This site intends to empower adult and community educators to implement maker pedagogies and projects in their classrooms. As an adult high school equivalency teacher and counselor in New York City, I have seen classrooms that embodied maker ethos and classrooms that could have benefited from more active and experiential learning.

I also know that adult and community classrooms have unique challenges. All our students are non-traditional, mixed-age, and mixed level. Teachers often don’t have institutional or financial resources to engage in cost and time intensive projects. Our classrooms are almost always shared with other teachers, programs, and services. So why should we try to implement maker projects and pedagogies and how can we do that in a way that is meaningful for students and efficient for teachers?

This site is in construction to help aid that mission by providing directions to low-cost, low-material maker projects with ideas for how it can fit into a High School Equivalency or Adult Basic Education curriculum. I will specifically be using the City University of New York High School Equivalency Curriculum which is used across New York State and is available for free (see the link in the header).

My goal is to convince you that maker projects in the high school equivalency and adult basic education classroom are uniquely valuable to adult students not only because it can support core science, technology, and math content needed to pass the TASC exam, but because it supports critical inquiry into civics, technology, and society, while providing an opportunity for adult students to engage in family science literacy experiences with their children. Maker projects and professional development are common and accessible in K-12 curricula in math, technology, and science. However in adult education classroom maker projects and pedagogies are rarely implemented. Some reasons for this gap are that— adult educators may imagine that maker projects are cost prohibitive, time, and labor intensive— so adult educators who may be amenable to trying maker projects in their classroom may be struggling to imagine how to balance a successful maker experience while also achieving their primary goals of preparing students to pass the TASC or High School Equivalency exam and go to college or gain meaningful employment.

Stay tuned for site updates & further resources! Feel free to get into contact with me for any questions or collaborations. Much thanks!

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