Alliance Academy of Integrated Learning is a Title I public middle school in East Oakland, California. Two Alliance teachers, A’aron Heard and Alia Ghabra, recently participated in the Agency by Design fellowship. As part of their developing teaching collaboration, Alia and A’aron incorporated Agency by Design thinking routines into their class curriculum as part of their program, Wonder Wednesdays. As Alia says in the video, AbD’s impact at Alliance was especially meaningful because it is “increasingly important for black and brown young people at low income schools to be able to make and experiment with creating.”

Check out the video below, which was created with Agency by Design Oakland as part of a series showcasing the work of participants in the 2016-2017 fellowship cohort. And click here to read a longer blog post about the incorporation of making into class curriculum at Alliance Academy of Integrated Learning!

Agency by Design is a research project exploring the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning. The project began in 2011 as collaboration between the Abundance Foundation and Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. The initial phase of research studied the practice of maker-centered learning in the K-12 context and included an action research component based in Oakland, CA. The most recent phase of the project includes an ongoing Oakland-based fellowship that provides professional development, coaching, and funding opportunities to local educators who incorporate maker-centered learning in their practice.