Apprenticeship in Action: McKinley Institute of Technology

On November 5th, community members from across the Bay Area came together to watch our apprenticeships in action at the McKinley Institute of Technology (MIT) site visit in Redwood City, CA. Attendees had the opportunity to meet with the Citizen Schools leadership team and hear from a panel of school partners and volunteer Citizen Teachers. They took a tour of the Tuesday after-school program and sat in on featured apprenticeships such as Fit Kids, Career Horizons, Making Beats, and Lego Robotics.

Maria Drake said, “As Executive Director of CSCA, I always speak of our partnerships with schools as being vital to the quality of our programming and therefore the success of our children. It was powerful to sit in a room and hear constituents directly affirm just how powerful these partnerships are.” 

MIT also hosts a class called Engineer for the Week (EFTW), led by Facebook volunteers. EFTW is a Facebook Education initiative that aims to demystify the world of tech, empowering students to build a working tech prototype while developing computer science skills. Facebook is a new donor of Citizen Schools through their Education Modernization division. This semester, Facebook has made significant contributions to the depth of our apprenticeship program and Career Exploration field trips.

Teaching Fellow Emily Yonce says, “If there's one thing most kids can agree on, it’s their love of video games. With EFTW, they're able to connect that passion to a career path. They're learning about what a career in engineering looks like. They are building relationships with Facebook employees, learning about their backgrounds and what passions brought them to this field. As we approach the end of the apprenticeship and the final showcase, students are experimenting with code on Scratch. They have learned about adding and changing different elements such as backdrop, sprite characters, and music. They learned about the design thinking process and experience it first-hand when testing and ‘remixing’ different games. Beyond learning about user experience and what makes a game fun, they have also learned how to connect these skills to serious social issues.”