?

Kitchen: Yeah, that was it; a bar code reader that scans right into a cell and the cell - I have a program that's just a timestamp inside the Google spreadsheets, it's just a simple program. And anything that uses a bar code and it goes into that cell, it automatically puts a timestamp right on it.

Sturtevant: And that Google spreadsheet is shared with our staff, so our staff know that the kid's there once the kid's there. They have them and they stay, so that accountability piece, as you manage a larger school or the teachers, know that's where a kid really did go.

Gonzalez: They can see right on their classroom computer that the kid just checked in because it'll come up live right on that spreadsheet.

Sturtevant: And then the accountability back is the teacher sends them down with what we call a prescription, because we didn't want a simple hall pass. The prescription comes in and this tells Mr. Kitchen this is what they're working on. And then that allows them to give direction to the students of what might be there and the students make some choice. The interesting that I've seen in the beginning piece is the kids are often telling the teachers why they want to go to the learning center, and they're figuring out why the learning center is a value.

Gonzalez: Okay. See, I want to do a full walkthrough on how all this happens. Let me ask one other question so that I don't forget it, because now I'm thinking about all this different furniture and equipment and technology that you all have, and I'm imagining someone listening to this, saying, "That sounds great. How do we pay for this?" And I know you all got some grant money, I believe, for doing this. So, let's talk about how you funded this project.

Sturtevant: When we started the proposal, we had no knowledge of any money coming our way. So, our initial start was, "What can we do with what we have?" And we had traditional furniture in there, books-if you look at the video, I believe it even shows the before-after. The books took up half the room-at least the bookstands took up half the room. Everything was very fastened, as you might say, and it was in its place. First thing Mr. Kitchen did was wipe that out; almost wiped out the contents. Didn't give them away or anything, but opened up the space. The books now became consolidated along the wall. And for those who have a love of books, we have as many books as we did before. We consolidated them and we're in the process of working with our local library for movement of books they have to us on a weekly basis, so kids can go in, check out books from our community library, they can be delivered here, they bring it back here, and we deliver them back to the library. So, in essence, we have expanded our library collection, not shrunk it.

Gonzalez: Nice. Okay, and that was going to be another question - kids can come in and use it the way they used a traditional library.

Sturtevant: Absolutely. They can come, get a book, read. And that's another topic in itself. We can even grow that to possibly electronics, the Kindles, all of that, in the future. So, with that, he took what furniture we have that he could move and be creative with it. We had some donations. I donated some stuff that I had. We went out. And then, we were fortunate to get a county grant-do you remember the amount?

Sturtevant: It was 20 thousand. So, a significant number, but not so exorbitant that a lot of schools maybe can't help with that. Working with some companies, and that's where Ed's background came in, to decide what was bells and whistles and the latest and greatest, to what was something that could grow, and what would bring kids in, and I will give Mr. Kitchen all of that with his research and some of his visits. As silly as it sounds, I would almost give up every technology thing - and there wouldn't be one technology thing that I wouldn't give up out of the furniture. The furniture is the integral piece, and that movement that the kids can move and go and how they sit or where they go working together in pairs or partners or large groups, or if the teacher does come down and use it and we rearrange the furniture - that's where I see the creativity of how they're collaborating.

Gonzalez: That's really interesting, yeah.

Sturtevant: So, that's my non-technological perception. Mr. Kitchen, from there...

Kitchen: I agree. I think the first question would be, "How much did you spend?" And the first half of the year, we didn't have that, so it functioned very similar to how we're functioning now. We're just fortunate to have the money to get some, for lack of a better term, fun tools in there that the kids can use. So, without those tools, it still functions in a very similar way it is now, with the collaboration and the different ways. We just had desk chairs with wheels on them, the old computer chairs that rolled around, and some in-house furniture. Just the newer stuff has really put a top on the collaboration part of it.

Gonzalez: Yeah. So, I want to go in the direction that you all want to go, and one thing we could do is sort of just look at this in terms of how does it get used - when a teacher, and then their student comes in to use it. Or we could talk about how you actually rolled it out to staff?

Kitchen: Okay. I'll talk a little bit about how the day works, or really how the period works, and then I think Penny can talk about the staff. Just imagine yourself as a classroom teacher and you probably want to send kids out to the hallway, but are afraid to send the kids out to the hallway because of X, Y, and Z - some teachers are hesitant of that. So now, this space has opened that. So, if you want to now personalize your learning, which is what we're doing nowadays anyway, you can send now three or four kids down to this learning center with this prescription that allows us really to work with them.

So, it start out with the kid walking in with the prescription from the teacher, scan their ID, and from there what our job is, we need to really get an analysis of the student's needs, and then what kind of work are they doing? Do they need the green screen room, do they need just a quiet space, do they need to sit with each other or grab a Chromebook? What's funny is, at this age, they know what they're going to do. So, when they come down here, they have an idea. If they don't, they're old enough and young enough at the same time to really ask, and to be inquisitive on, "How can I make this project different?" So, once they walk in, scan it, go to their appropriate area, then they start working. And, really, we're just kind of a facilitator. And they know over time where they should be going and working on what project, whether it's an interactive white board, whether they go to the green screen, or whether they do it old paper and pencil, cutting, things like that.

So, my job was I wanted them to know when they walked into the door where to go -what station, what collaboration pod, what can I move, where do I go to work. And they're really on their own. So, we have kids from art, science, math, language arts. We can have those kids from each discipline at any given time.

Gonzalez: Can you give me a few examples of some of the neat things you've seen kids working on when they come in? Maybe some things that you just weren't expecting that have just arisen now from having this space available?

Kitchen: Well, one is the video. As a technology teacher, and even when I taught math it was very hard to create technology math, so this has really given me the opportunity to kind of give kids examples. So, when they go present, they can use the green screen room, for example; we have an app that has a newscast on it. So, we have kids coming in and instead of giving a PowerPoint or Google slide presentation about a certain project they're on, they will partner up with the kids and they will do actually a newscast. And we have a teleprompter that I hooked up through a Chromebook that they can actually look at it as a newscast or a weather forecast or a sports center forecast or a top ten. I mean, we're really using things that they're seeing every day, that they enjoy, that will make the presentation more personal, and the accountability of it is the piece that I think what you're going to see from the teacher perspective, is you're going to get some work that's more personal.

So, we have some green screen use with the apps. We also have just plain old video, where they will just look at themselves as an interviewer out in the field somewhere, interviewing somebody, or I had a kid one day-and really, you got to get the pulse of what the kids are looking at, and they watch a lot of MTV and I had a kid do an MTV Cribs of our LC. So, he had somebody do the camera and they walk through the LC like it was his house, and he explained everything what was going on in it. And it was just really off the cuff. It wasn't planned. It was very neat to see. So, we have a lot of those different types. The other ones I think that's probably used more is just a collaboration piece on the Chromebook and just to be able to display it on a 40-inch TV, and for everybody to have input on it is, I think, missing out there, because that's what we do in our working world - we have to work with people. And that was the goal of the collaboration pods.

Sturtevant: So, as a principal, when I go down, I'll see a group of kids studying for a test in a traditional sense. I'll see a kid in the green screen room that'd be taping their bulletin for language arts class, or two or three kids doing a skit in there. I'll see another group and they have two or three Chromebooks tied in to one of our flat screen TVs as a monitor, and they're working and editing all three together on some paper or some topic or some presentation. I'll see a couple other kids over on one of our panels working through some math, and it's kind of great for some of our tactile kids. So, they're coming in and they're just doing their traditional math equations, but they're writing them with their finger on this flat screen, and working through it. So, it's got a tactile point. Mr. Kitchen, being a math person, will pull up something that will help them understand. You'll see six different classrooms, different kids, and some of them are just in there just talking, or they're sitting on the rocking chair that's on the floor, because that's the way it works for them. Depending on the space that you have, you have some quiet spaces.

And we're not done. We've already talked about what comes next, and that's why I say it's so important not to limit the space and have things fastened down, because it changes. I see teachers have come in and brought their whole class, because you can sign this center out and then it's a creative place for either presentations or for some type of work going on that you really need kids doing all kinds of things and you can be there. I also see it administratively as in the future we have a side room, because we are eventually going to be a one to one school, in the near two years, I would say. Our labs are being used so much less, because our kids have their own devices or we have enough Chromebooks to work. That lab that's next-door might even be a place where we have equipment and the teacher has an opportunity to try the equipment, bring their classroom in, experience the work with the kids, see if that's what's needed. You may not need a clever touch every day, but it's here to use in this environment.

So, it's really just a creative learning space for students first, but also the staff. And you asked me the question about how they buy in. I think when you're planning something like this, you first have to ask what is your goal of this space. And our goal that we set was extension of the classroom. Because we were afforded this opportunity kind of in the midst of something, we didn't get the planning process. We got "School's starting, do it." So, I would encourage everybody to have that opportunity prior, talk with staff, build up, get the ideas and the buy in. That didn't happen for us, so it's been a process through the year, creating ways to get kids in, inviting teachers in, actually working with staff and pulling them in.

But ultimately, the turning point that I saw, kind of that flip that started to occur is when students started asking the teachers to go down, to be down there. And that started drawing teachers in. "Well, why do they want to be there? What are they doing?" And when the products started coming back and the teachers saw all the kids learning as a result of that, that's a change. Just recently in the second semester, the other change I'm seeing now is when I see our staff planning, they talk about, "Oh, they could do this in the learning center." So, now the staff are starting to think of the learning center as a piece of their planning, and I think that's the involvement that will occur to the point that the learning center's not even going to be enough - everybody will be vying for it. But that's the great piece, that the teacher doesn't have to be there. Classrooms can plan that as an extension and send kids down.

Gonzalez: Right. How did you let everybody know at the beginning? I remember at the very beginning of the school year, you were barely even in furniture at that point, and it was just like, "Well, school's opening, so here we go." So, how did you let everybody in the building know, "Here's what we have, here's what's available, here are all the tools." How did you orient everybody to the new space?

Kitchen: So, I went to the science department and really just picked it apart, it really didn't matter, and said, "Are you willing to give up one day, a period, to bring your kids down?" And we gave them their IDs, explained the check-in process, and really just described what the learning center is. And so, really, it just took one day. And then we sprinkled in, obviously, throughout the next week or two the kids that were missing. So, just brought them in one period, kind of introduced ourselves, took a peek at what's in the learning center, what can be done, what can't be done, laid out some groundwork in terms of how you get in here, how the teacher's going to let you in here, what we're going to have in here maybe in the future-this was very early, this was September, and we didn't get our furniture until after Christmas break. So, this was very early.

So, really, I just grabbed the class and took one day. It was the best way, really. We thought to do it rather than kind of message it out through announcements or paper - just bring them in physically, show them what's going on, and from there, it took off.

Gonzalez: Were there any kind of special guidelines that you had to set for students or teachers, really, just to make sure that the space was used appropriately, that you managed for crowd control, or taking care of the equipment, or anything along those lines?

Kitchen: Yeah. As a classroom teacher-and I kind of lend myself back to that and kind of just try to think how I managed my classroom-I didn't have rules, I had procedures. So, really, my goal was to teach the kids and explain to the teachers, "This is what happens when you walk in," I think the process becomes a little easier. So, obviously, we talked about food and drink and how many kids can you bring down at one time. That was a huge question from the teachers. "How do I know?" And our thought was, "You send how many you want, I'll send you back what I don't want," and we really didn't have an issue with that. We know what our limit is. We try to accommodate as many as we can. So, I think if you put rules on, you put parameters on it, I don't think the space then lends itself to what it is. I mean, we are breaking down the walls within the classroom.

So, really just to go about it in those ways, kind of explain, "This is what we're going go, this is what we're going to build with. It's not a classroom. Don't send your whole class down here. That's not what we want. We want to try to get kids from each different discipline - math, art, science, language arts and so forth. So, once we set those parameters, it'll work itself out."

Gonzalez: Okay. Having taught middle school, I'm imagining a room full of kids that have been all sent down by their teachers and just you as the only adult in the room, or maybe you with one other person. And I'm thinking that depending on the kids that are sent down things could get rowdy and they could get off task. And I'm sure that everybody listening to this is thinking they could get off task very easily with less supervision than when they're in their own teacher's classroom. So, how have you managed those incidents, or do they just not happen?

Kitchen: Oh, they happen. The funny part is, as a high school teacher for 22 years, I've never been in a middle school classroom, so it is different. I mean, I've always that when I go out and do professional development. It is different. We've had schools come in here and look at our learning center and our equipment, and the first thing that I will talk to them about is, "Don't just take this and put it in your school district." I think it takes a-I won't say a special person, but a person that will be able to handle exactly what you just said - a bunch of teenage kids going in there, because they are middle school kids. And I think if you just get up and be active with them and engage with them, they're going to follow along with whatever they're supposed to be doing.

Now, I'm not as specific as I would be in a classroom, because I take the learning center tends to be that flexible space, sometimes a loud space. But again, it lends itself to that collaborative piece where my gift and I think my specialty is that's how I ran my classroom - it was controlled chaos, you know? And it's not quiet. That's not the design of it, because we wanted it that way. And we've had kids that don't like to come in there because it is that way, and I think that's fine. That's perfectly okay. We want the kids to go to the space where they'll be able to perform in and learn in. So, I had 50 to 60 kids in there at one time, and let me tell you, it's a challenge, but I think it's a fun challenge because as long as they're working towards their goal then I think it's a neat space to see.

Gonzalez: So, I think the key is for you to be actually walking around and not just behind that front desk.

Sturtevant: I think there's two keys, Jennifer, and one is the person in there does have to be invested and buy into the process - the controlled chaos was the words that I was looking for. And if you were standing outside our library, you might see chaos. But if you walk in and you start listening, you're hearing the different conversations, you're hearing the different things going on, and they really all are on point. So, that person who is not the librarian that was behind the desk waiting on a book to get checked out and was shushing everybody, that day is not a learning center. They're out there, they can tell you, and they're guiding. They're facilitating. They don't have to be doing direct instruction and one-on-one.

The second piece is that prescription piece - why is the kid there? It isn't just because this is a fun, exciting technology spot. I'm here with a purpose, and this is what I came down to do. Now, to Mr. Kitchen's credit, the buy-in that you ask about I think has been driven from the kids. And another way that he invested in that, we have a period in the middle of our day where the kids have half an hour, we call it student center. It's a home room study hall period they can get different services, and then the other half hour of it is lunch. So, eighth grade has student center for half an hour. They open the doors of our learning center, and instead of going off and taking their lunch right then, they open the doors to the learning center. This would be kind of close to a makerspace in a way, but interactive games, often trivia games, but they're learning games. It's often current events or on topics or different subjects. And the kids come down and they participate in those games, and they have a blast and they're having fun.

And so, the kids are asking to go to the learning center. Teachers can look at that two ways - oh, they're getting out of things and just want to go to the learning center and play, or they can say, "Hey, they want to go to the learning center. Hey, you can go to the learning center Tuesday when you get caught up in all of your language arts." They can use it in a multitude of ways as a positive reinforcement for doing the things they need to do. And so, I think the buy in came, too, from the investment from Mr. Kitchen and his partner Jeff Stanford on how can we get kids in here to see these tools, to have fun and learn, and then that just has facilitated kids telling teachers what they can do. And I don't mean that's bad, I mean like, "Hey, let this project, try take it down and do this."

Gonzalez: Well, let's talk a little bit about that, because I know you had talked about wanting to kind of regularly touch base with the teachers about units that they have coming up, so that you're not just passively sitting there waiting for people to show up whenever they feel like it. It's a more active cycle, I guess, that you had envisioned. Tell me how that has played out in terms of your engagement with the teachers.

Kitchen: Well, I think it started at the beginning. I'm a grassroots kind of person when it comes to new things. So, when we brought in Chromebooks to the district, it's grassroots. You find two or three people, get them to buy in and they just start talking to their peers, and then it goes that way. Kind of the same way I did this. I went to the teacher and said, "What have you got coming up, what kind of projects do you have? Let's try it. Have you ever thought about doing it with a video? Have you ever thought about bringing your kids down and just having them work in spaces in here?" And they were like, "No." And so, we started out that way, and then from there they meet once a day-you know how teachers are meeting now anyway-and they discuss, like, "Hey, you should take your class down to the learning center because they did this group project and they thought of a different way to do it."

So, at first, it really started small, but then now it's almost like a fight to get in. Then they come to me and say, "How can I make this project different?" Because they are getting tired of doing the same thing in terms of whether it's just presenting on a Google slide or just standing up and doing a report or writing a paper. So, now it's more of as the grassroots came and teachers went around and talking to each other. If I recognize and didn't see in maybe a discipline here and there not using it, I'd come up to them and say, "Hey, what are you doing next? Have you ever thought bringing your kids down? Can you do a video? Hey, I found something on the green screen I think you would like." It's really just not forcing it, because you can't really force the things on the teachers. You want the teachers to have the buy in, and as a classroom teacher, I didn't like that anyway, if someone came and said, "Hey, you have to use this." It's really just an option. If you like it, go with it. If not, let's try to find another way to do it.

Gonzalez: Yeah. It sounds like you actually being aware of what they're teaching is a big key to that, as opposed to you just sort of saying, "We've got some great things if you ever want to." Sometimes those generalized invitations don't really go anywhere. You're helping people actually connect the dots between their content and the tools that you have available to them.

Kitchen: Yeah. And the last couple years - really, the last ten years being a technology tutor, professional development has helped. You want to take the stuff that we've always been good at or what we like, and just try to infuse some of the tools. The key is just an extra tool in the toolbox. And nowadays, we just have a lot of kids that need that extra tool, and I think the learning environment that we have down there is we have probably four or five or six different tools that now the teacher can just lean on. And the advantages in terms of having a teacher in there, rather than just maybe an outsider or-I don't want to say librarian or media center specialist-but an actual teacher that has been in a classroom and has done some of this, is I think very beneficial. I think it would be hard for someone who hasn't either experienced this or even seen it to be able to kind of look through the lens that a teacher would.

Gonzalez: Right, right. And your background was math first and then you kind of moved into technology?

Kitchen: Yeah. I mean, as a classroom teacher, as the whiteboards came in in the early 2000s, and I worked with Texas Instruments a little bit with the calculator, so my passion really became on the professional development side of teaching other teachers how to use what we have, and I just thought you needed to share stuff. So, I've been doing that for 15 years, so now that more and more technology is coming down the pipe with 1-to-1 and Chromebooks and the live spreadsheets and live documents, this was a pretty easy transition for me.

Gonzalez: Right. So, when we share this with teachers, one of the things I would love to do is actually give them a downloadable copy of the prescription form, so that they can see how that works. Would that be possible to do that?

Gonzalez: Okay. Because I have a feeling that seeing how that actually works would help people to do that.

Kitchen: Yeah, and the funny part is there really isn't a right way yet. Like Penny said, we haven't really talked about what the best way is yet. We've tried some different ones. We tried electronic, we tried paper and pencil, so we're trying a few different things to really see what works, and then kind of just evolving. Almost like Learning Center, where it's not just one way to do it, so there are a few different way that we've tried.

Sturtevant: And it's as simple as a hall pass, really. Other than just the name and place, it just says this is what they're doing, or they need to use this. So, it's really simplistic, but we can do something like that. I think anybody looking to do a creative learning space, if you are going to go along the lines of the Learning Center, where it's a classroom extension. Ed touched on the fact that he's been a teacher. I'm sure there's other people who maybe could do this that aren't teachers, but whoever you have has to have buy in themselves. They have to see the vision and the lens of what it can be, because honestly, once I've turned it over, I got to have fun. Ed's got to sit down there and figure out how things should go or what we could try. Initially, prior to our grant coming in, I was bringing in Legos. We were talking about just basic whiteboards kids could write on, buying film for tabletops to write on. So, there's massive ways this creative collaboration can happen that aren't those high-end dollars.

And I know for many school districts 20 thousand isn't a massive amount, but we felt that that was fabulous to have. So, the money doesn't have to be limiting. It's the creativity that makes this happen.

Gonzalez: And the flexibility of that space sounds like that's a really big key. So, if a school is listening now and they're thinking, "I would really like to try this," where can they start? What would be some maybe tips for what not to do and things that they should do?

Sturtevant: I think the initial is some strong conversations with your central office, with your teachers, with some of the leads about what's going to be your purpose. Is your purpose going to be the makerspace where kids can come and create and be and maybe a related art? Is your purpose going to be supporting teachers to be able to bring classes in and have these extra tools to use, which is similar to our high school initiative, or is your purpose like ours where you want it to be an extension of every classroom and give these outlets? So, once you define your purpose, that's huge because that stays your focus of where you're headed. And then from there, who are your key players, and what are those roles? You want to get those things defined. What is your budget, and what's going to be your opening? You always need a catalyst, a catcher, or something like that. And that was a discussion we had.

We didn't get to have a grand opening. School opened and we had an empty room, you know? So, I would encourage somebody if they have that time to have a grand opening. We actually put together what we call a learning center committee. So, we brought in our local librarian, our high school media specialist, Ed, myself, our director of instruction, and we sat down and talked about what's our next steps, what can we do. They were who helped say yes, that we validate, this is the way to spend the grant money. So, it was a collaborative process as well. I think we did it in a fairly short timeline. I would only encourage others to have a little bit more on the forefront of planning than we did. But if you're graced an opportunity, you don't turn it down.

Gonzalez: Well, and I think it's to your credit that you guys didn't say, "Well, we're just going to close the library for six months while we wait for this thing to be perfect." You just went ahead with what you had and started using the space differently instead of waiting for all the pieces to be there.

Sturtevant: And that was the grace, not knowing we had the money. I dug in my basement and found all leftover Legos, you know? Those have not been used in the way we thought, but they're on the shelf and they will get used some day, I'm quite certain, as kids build projects.

Gonzalez: Yeah. Well, is there anything else before we wrap up that you would want to share with people interested in doing this?

Kitchen: Well, I think you have to go on your comment of what's positive and negative. You really have to figure out how your staff and your school operates, because this is going to be different in all different parts, whether it's high school, middle school, and where you're at in the country. It really depends on how you want the space. You can look and read about how different schools are changing their common spaces, changing their libraries, changing their media center, and I wanted to make it unique. We wanted to do something totally different. And I think we've achieved that and I think we've achieved really connecting with the classroom and with the teachers.

And like Penny said, it's just going to keep evolving in terms of what's going to happen with our one-to-one, what's going to happen with our project-based learning, what's going to happen in, really, every day as these kids move forward. So, I really think you've got to look at what your teachers and what your kids are doing right now and kind of adapt to that.

Gonzalez: Well, thank you so much for sharing this, and we're going to get pictures and video and stuff, so that anybody who's listening to this can go to the actual blog post and look at how you guys have arranged that space so that they can really picture it.

Kitchen: Sure. And I think I would encourage people, too, if they're near us or want to contact us, our doors are always open to come in and watch. As an educator and as a coach, we want to reinvent, we just want to go and take the best ideas. And if we can get more activity in these kids' hands and the more things that they can be accustomed to I think is our job.

Sturtevant: I think the involvement-we aren't done, we'll never be done. We'll grow, we'll be creative. But having good people invested and taking off on it and just taking charge of it was huge, and I've got to be that support person that either sells it or brings in ideas. We've been very fortunate - a school not far from us opened their doors to us to see what they were doing. There's no right or wrong. It's what does your school need, what is your staff ready for, and what can you students do, whether you call that a makerspace or learning center and innovation center. Once you find your purpose, what can you do? How do you make it work for your school, your kids?

Gonzalez: I bet your teachers are really grateful that you are thinking expansively and really trying to make the most of this space. I'm sure that there are a lot of underutilized libraries out there that could use some kind of an upgrade.

Sturtevant: I think for us what's going to happen is we're going to take a space that maybe ran some weeks five to ten kids through its doors to it will be the integral piece that moves our school into the personalization, the technology era that our kids are entering. And it will be integral, or based around what's happening from this learning center.

Kitchen: You know, we're averaging around 120 kids a day that go through the doors.

Gonzalez: I was going to ask that. That's a hugely-

Sturtevant: In a school of right around 500. We just have two grades, so that gives you some idea. It is a tool. Our teachers are still our most important facilitators of learning, and these are just tools that let that teacher have more personalized time with the kid, so they direct it. And this is going to become integral even further as our education process goes forward.
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Episode 38: The School Library that Increased Student Use by 1,000 Percent

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 38 Transcript Jennifer Gonzalez, Host Listen to the audio version of this podcast. Gonzalez: This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 38 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to tell you the story of a school library that increased student use by ...

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Jamie Leben highlights how makerspaces serve as powerful hubs for community connection, collaboration, and local problem-solving. In this TEDx talk, he explains how shared creative spaces can spark entrepreneurship, mentorship, and cross-generational learning, transforming not just schools, but entire neighborhoods. A great reminder that makerspaces don’t just build projects, they build people and community resilience.

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Makerspace: Make Community | Jamie Leben | TEDxFrontRange