A Brand New Start…Again

Tomorrow I start the UXDI course at General Assembly in NYC. That means I’m jumping into an entirely new field and dedicating the next 10 weeks to learning and producing enough to get myself a job in a brand new, totally unfamiliar career. If that sounds scary, don’t worry. I’ve done this before.

Four years ago I left the field I had prepared myself for in college (tv production) for teaching. In public schools. In New York City. It was a similar setup — I had about 12 weeks of pre-service training to learn all I would need to get a job in a “high needs” public school. I walked into the program in June and when the school year started in September, I was alone in a room of high school students. Plus, my license was in special education, so I was alone in a room of high school students who needed a level of expertise from an educator who just went through 12 weeks of zero to hero grooming. Daunting is the understatement of the century.

I learned a lot that first year and every day that I spent in the classroom. Teaching is the art of learning, and to be a great teacher you need to become a great learner. So I learned a lot, and in my students I saw awesome potential. I watched teenagers, not just my students with disabilities, persevere to learn the alphabet, practice multiplication, overcome dyslexia, write complete sentences. I watched young people do things they should have been able to do by the time they were 10, but they sat in front of me at 15, 17, even 20 years old and relentlessly worked to improve.

The story of inequality in education is complicated, and I had four years on the front lines.

Our young people believe in a system of education that doesn’t necessarily prepare them for college or jobs or careers. Not only is it a failing system, but one that allows far too many young people and great educators to fall through the cracks.

When I realized this, I started to learn how to code. I had taught Digital Media in my first year of teaching and worked closely with our technology teacher to support a growing tech education emphasis in our school (I worked in a truly amazing public school), so I knew and had preached to students the value of learning how to code. So I decided to learn myself. And then I started attending ed tech events. And then tech events. And design events. And the clouds kind of parted for me.

I wanted to be a UX designer. A user researcher. A knower of people, designing and creating for people. It’s what I’ve done in the classroom for four years, learning how my students work, their behaviors and habits, and designing experiences that allow them to learn and develop. That was always my favorite part of teaching, I just stopped believing in the product we were selling.

Education should be providing our young people — our revolutionaries, the generation of our future —with knowledge, skills, and experiences that are applicable to job markets that allow them to live independently, support a family, and contribute to a just and fair society. Currently, our education system is not doing that.

For our young people, I dream of a future where they can pursue education without signing up for a lifetime of debt, where they have the means to create businesses and develop careers around their passions, where they have access to tools that will help them build the futures they dream about. I worry that if the tech industry doesn’t diversify and become more accessible, then our world will move farther away from this dream that should already be a reality.

So yeah, it’s a brand new start…again. I’m sure I’ll have many more in my lifetime, if I’m lucky. But each turn I’ve taken so far has allowed me, in different ways, to build and move towards the future I dream about.

Here’s to designing a better future.