Aryanna Trejo (00:00):

I would hear teachers saying things like, “Well, I just can’t do coding; this is too hard for me; the time has passed.” And I would ask them, “Would you say that to your student about math or English?” And they would always sheepishly go, “No.” And I’d say, “Well, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your student.”

Eric Cross (00:19):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Aryanna Trejo. Aryanna is a member of the professional learning team at Code.org. Before joining Code.org, Aryanna led computer science professional development for elementary school teachers, and served as an instructional coach for new educators. She also taught fourth and fifth grade in both New York City and in Los Angeles. In this episode, we discuss Aryanna’s journey to Code.org, where she helps educators connect coding to real life, how to use a rubber duck to solve problems, and how coding and computer science principles can be taught to students in areas without access to the internet…or even a computer. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Aryanna Trejo. So I was born and raised here, and I saw that you went to UC San Diego.

Aryanna Trejo (01:11):

I did, I did. I actually just put a deposit down on an apartment in University Heights, ’cause I’m moving back.

Eric Cross (01:16):

You’re coming back?

Aryanna Trejo (01:17):

I’m coming back. Yeah.

Eric Cross (01:19):

So if you need a classroom to visit….

Aryanna Trejo (01:21):

I would love to do more classroom observations!

Eric Cross (01:24):

Are we doing this? Let’s do—we’re making this happen.

Aryanna Trejo (01:26):

We are. Yeah. So I’ll be there. I’m moving there in April. I actually grew up in Orange County too, so I’m like a very diehard SoCal person.

Eric Cross (01:35):

So I feel like I know the answer to, hopefully—Tupac or Biggie? ‘Cause you’re on the East Coast, and you’re on the West Coast.

Aryanna Trejo (01:40):

Yeah. I like Tupac, but I have more Biggie songs committed to memory. Which is not a lot. I have “Juicy” and “Hypnotized” memorized.

Eric Cross (01:53):

All right. So you’re just memorizing, and you have the Biggie songs memorized, but not the Tupac ones.

Aryanna Trejo (01:58):

No, but I do love Tupac songs. You know, it’s like, Biggie has the flow, but Tupac has the lyrics. Nobody’s—they both have something really amazing about them.

Eric Cross (02:06):

You know, I can respect that you broke it down into both of their strengths.

Aryanna Trejo (02:11):

Thanks for buttering me up before this interview. And not….

Eric Cross (02:15):

<laugh> Oh, we already started.

Aryanna Trejo (02:16):

Huh? We already started?

Eric Cross (02:17):

We’re already started. Yeah. We’re already into this.

Aryanna Trejo (02:19):

We’re into it.

Eric Cross (02:21):

You were in the classroom, fourth and fifth grade, and you were doing TFA.

Aryanna Trejo (02:26):

I did. I did Teach For America. I was 2012, New York City Corps. Right after graduation. ‘Cause I graduated UC San Diego in 2012. So graduation was on June 17th, and I touched down at JFK on June 19th.

Eric Cross (02:40):

Even though I wasn’t in TFA, I know a lot of the fellows that are in it. And there’s just some phenomenal teachers in there. How long were you doing elementary school when you were teaching?

Aryanna Trejo (02:49):

Yeah, I taught for—well, I did, three years of teaching fourth grade. Then there happened to be an instructional coach opening in my fourth year. I took that, did some instructional coaching within the same network, and then I moved back to LA and I taught fifth grade for a year.

Eric Cross (03:11):

1. And what was it like now? Did you go to Code.org right after the classroom?

Aryanna Trejo (03:17):

No, I didn’t. No. I transitioned after teaching fifth grade for a year in downtown Los Angeles, in the Pico-Union neighborhood. I ended up getting this email out of the blue from someone who had actually found me through the Teach for America job site. ‘Cause I was hitting the pavement; I was really looking to transition out of the classroom. And she invited me to interview with this company called 9 Dots. And they taught computer science to kids K–6 throughout Los Angeles and Compton. And I was like, “Sure, no problem. Let’s do it.” So I interviewed, I got the job, and yeah, that’s how I transitioned to 9 Dots. And then after almost four years there, I transitioned to Code.org, with the same person. Actually, she moved over to Code.org first, and then she helped me get this job.

Eric Cross (04:07):

Oh, that’s happened a lot—like, that relationship kinda carries over.

Aryanna Trejo (04:11):

Yeah. We’re meant to be coworkers.

Eric Cross (04:13):

Yeah. Are you still? Is she still there? Are you both still together?

Aryanna Trejo (04:17):

Yeah, we’re on the same team and it’s nice. I saw her last night for Happy Hour, with another coworker who’s in LA. So we’re tight. And she’s a wonderful, wonderful mentor to me.

Eric Cross (04:28):

That’s great. Did you have computer-science background, when you were doing elementary school teaching? Did you have—

Aryanna Trejo (04:34):

No. <laugh> Not at all. When I was teaching in New York City, I had like four desktop computers in my classroom, and we rarely used them. Which was such a shame. And then when I moved to Los Angeles and taught fifth grade there, we were a one-to-one school, and the joys of that are just amazing. It was just really wonderful to, you know, get the students used to typing on the computer, using different software to submit their assignments. Getting creative—as creative as you can get—with Google Slides. You know, to show off what they know. And stuff like that. That’s all I had, though. And you know, when I transitioned to 9 Dots I was like, “Sure, why not? Let’s give a shot.” And I learned a lot. It was really interesting, yeah.

Eric Cross (05:26):

And so now at Code.org you are…well, so my journey with Code.org, I’ve been in the classroom for eight years. Still in the classroom as of…an hour ago, I was there. <Laugh> And I use Code.org, and I feel like I’ve checked it periodically, and I feel like it’s evolved over the gaps. And I’ve seen it. It’s become more robust in the things that they offer, over the years I’ve been an educator. Just to kind of…could you give a thumbnail sketch? Like, what is Code.org? Who’s it for? Who’s the target audience? What resources are there?

Aryanna Trejo (06:00):

Yeah. So it’s for everyone. It is a nonprofit that provides curriculum and training and a platform for teachers and students. We provide curriculum for K through 12. It’s completely free. And it comes with lesson plans, slideshows, all that. We focus specifically on underrepresented groups. So we have targeted measures for Black students, for Native American students, for students who identify as female. That’s a huge part of our mission. But we’re really working to expand access to computer science to as many students as we can.

Eric Cross (06:41):

One of the things I’m hearing in your story is you were teaching in Compton; you were in Bronx, New York. One of the reasons why I got into the classroom is because of educators, and the impact they made on me in exposing me to science and technologies I’d never had access to. And that intentionality, that you’re going about it…are there…not just the code, but how you bring that across to different groups…are there strategies, or are there ways to connect this idea of coding to diverse groups and diverse audiences? Or is it kind of, the curriculum applies for everyone? ‘Cause in science, when I’m teaching, I’m always trying to make what I’m doing relevant to the backgrounds of my students.

Aryanna Trejo (07:28):

Sure.

Eric Cross (07:28):

So I’m teaching biology, and I’m trying to make this kind of connection. Sometimes it’s more organic; sometimes it feels kind of forced. Because it’s just not always a nice fit. But it sounds like Code.org is really about inclusion. And in the numbers that I’ve seen for representation, in especially computer science software engineers, the groups that you’re focusing on are not necessarily represented in the professional workforce. At least disproportionately.

Aryanna Trejo (07:54):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s correct.

Eric Cross (07:57):

And so how do you go about being intentional about reaching groups that we don’t see in, you know, the Silicon Valley software engineers? How do you start that? Like, at a young age, do you look for specific schools in specific areas to say, “We are going to bring this to the school. We’re going out to these populations of the cities”? Because we’re just not seeing…you know, on the map, we’re not seeing anybody really doing anything with coding here. Or we’re not seeing the numbers come out of these areas, out of these cities, of students who are going into STEM or going into computer science fields.

Aryanna Trejo (08:41):

Yeah. I don’t necessarily work on the recruitment side of it, is the issue, in my position. But I do work on the professional learning, that is brought out to teachers. And we have a huge focus on equity throughout the workshops that we create from K–12. It’s something we’re really passionate about. We definitely aim to prepare teachers to teach computer science. That’s a huge part of it. Knowing the content, but also thinking through, “What does recruitment look like at your school to make sure that the demographics of your classroom match the demographics of your entire school?” Also, thinking through, “How can we make sure that female students feel included in your classroom? How can we make sure that we are, giving students creativity to think about, or we are setting students up to be creative and think about the problems that are in their community, and how they can use computer science to solve them, or at least work towards them?”

Eric Cross (09:39):

So solving real-world problems and that inclusion aspect…are there things like…you were saying “female or students who identify as female”…are there things that teachers can do to ensure that they’re being more inclusive? Or to recruit, or encourage more female students to take part? One of the things I was thinking of, that I’ve seen, is I’ve seen coding kind of camps.

Aryanna Trejo (10:06):

Sure.

Eric Cross (10:08):

That were specifically for a female audience. And that seemed to help with recruitment. Is that something that you see on your side?

Aryanna Trejo (10:16):

That’s not something that we set up, no. But the curriculum that I work with is CS Principles. And it’s offered as an Advanced Placement course, as well as an AP class. So that’s a curriculum that’s designed for students who are in grades 10 through 12. And so at that point, we can really talk to teachers and ask them what the recruitment strategy is. But in terms of strategies that teachers can use to recruit those students…I mean, I’ve heard over and over from lots of different teachers who identify as female that they didn’t think that computer science was for them, until they saw a role model in that position. And so just being a role model for those students is really wonderful.

Eric Cross (11:00):

And I see it too, with—like, we do “Draw a Scientist” activity, which is like a popular science thing—

Aryanna Trejo (11:05):

Sure, yeah, I’m familiar.

Eric Cross (11:05):

But it’s the same thing, right? Like, it fleshes out. My students don’t draw themselves as scientists. They draw what they perceive, based on what television says. I imagine with computer science, it’s probably really similar, when you think about “What’s a software engineer look like?” Do students tend to draw themselves? Or is it even a mystery? Because I don’t even know what a software engineer looks like.

Aryanna Trejo (11:28):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things we love to do with our professional learning workshops is talk about understanding yourself, your identities, how they show up in the classroom as biases. And, you know, things like stereotype threat. We see that as really important to understand, and think through, and consider, before you step into the classroom. So that you’re not, you know, coddling certain groups of students because you don’t believe that they are able to be successful in computer science. Holding all the students to the same expectations and believing that they can succeed. And computer science, I think a lot of the times people have this conception of it being this utopian, bias-less, technocratic field. When in reality, everything has bias. And people talk about algorithmic bias and facial recognition, but also the people who created computers and computer languages have their own bias that comes through. And I think it’s really important to show students that. So that they can, one, know what they’re working with, and two, make sure that they can create products that reduce that bias.

Eric Cross (12:50):

It’s like…it’s not objective, just because we’re creating software. Like, once it gets to a point of being so sophisticated…I think, like, AI software, right? With facial recognition? And we’re seeing more and more articles come out about, you know, predicting trends based on historical data.

Aryanna Trejo (13:12):

Sure.

Eric Cross (13:13):

But then, the trends and things that they’re seeing tend to target things that have happened in the past. But it also doesn’t take into consideration a lot of other factors that can lead to certain groups or populations being identified. And I’ve seen some articles lately about how your code is really just representation of what you put into it. And like you just said, your bias—if you have that, conscious or unconscious—you’re gonna put that into your code. And the input is gonna be an impact, is gonna impact the output.

Aryanna Trejo (13:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Or even just—and I’m ashamed to say this, ’cause this is an idea that came to me just recently, through an article that I read—but computers themselves have bias. The hardware assumes that you have vision, that you can see the screen, that you are able-bodied, that you can use your hands to work the keyboard, the mouse, et cetera, and that you don’t have to use assistive technology. You know, there are small things like that, where we think that technology, like I said, is this utopian, futuristic science…but there are biases throughout.

Eric Cross (14:19):

You’re absolutely right. I’ve never even—I’ve never even considered that. Even though I do use assistive tech, and figure it out, I’ve never thought from the ground up, the process is built for an able-bodied, sighted, hearing person.

Aryanna Trejo (14:31):

Exactly.

Eric Cross (14:32):

To be able to engage with the hardware. And then these other things, these tertiary things that we kind of add on, so that you can do this, but it’s not designed from the ground up for people who are, you know, different audiences, physically. So I’m glad you brought that up, though. Now I’ve seen—and I haven’t done this—but I know Hour of Code is a big thing. And this is something that’s ongoing. Can you talk a little bit about what Hour of Code is? I know it’s, it’s a big thing for the classroom teachers.

Aryanna Trejo (15:08):

Yeah. So Hour of Code is really exciting, and it’s just blossomed from something small to something tremendous. This year is gonna be the 10th Hour of Code. So what it is, is it happens during CS Education Week in December, during Grace Hopper’s—or to honor Grace Hopper’s birthday. She was a computer scientist and Navy Admiral. And basically the aim of it is to get as many students on the computer doing an hour of code, and demystify what coding is. You know, to do seed-planting. To show teachers that this is something that you can facilitate for your students. And also to show students like, “Hey, computer science is something you can absolutely do. Not just for an hour, but more if you want.” So, yeah. Now it’s worldwide, and it’s really exciting.

Eric Cross (15:58):

That’s awesome. And I think about teachers and I still hear the apologetic—when I’m helping teachers in the classroom with education technology—the self-deprecating “I’m a dinosaur; I’m not good with tech,” which is never true. Like, they’re better than they even realize. And I feel like sometimes there’s still a stigma, too. It’s like <laugh> The Simpsons’ Comic Book Store Guy. The condescending tech support person—

Aryanna Trejo (16:27):

Sure.

Eric Cross (16:28):

—who has that tone. And so I feel like some people have been so negatively impacted by that person. So I know when I’m helping people, I actually try to go full-spectrum the other side. But I’m thinking about teachers’ barrier to entry. Sometimes code is like, “Whoa.” And I don’t teach computer science. Do you see those barriers to entry, or at least the perception of them? And then, what’s the reality for like someone listening, and going, “I’m a fourth grade teacher,” or “I’m a humanities teacher in ninth grade.” What’s the perception that you see, versus reality, with the teachers that you train? Is it much more accessible than we think? Or is there a level of sophistication that you have to have coming into it?

Aryanna Trejo (17:10):

No, not at all. I know computer science, and that says a lot! <Laugh> You know, I know my own corner of computer science. And you know, that’s me being self-deprecating, too. But I think learning computer science has helped me in so many different ways that I wasn’t expecting. I recently took the GRE in hopes of, you know, getting back into grad school. And I think just the way that computer science teaches you to search for bugs in your code, or errors, and kind of tirelessly look at a problem from multiple different angles, I was able to carry that into the math that I was doing. And I noticed just a huge difference in the way that I approached it, and the way that I was open to it. But you asked a great question, in regards to the barriers to technology. In my position at 9 Dots, I was working directly with teachers to lead professional development with them. Sometimes it would be a full day; sometimes it would be an hour after school. And the one thing that I always had in my back pocket that was really useful is that I would hear teachers saying things like, “Well, I just can’t do coding; this is too hard for me; the time has passed.” And I would ask them, “Would you say that to your student about math or English?” And they would always sheepishly go, “No.” And I’d say, “Well, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your student.” You know, it takes some patience and nobody’s gonna get it perfect 100 percent of the time. Have I banged my head against the wall trying to solve one tiny little syntax error in my code? Absolutely! But it feels absolutely phenomenal to fix that. And I was an English major in undergrad, and I had never done computer science before. So it’s something that becomes really satisfying.

Eric Cross (19:07):

Yeah, I imagine. I had someone—a trainer or a presenter—one time bring up the fact that our students rarely get to see us learn in real time.

Aryanna Trejo (19:19):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (19:19):

So we don’t get to ever really model failure. I mean, unless we’re in a classroom situation <laughs> in our failures, with classroom management. Then they see it, they see it! But they don’t get to see us model learning failure. And I don’t mean like failure—and yes, I know, “first attempt is learning,” and “no such thing as failure”—that’s not what I’m talking about. But just when we’re not successful with our code, and then we experience real-time frustration.

Aryanna Trejo (19:42):

Yep.

Eric Cross (19:42):

And they said that is actually a great learning experience for your students to watch you go through productive struggle. And that was really liberating for me. Because now I’m in the classroom, and I’m trying to go through it with my students, and the beautiful thing was, they started helping me. We were all trying to solve the problem. And then we had this authentic problem-solving experience. I think it was like a Scratch program, where we were trying to solve, trying to embed it somewhere, or something. And then, in the background of the class: “Mr. Cross! I got it! I figured it out!” And it was this really neat bonding experience. And I felt that—your ears get red, and you get hot, ’cause you’re not—

Aryanna Trejo (20:19):

Oh yeah.

Eric Cross (20:20):

You don’t know it! And you’re in front of 36 kids! And I said, “OK, I need to tell them how I feel.”

Aryanna Trejo (20:25):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (20:26):

So I said, “Now I feel really frustrated.” Like, “I want to go through this, and here’s my thoughts.” ‘Cause I knew that it would be helpful if they saw and would hear my thoughts. So I just did a quick think-aloud and I said, “In my head, <laugh> I want to just quit,” I said, “But I realize that this is the part where my learning’s happening. So I just want you all to hear what’s going on in my brain.” And now I feel like when I’m doing coding with my students, and it’s just basic coding, I feel much more comfortable, like, not knowing. But I needed someone to release me from that “I have to be the expert in everything” to do it.

Aryanna Trejo (21:06):

And teachers are used to being the experts. Right? And they should be. And coding is just such a different landscape. But I think once you kind of give over to the power of tinkering, I think it’s really gratifying. I love being able to…you can revise a sentence, and then read your paragraph back to yourself in English, and say, “OK, I get it.” But there’s something so gratifying about changing a line of code or a block and then being able to hit play and watch your program come to life, and say, “Hmm, that’s not quite what I wanted. Let’s try something different.”

Eric Cross (21:39):

I love your connection to tinkering. ‘Cause—I had never thought about it—’cause I love tinkering with my hands. But I always think about physical things. But coding is exactly that. It’s tinkering.

Aryanna Trejo (21:47):

It’s exactly that.

Eric Cross (21:47):

That’s exactly what it is.

Aryanna Trejo (21:49):

And a lot of it is, for me, especially when I’m trying something new, it’s guess-and-check. It’s like, “OK, that didn’t work. What if I add a semicolon here? Will it finally work? Or what if I add a ‘for’ loop? Will this get me what I want?” And it’s wonderful because you have that with students as well. Like, you have that record of their thinking, and you can ask them to go step-by-step and tell you, you know, “First, I added this, because I wanted the program to do this,” and so on and so forth. And so you have that record, but you can always get rid of it. Students often wanna get completely get rid of it. That’s something that I’ve noticed a lot as I’ve taught computer science. But, once you can get them to target the specific parts of the program, tinker with that, and continue, that’s a really wonderful learning space. There was also something you said about modeling failure. I love the fact that in computer science you can model failure for your students. You said to your students, “I’m getting frustrated.” I love that, because I never got that in math. Nobody ever showed me what it was like to be frustrated with graphing a parabola. Right? Like, my math teachers were always like, “Doot, doot, doot, here you go, you’re done!” <Laugh> And I would get so frustrated, because it didn’t come that easily to me. And I think there’s two parts to that. So there’s modeling the learning and the thinking and the productive struggle, but also there’s the identity of being a computer scientist and modeling what that looks like. So for me, when I get really frustrated with a program, I walk away. I take five minutes. I take a deep breath. I say, “I’m not gonna think about it in these five minutes.” And I come back to it. And I think once you start teaching computer science, you can facilitate that for students. And there’s so many different strategies that they can pick up. They can pick up rubber ducking, which is where they pick up a rubber duck or a similar object, and they talk to it as if they were a partner and talk through their code. And oftentimes, as you’re rubber ducking, you’re gonna find that error, because you’re explaining it to someone who’s a stand-in for a novice. And rubber ducking is a well-known strategy for computer scientists who make it their career. You know, there’s pair programming. Some students love pair programming; some students hate it. But the students start to build this identity about how they problem-solve. And how they approach failure. And I just love that.

Eric Cross (24:31):

I’m writing this down. Because the rubber-ducking strategy, I love. I just imagine my seventh graders, a bunch of 13-year-olds with, like, rubber on the desk. And not necessarily in coding, but I was thinking in my science class. And they’re working through a challenge, and they’re all looking at this duck, and they’re talking to it. But I just love the the idea of externalizing your thought process and talking through it yourself so that you can hopefully arrive at a conclusion. But it’s such a great practice, and this is something that’s been around for a long time, apparently. So.

Aryanna Trejo (24:59):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a real thing. And you know, you can go low-fi. It doesn’t have to be a rubber duck. You can have students talk to their pencils or their imaginary friends. That’s not the issue; the issue is, you know, talking to somebody.

Eric Cross (25:10):

I know you support teachers. But I just wanted to…I was just curious about your typical day, what that’s like. And then what you do, how you support ’em.

Aryanna Trejo (25:15):

So, at my previous job at 9 Dots, I was in there with the teachers in the classrooms. I was coaching our internal staff who went out to co-teach with teachers. And I loved that. And I had such a great impact on a local scale. But now at Code.org, I have a much broader impact. But I don’t get to interface with—that’s such a tech-y word!—I don’t get to interact with—

Eric Cross (25:42):

You work at Code.org! You get to—

Aryanna Trejo (25:42):

I know! But I’m a teacher at heart, forever, right? That’s my identity that I forged when I was 22 years old. And a typical day looks like opening up my computer, taking a look at my calendar. I often have meetings to talk about, different things that we’re doing to support our facilitators who go out to our teachers and lead their workshops for them. I recently worked on a product that was designed for CS principles, teachers, to onboard to the course if they weren’t able to get into an in-person workshop. And it’s completely self-paced, so it gives teachers an on-ramp into the course. And now I’m working on some in-person workshop agendas. So I feel really wonderful that my work is going out to thousands of teachers. But at the same time, I really, really miss talking to teachers. Because that’s something that energizes me so much.

Eric Cross (26:46):

When should students start learning computer science? I feel like we see it in this kind of narrow lane. Like, this is computer science if you make an app. Can it be more than that? As far as like the benefit of computer science? And—I guess two-part question—when should students, one, start being exposed to it? And then two, what are some of the benefits beyond just, “I wanna just make an app”?

Aryanna Trejo (27:08):

I taught coding to kindergartners. It can start as early as you as you want it to. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be on the computer. A lot of students that I worked with didn’t have computers at home, were interacting with computers for the first time. And that’s a huge barrier, of course, to a lot of teachers. But there are so many unplugged lessons that you can do to start to start to have students think about algorithms, which is just a series of steps to complete to solve a problem. As long as a student can use a computer, I think they can do computer science. There are products out there like codeSpark, where students—and Code.org has these products too—where students are moving an avatar around a board, kind of like a quadrant to…you know, they feed the directions to a computer and then the computer enacts it for them. And with that, they can learn algorithms. You know, that is computer science. And a lot of people don’t see it that way, but it really is. And it starts to set students up for more complex thinking as they move on.

Eric Cross (28:13):

One of the biggest underserved communities, geographically, are students in rural areas.

Aryanna Trejo (28:20):

Yep.

Eric Cross (28:21):

They can be reservations; they can be places just not an urban area. Is there a way to serve our communities of students and bring these skills in an unplugged way?

Aryanna Trejo (28:32):

Yeah. Yeah. If you typed in “unplugged computer science lessons” to Google, you’ll have a ton of hits. And there are so many students out there—not just in rural areas. But there’s incarcerated students. It hurts my heart to even say those words, but in urban areas too. Like in my classroom, where I only had four desktop computers. Access is a real struggle. And there’s things, like I said, instead of moving an avatar around a grid on the computer, I used to have an actual mat that I would take out to my kindergarten classrooms, lay it out, and it would have a grid on it. And we’d have one of the students act as the avatar and the rest of the students would give them directions to get to a different point on the grid. And there, you’re building an algorithm or just a series of steps. Like I said, it’s not some fancy term to solve a problem. And there’s multiple ways to solve that problem, too. And I think investigating that can be a really good way to stretch those lessons.

Eric Cross (29:32):

It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but this low-tech computer science strategy. Develop these skills and then transfer that once you have access to the tools.

Aryanna Trejo (29:39):

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s a good way for students who need kinesthetic means to start to understand something, or just different learning styles, to start transferring that over.

Eric Cross (29:53):

I probably have students in the classroom where those kinesthetic moving things would help be a great way—or WILL be a great way—for them to learn the principles and the fundamentals of coding. Instead of only giving the option to just do the computer, actually giving them some choice. Or giving them a way to be able to manipulate things. We’re still in the system of education that’s still very siloed. It’s been the same way for a hundred years. We got math and then we got science and we got English. I’m wondering, how can a teacher fit this into their daily lessons? And then, do you have any experiences or stories or things that you’ve seen, just really creative ways that you’ve seen teachers incorporate this? Outside the norm of, “This is a computer science class; we’re just gonna code.” But have you seen it branch out? In the trainings that you’ve done?

Aryanna Trejo (30:40):

I’ve seen examples of that. I’ve seen a teacher use Scratch to demonstrate different climates of California, and show the different climates. This past year for Hour of Code, my friend Amy—the one who helped me move to 9 Dots and at Code.org—she created this incredible tutorial called Poetry Bot. And it was a way to get students to match the mood of the poem to some of the elements that were happening in the stage. So they would have different backgrounds show up at different parts of the poem. When the words would show up, they would have different sprites show up. They would have, sometimes, sounds. Or the text would show up with different animations. So there are cross-curricular opportunities everywhere, if you can be creative enough to find them, or if you beg, borrow, steal from other educators who are doing this incredible work out there.

Eric Cross (31:36):

Yeah. I say this all the time, but I’m an educational DJ, not an MC.

Aryanna Trejo (31:44):

Oh yeah.

Eric Cross (31:45):

So MCs write their lyrics and DJs remix with things that other people have done.

Aryanna Trejo (31:48):

Absolutely.

Eric Cross (31:48):

I was like, I’m a DJ. I was like, all day. Sometimes I’ll write a lyric, once or twice, but most of the time I’m remixing things. So teachers, if you’ve been out there and you got an awesome interdisciplinary thing, or you’ve incorporated coding and it’s something that’s traditionally not seen, please send it to us. Share it with us.

Aryanna Trejo (32:03):

Yeah. And there are so many different places where you can find that. We have a forum for Code.org, but there’s also CSTA, the Computer Science Teachers Association. You can join your local chapter and get to know other computer science teachers out there.

Eric Cross (32:19):

I guess…to wrap up, I’ve been using Scratch programming, the MIT website. My students do the basic animated name, CS First, stuff. But over the years, I’ve noticed that my students are coming in with a higher level of sophistication in Scratch to where now the differentiation…some of my students are just doing very basic…and then I have other students who’ve created full-on video games with complex…like, you look at their Scratch page and it’s just an amazing amount of blocks and integrations and things that they have. Is there anything on Code.org that could be a next step? That takes them beyond, maybe like the visuals? And if so, what would be a good next step, to take students to advance them to another platform? There’s so many coding languages out there, I feel like. Or I might not even be thinking about that the right way.

Aryanna Trejo (33:20):

No, I think you are. You know, we have three different curricula out on our website right now. We have CS Fundamentals, which is probably more in line with what you’re talking about. We have a free CS Discoveries curriculum, and that is designed for, grades, I believe, 6 through 10. And that would be a really good entry point, for both teachers and for students.

Eric Cross (33:44):

There’s a lot of new stuff that I hadn’t seen yet, a few years ago.

Aryanna Trejo (33:49):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (33:49):

So I was really excited.

Aryanna Trejo (33:50):

One thing that I do know is that CS Discovery has just added an artificial intelligence slash machine-learning unit, that you can just pick up and give to your students. You don’t have to go in order with CS Discoveries, like you do with CS Principles. And I’ve gone through some of those lessons. They are really rad. And I would’ve loved to have learned that when I was in middle school or high school. So yeah, we’re constantly thinking of how we can make things one, relevant to our students, and two relevant to what’s going on in the world.

Eric Cross (34:20):

So would I be overselling it if I said, “If you go through this, you’ll be able to create an AI or a neural net to do all your homework”?

Aryanna Trejo (34:26):

You would be overselling it.

Eric Cross (34:27):

I would be? OK. So what I’ll do is, I’ll wait until the end of the school year, and then introduce it, and then by the time they’ve realized it’s not true, they’ll be eighth graders.

Aryanna Trejo (34:35):

There you go. Good old bait-and-switch.

Eric Cross (34:37):

You’re amazing. Thank you for serving teachers, and for being part of such a great organization that puts out great stuff. So much free curricula for teachers to be able to use. Especially nowadays we hunt and scour the internet for those types of things. And to be able to bring computer literacy into the classroom, and with your focus of serving communities of underrepresented groups, it feels good to know that not only is it high-quality material, but it’s also trying to raise everyone up. Because ultimately when we have more people trying to solve a common problem, we come up with better solutions. And I was talking to somebody who was a materials engineer somewhere in Europe, and he said one of the things about the U.S., As he was critiquing me on this flight, critiquing the U.S., He said, “One of the things about your country is that you have a heterogeneous group of people who, in a group, when you have multiple perspectives attacking a problem, you come up with more novel solutions.” He says, “That’s one of the great things, is that there’s not necessarily just a hive mind.” And I think that that’s one of the great things. We uplift different communities, and we uplift women, people of color, people who, have backgrounds that parents didn’t go to college but have these amazing qualities and strengths. And we put everybody focusing on the same issue. We come up with novel solutions that we wouldn’t have come up with if only select groups were trying to look at it and solve it. And so—.

Aryanna Trejo (36:22):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (36:23):

And we couldn’t do that without organizations like yours, that help empower teachers. So.

Aryanna Trejo (36:27):

Yeah! You really said it.

Eric Cross (36:29):

You’re coming to my classroom when you’re back in San Diego?

Aryanna Trejo (36:31):

Yeah! I totally will. Yeah. Let’s make it happen.

Eric Cross (36:34):

Last question. If you think back in your schooling, your own schooling, K through college, is there a person or a teacher that had a big impact on you? Or a learning experience that had an impact on you? And it could be, you know, positive or negative. But something that impacted you, even to this day, that stands out to you, that you remember?

Aryanna Trejo (36:56):

This is a big diversion from the topics that we’re talking about. But in grades 10 through 12, my drama teacher, Mr. Byler, who I still talk with, was such a huge impression on me. Really wonderful. And I couldn’t tell you the teaching moves that he did that were wonderful. I don’t know much about his management. But I can tell you that he gave me space to be confident, and grow into myself, through drama productions. They were high school productions, so they weren’t amazing. But I just really came into myself in high school, because I had the confidence to get on stage. And he was just such a wonderful mentor to all of us. So, props to Mr. Byler.

Eric Cross (37:39):

Shout out to Mr. Byler for creating space for Aryanna to fly! Thanks for making time, after your workday, to talk with us and to share Code.org with teachers.

Aryanna Trejo (37:54):

Of course. Happy to.

Eric Cross (37:59):

Thanks so much for joining me and Aryanna today. We want to hear more about you. If you have any great lessons or ways to keep student engagement high, please email us at stem@amplify.com. Make sure to click subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And join our brand new Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community for some extra content.

Juan Vivas (00:00):

But to me, based on my experience so far, I think the best way to put it: An engineer is a technical problem-solver.

Eric Cross (00:28):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Juan Vivas. Juan is a supply chain engineer for SpaceX. His career in STEM has pivoted from chemical engineering to working on foods like Cinnamon Toast Crunch to his current role at SpaceX, where he’s responsible for his work on Starlink, a technology that uses low-orbit satellites to provide internet access across the world. In this episode, Juan shares his story of how he became an engineer and how a thoughtful teacher used robotics to inspire him. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Juan Vivas. Juan, thanks for being here.

Juan Vivas (01:14):

Yeah, yeah, of course! Super-excited to be here.

Eric Cross (01:19):

Hey, and starting off, I kind of like to ask your origin story. We were talking earlier about Marvel, and your journey of one working for…what I consider the closest thing that we have to SHIELD in the Marvel stories is SpaceX. Like with my own students, we talk about SpaceX like it’s a fictional thing, and we watch the rocket launches together and we watch the recovery and it’s so cool.

Juan Vivas (01:45):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (01:46):

And so when I knew that we were gonna be able to talk to you, I was excited. Like, I felt like I was a kid.

Juan Vivas (01:51):

<Laugh>

Eric Cross (01:51):

So I’d love to hear your origin story of you ultimately landing at SpaceX. And begin wherever kind of seems most natural to you.

Juan Vivas (01:59):

Yeah, yeah, of course. You know, I wasn’t one of those kids at from a young age I said “Oh, I’m gonna be an engineer.” Right? “I want to go and build all these things.” Where I grew up, and the social circle that I had, a lot of people were like doctors or lawyers. Just figured, you know, I’ll go to med school and go down the same path that 90% of like everyone else was gonna take. But in high school, I actually got into robotics. And, kind of like I mentioned, I wanted to do med school, that is what I figured I would end up doing. And then I got into robotics in high school. And I think that was what really kind of like changed my perspective of what I wanted to do, because basically these competitions were just—it was full-on driven by students. So we designed, programmed, and manufactured, like, the entire robot itself. And so through that I ended up doing a summer engineering program at the University of Maryland, the summer before going into my senior year in high school. And there we worked on a competition with underwater robots. And so we spent the entire summer, kind of similar scenario, designing a robot, manufacturing it, programming it. And then in the end it was like a competition in the buoyancy tank with different teams. And, you know, I think one thing that was really neat about that experience is that I got to hear Dr. John C. Mathers, who is a Nobel Prize physicist, speak to us in a room with, like, only 10 high school students. And just hearing his experience of where he started and the accomplishment that he’s been able to do, down in the STEM path, was really neat. And that summer was my final decision that I’m “OK, I know I want to be an engineer.” What’s interesting is I ended up choosing chemical engineering, instead of mechanical, which a lot of people, you know, based on all the experience that led me up to be an engineer, they asked me why I didn’t choose mechanical engineering. And I think one of the reasons why I chose chemical engineering is it’s very process-based. So one thing needs to happen, and there’s different inputs to that one step, and that step has an end-to-end reaction to it, right? So certain things need to happen in step one in order for step two to occur. And however the inputs happen in step one, it’s gonna affect the rest of the process. Honestly, very different than what I thought it was really gonna be. But what’s neat about chemical engineering is that it’s one of the most versatile engineering majors that you can have. Chemical engineering, because you work with a lot of process bases. Everything has a process, right? Everything needs to start with step one, and with, you know, step 10, whatever. And it’s all about optimization and improvement along those processes. So you can really take chemical engineering principles and apply ’em to different areas of a career, which is essentially the experience that I had in college. I had three internships with Dow Chemical where I did environmental health and safety, production, and supply-chain improvement. I then did research and development with Clorox. And then I did manufacturing engineering with General Mills. So really different job roles, different aspects, but same methodology applied.

Eric Cross (05:36):

I feel like there’s so much that you just said, <laugh> and I was trying to always, “I wanna ask him about that!” And in there, what I heard was there was a real pivotable, pivot moment in your life. Was the club…or was it a club, the robotics program? Or was that a class?

Juan Vivas (05:53):

You know, it was actually…it was VEX Robotics, specifically.

Eric Cross (05:56):

It was VEX! OK. Yeah, yeah. Really popular. And they still have it; I think we actually have some downstairs. So it was a club, and not necessarily a formal environment, where you were able to build. And it’s both collaborative and competitive, right? Like, there’s both aspects.

Juan Vivas (06:11):

Yep. Yep.

Eric Cross (06:11):

And, and then you had access to one of the only two facilities in the country that have these…were they buoyancy tanks?

Juan Vivas (06:20):

Buoyancy tanks, yep.

Eric Cross (06:21):

And there’s this book, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and then another similar book called Balance. It talks about how some of these innovators, like Steve Jobs and, and Bill Gates, they had access to things that other people didn’t. So, like, Bill Gates, I think at the University of Washington, had a computer that, you know, no one else did. And Jobs had one at, like, Hewlett-Packard. So it gave you this awesome headstart, where you’re able to test things in a real-life environment that kind of transfers into real-world skills. And then a few internships, so like, internships and mentors. So you had these people in the industry or people who were front-runners that were able to pour into you and give you these opportunities. And so it’s really neat to see how a program that starts as a club, kind of a competitive thing that introduced you to it and hooked you, then led to unfolding all of these opportunities that ultimately led you up to being here. And there’s one part—in looking at your LinkedIn profile, there’s a couple of really cool things that stand out. There’s a lot of cool things, but there’s two that really stood out. So one, working at SpaceX, and we’ll talk more about that, but I wanna go to General Mills and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Because Cinnamon Toast Crunch is amazing.

Juan Vivas (07:39):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (07:39):

And you were part of the supply chain for that. In my head, I’m thinking, OK, like, what is he like responsible for? Like, getting the cinnamon and sugar?

Juan Vivas (07:51):

<Laugh>

Eric Cross (07:51):

What was, what did your job entail, when you were running that?

Juan Vivas (07:55):

There, I didn’t even know what I was gonna be doing until my first day. It was just, whatever the business need is, that’s where you’re gonna be put. So this was actually a high-priority plan for General Mills. And the production line that made Cinnamon Toast Crunch was split up into processes. So you have, they call it the process-process side, which is like literally raw materials, like making the cereal from scratch, baking it, adding the sugar, and then sending it to be packaged. And then you have the packaging-process side. so I was then placed as a packaging process lead, for the packaging side of that production line. So I was accountable for two packaging lines that packed out Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And that is where—that was actually my first real, you know, call it “real job,” like graduated college, going straight into the industry. I was a process lead for the packaging side of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Eric Cross (08:54):

So you went from cereal to rockets, <laugh>, which which is an amazing trajectory to have.

Juan Vivas (09:03):

Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Cross (09:04):

And when you kind of mentioned, back in your story about medical school, and, you know, it’s kinda like, what you see people doing, and you’re “OK, this is what I think I wanna do.” And then we have a perception in our mind about what a certain job’s gonna be like. And then reality hits. I think a lot of—when I ask my students, “What do you wanna do?” They think, like, “lawyer!” and when they think “lawyer!” they’re like, “I’m good at arguing!” Right? And until they find—until they talk to some lawyers and they find out like what that career can look like.

Juan Vivas (09:28):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (09:28):

You’re not just in the courtroom showing off your arguing skills. But, like, an engineer, when I talk to my students about what does it mean to be an engineer, often it’s very linear. It’s “I build bridges,” or, you know, maybe cars, but you’re a supply chain engineer. And, and that’s something that I think, now more than ever, it’s probably an incredibly critical role, especially considering that all of these supply constraints. Can you—what is a supply chain engineer? And what does it look like in your day-to-day? How is engineering rolled into that?

Juan Vivas (10:03):

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s an excellent question. I, too, once thought that engineering was just “I’m gonna be actually making something physical,” and like being super engineer-y about it. But, to me, based on my experience so far, I think the best way to put it: An engineer is a technical problem solver. As a supply chain engineer, specifically right now in my role at SpaceX…you know, as you can guess, the supply chain in the entire world is crazy. There’s no raw materials anywhere, and nothing can ever get on time. And so what I work on is I help our suppliers develop processes to meet the design criteria that we set up for like a specific part. As my job as a supply chain engineer, it’s “Can I take this design and make it manufacturable?” Right? “Can I go to any supplier and can they actually make this to the tolerance that the design engineer set them to be?” Nine out of 10 cases, the answer is no, essentially, is the best high-level way to put it.

Eric Cross (11:10):

When you’re solving these problems, is it this iterative process of going back and forth? Or is it just this aha-moment when you finally figure things out? ‘Cause I imagine they’re coming up with a design; you’re going back and saying, “Can this be manufactured?” or “Can it be done?” They’re saying no 90% of the time. And then are you the one responsible for kind of iterating on this, or changing it and then going back to them and telling them, asking them, until you get a yes? Is that—

Juan Vivas (11:33):

Yep. Yep, yep. Exactly. So we go through a process called Design for Manufacturing, DFMing. And where I essentially take, you know, the design engineer’s proposal, and then I have conversations with the suppliers, and then, that’s where the iteration begins. Where we go back and forth, back and forth, until we kind of meet in the middle to have something that can be manufacturable. Most of the times, in my experience, suppliers will always tell you no, just because they always want something that is manufactured really easily. And so you just gotta learn through experience. Like, when are they actually telling you something that’s a fact, versus when they’re just trying to you know, get out of a tolerance, or that “all right, all right, they mentioned that would just like make their jobs a little bit more difficult.”

Eric Cross (12:17):

So I’m hearing like there’s soft skills that are woven into the technical skills that you also need to be able to have.

Juan Vivas (12:23):

Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, as an engineer—and this is something, again, that I feel like you can only learn through experience—you’re gonna see that it’s not just you working to solve this one problem. Especially for a supply chain engineer. You’re talking with marketing; you’re talking with an industrial design team; you’re talking with logistics; you’re talking with procurement, materials management—just a whole set of people that don’t necessarily have technical background. Right? So sometimes, depending on the audience that I’m targeting, I’m always very, very peculiar on what is my target audience, right? How can I—how deep in my technical knowledge do I need to go? Because if I just, you know, talk straight Engineer, they either don’t care or they’re gonna be really confused about what I’m saying. So there is a stronghold of soft skills that definitely go into engineering, which I think are really important to communicate, you know, to, let’s say, students that are really interested in engineering. So you can be extremely smart and intelligent and really good at problem-solving, but if you don’t have those soft skills that you apply in the real world—’cause in the real world, you’re never only gonna be working with engineers, no matter like where you’re at—so having those soft skills to be able to manage with different backgrounds and different sort of people and different ways of thinking, it’s, I feel, really critical, for, for an engineer in the real world.

Eric Cross (13:50):

No, I think that’s a great point. It reminds me of teaching! And so many other professions where your ultimate goal is to really pour into this person in front of you and help develop them and create a sense of inquiry and wonder and personal growth and inspiration. But you’re also working within constraints and people and relationships. You know, you have your other teachers, you have parents, you have administrators, you have a district, you have communities, stakeholders. You have all of these different dynamics that you have to kind of navigate in order to ultimately help this child thrive. Versus just, like, being in the classroom: “OK, I just got <laugh>, the hundred or 200 students, just you and me. That’s it.” But that’s not the real world. And there’s this report that came out, I think Google ran it, Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle, and they asked the question, “What are the most effective traits of a good team and a manager?” And the top seven skills were all soft skills. So it is like exactly what you’re saying, where, yeah, it’s great that you have this technical aptitude, but if you’re not able to work with other people, problem-solve together, work with people of different backgrounds and perspectives, then you’re gonna run into some roadblocks. And that kind of dovetails, like, looking at things like if you looked at education from the perspective of an engineer. So you’re all about optimizing, right? Optimizing, working with what you got. When you look at education, are there any things that you would optimize to help improve the experience of students? Like, looking back, that you would fine-tune, that you think could provide better outcomes in the classroom?

Juan Vivas (15:28):

You know, I feel…I don’t know. Obviously I’m not a teacher. And I’m sure teachers just have so much stuff going on. But I think just like, finding…giving a chance to those students that you see a lot of potential in and really taking the time to mold them. You know, I did have a teacher who was able to mold me and give me that kind of one-on-one personal experience, right? I think honestly to me it just comes down to mentorship, and motivating students on what, you know, they’re passionate for. Like, putting them in front of engineers, right? Like finding engineers to come volunteer and explain to them. I genuinely believe it just takes one spark to really get a student on a trajectory where they can make an impact in the future. So to me, it comes down to, really, exposure. How much are you really exposing your students to…you know what, something I’ve learned, when I joined SpaceX, is that Elon doesn’t believe—well, you know, there there’s a lot of things that Elon believes and not believes in; there’s a whole different type of conversation!—but he doesn’t think that you can just take a curriculum, let’s say, and just apply it massively to everyone and expect like everyone to be it. That’s just naturally not how it works, right? Students learn at different paces; they have different sort of interests. This is actually why he created his own school for his kids in LA, called Ad Astra. You know, if you take that mentality, what that school is doing is that they’re working at the students’ pace and at the student’s interests, right? And I actually have a coworker who has his kids in that school. And I mean, these are one of the most brilliant kids I’ve ever known. Like, they are taking differential equations in the eighth grade. And I didn’t know what differential equations was until I was in college already and they told me, “This is a class you have to take.” <Laugh>. But it’s finding that crossway where, where is the curiosity of the student? What are they really interested in? and exposing them to that.

Eric Cross (17:51):

Yeah. And what I’m hearing of that is, in teacher-speak, a lot of personalized learning. Like you were talking about…is it Ad Astra?

Juan Vivas (17:59):

Ad Astra? Yep.

Eric Cross (18:01):

Ad Astra. You know, every student learns in their own way and they develop knowledge in their own way. And being able to personalize learning according to the students’ abilities and needs, and then accelerate or slow down, really produces some amazing effects. I know this is something that we as teachers try to do with the classroom. Scaling it is the challenge. But it’s great because even with people who are in charge of policy or people who have decision-making ability, hearing people from the top down saying, “Hey, look, this is what worked for me. This is how I was able to become successful. I had a teacher that was able to be a mentor to me because they knew me, they had a relationship with me, they were able to tap into my passions and use those passions to drive me to do or put me in programs that I might not have known about because they, they knew who I was.” And it’s not one-size-fits-all for everyone. So having—maybe it’s curriculum or learning experiences that are kind of modular, where students are able to maybe try on different things and get that exposure, I’m a big, big believer, like you are, in mentorship. That was a huge, huge thing in my life. Having mentors. It’s the reason why I became a science teacher. In seventh grade, I had a mentor who had us doing college-level science, you know, at UC San Diego. And it completely changed the trajectory of my life, in a direction that I wouldn’t have had without him. So I think that’s great. And it’s something that we as teachers would appreciate hearing. Going back to what you said…earlier you said your wife is a supply chain engineer as well. And so that means that there’s two people who are process-minded in the household. And this is kind of a lighter question, but I gotta wonder, do you have the most optimized flow for grocery shopping? <Laugh> Because…

Juan Vivas (19:49):

Yeah, I think we don’t spend more than like 20 minutes at a grocery store. Mind you, we only shop at Trader Joe’s and we have a very specific list before going in. And if you ever shop at Trader Joe’s, you just know where everything is ’cause it’s always there and it’s small, right? But yeah, like we’re, we’re in and out in like 15, 20 minutes. It’s great.

Eric Cross (20:11):

I love it. I love it. I feel like I’m that way by design. I go in with a purpose and this is exactly what I want. I know where the cookie butter is, <laugh>, I know where my coffee is, and then, OK, I’m in and out. Apple Pay or whatever I’m using. And then we’re good to go. Do you think…so as someone listening to this or some people even just becoming aware of supply chain engineering, what advice would you give someone that’s interested in pursuing this career path? If you maybe reverse-engineered your process, knowing what you know now, you were gonna give advice, you were that mentor, what are just some kind of tips or ideas or thoughts or trajectories that you’d think that they should aim for? I’m assuming like robotics….

Juan Vivas (20:56):

Yeah. You know, I think I would say definitely finding some sort of program that exposes you to a lot of things that you won’t be exposed to, like on a day-to-day basis, or something that you just can’t be exposed to naturally at school. And mentorship, honestly. I was born in Colombia and my parents were both—they’re still both professionals, but they were both professionals in Colombia. And when we moved to this country, this was like December of 1999. My parents started from scratch, and so they didn’t really grow up in the States, right? So when it was my time to go to college and do all of this stuff, it was just like me on my own figuring this stuff out. And, you know, they definitely made some mistakes when it came to college applications and whatnot. But once I was in college, I knew that the best way for my success was gonna be through mentorship. And that’s when I joined the, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, which is a nationwide organization. And each college, well, most college campuses, have their own chapter. In joining that, I was exposed to resume workshops, mock interviews—basically how do you even talk to a recruiter? Which is so critical, right? And personally that that organization was really what molded my actual professional career.

Eric Cross (22:19):

There’s this theme that I’m hearing, kind of weaving through this. And in addition to—as we’re talking about STEM and technical skills, in addition to that, there’s this thread that I’m receiving of…being able to form relationships with other people, for our students, is an important skill to teach and should be taught explicitly. Which isn’t…it’s not really a curriculum, right? Like, you don’t get tested on your ability to….conflict resolution or how to write an email or how to develop a relationship. And then the other part in I think what you just said is the aspect of community. Through this organization, you learned kind of some of these hidden rules, maybe I would call it.

Juan Vivas (23:04):

Yep.

Eric Cross (23:04):

It’s not that you didn’t have the…you had the aptitude. You had the drive. But there were these kind of hidden rules, and from moving to the US, you needed a community to be able to show you, so that you can kind of go through the proper steps.

Juan Vivas (23:16):

Exactly.

Eric Cross (23:17):

And so that created a lot of value for you.

Juan Vivas (23:19):

Yep.

Eric Cross (23:20):

Well, the last question that I have is, is just kind of a wondering. You have this awesome story, and the story continues to unfold. I gotta say, <laugh> I’m gonna be following your LinkedIn profile, because I think you just have kind of the coolest trajectory of going from, you know, General Mills, working in chemical engineering, and then ultimately it’s SpaceX. And every time I see the rocket taking off and landing, I’m gonna be thinking, thinking about you. So cool!

Juan Vivas (23:47):

Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Cross (23:49):

And personally, I have a hope that one day, one of my students will be at a company, you know, like SpaceX or Tesla or wherever, and one day I get to interview them and talk to them and see what they say. But the last question I want to ask is, is there, is there a teacher who inspired you, or a memorable experience that you have that made an impact on you?

Juan Vivas (24:16):

Yeah, yeah, of course. It was kind of you know, middle school going into high school. The way my school worked, everything was divided from pre-kindergarten, whatever, first to sixth grade, and then seventh grade to 12th grade. So I had a high school science teacher, Ms. Brown, Ms. Velda Brown, who, came from a small little island town on the east coast of Canada. Somehow landed, in the high school that I went to, to teach science. Going back to the beginning of the story where I mentioned that I figured whatever, I’ll go to med school. I played soccer, basketball, and, you know, I said, “I’ll figure it out once I graduate.” It might have been like life science in the eighth grade or something like that. But then she went on to teach me chemistry and physics as well. And when I was in the 10th grade, she approached me and she asked me if I wanted to join the robotics club. And I remember saying robotics? I don’t know. You know, naturally, in school, it’s different sorts of crowds: people that play sports and people that are like in like STEM clubs or whatever. And I was, “Ah, I don’t know; I don’t know how I feel about robotics; not really my thing….” But somehow she convinced me to join robotics. It’s me, coming into this group of kids that already knew each other, and they were all working on robotics. And I’m, “Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m just here to try this thing out.” It was a thing where we met every single Saturday at like seven in the morning. And there were times where I literally had to choose, “Do I go to like a soccer game or do I go to you help my team with robotics?” And I completely loved it. Like, I fell in love with the aspect of building something from scratch, and just making it operative. And she ended up just being a huge mentor for me in high school, actually. With her, with the help of her, I ended up opening the robotics club at my school. And before I left, we opened it up to middle schoolers. And then, you know, later, years later down the road when I was in college, I found out that it was now a whole-school thing. So there was an elementary robotics club at the school, the middle school one, and then the high school one were still a thing like years after I left. And that was like just so amazing to hear. But yeah, it was Ms. Velda Brown, my high school science teacher, that really took her time to mold me and get me into robotics, and really mentor me. And honestly, I’m sure you as teachers, you guys probably hear about it a lot, but you can have a lot of power in shaping a kid by just telling—believing in them, right? She believed in me so much that I would go on to be a successful engineer. And I’m. “OK, yeah, yeah, you’re just saying it.” But she spoke life into her students up to this day. I still speak about it with my wife, and when I’m in conversations about this, that if it wasn’t for my high school science teacher, I would not—well, no, I would probably not be an engineer right now.

Eric Cross (27:38):

Wow. Shout out to Ms. Velda Brown <laugh>. Would you say she spoke…I think one thing that just resonated with me is when you said she “spoke life” into you.

Juan Vivas (27:46):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (27:46):

That was really powerful. And I think we as teachers have that power and we don’t realize it. Because, you know, we get so we’re so familiar and living day-to-day, but we do have the power of life, speaking life, into our young people. And, yeah, that was—

Juan Vivas (28:03):

Absolutely, yeah. You know, I think obviously people grew up with different backgrounds, different communities, life situations, right? So imagine having like a student that is similar in that environment and then they just hear someone at their school, like, “Hey, you’re really good at this. why don’t you consider doing this?” And that’s when I feel teachers have that power. Where like they don’t necessarily know the background, but they can make that opportunity, or make that decision in the moment, to really shape a student’s life.

Eric Cross (28:37):

And we need to hear that. And I think, I hope that other teachers listening to this will be reminded that many times we don’t get to reap the harvest. We don’t get to see the <laugh> Juan Vivases at SpaceX. They just kind of go, and they disappear, and we hope for the best, and we get a new group. But every once in a while they come back, and we get to see what our watering or seed-planting was able to produce. And so, just know that you sharing your story for educators, and for definitely Ms. Brown, makes a huge difference and is a huge encouragement. So.

Juan Vivas (29:11):

You know, I think we touched on earlier, you know, how do I end up going from cereal to rockets, right? And I think it ties along with what I mentioned earlier of just taking—as an engineer, you’re really a critical problem solver, right? And you think that methodology. And if you find a way, you can apply it to different sectors. When I was doing a lot of like the packaging process stuff at General Mills, being a lead on a high-volume manufacturing line, what I do for SpaceX specifically, right now, I’m actually on the Starlink project. So if you’re up to date with Starlink, it’s, it’s essentially high reliable, fast internet that we’re providing to areas where usually people don’t have access to internet, right? Or maybe they do, but it’s extremely expensive. Because to an internet provider company, the benefit is not there, if they extend an entire internet fiber line out to their place because it’s only directed to them, right? So that’s, that’s essentially what Starlink is trying to solve. And this is the first time that SpaceX is facing a consumer packaging scenario. Before it was just rockets. And now they’re selling a product to consumers. They had never done that before, especially in a high-volume manufacturing setting. And so I am the supplier development engineer for all the consumer-facing packaging for the Starlink product itself. And that’s essentially how all those thoughts connected, where I had this experience coming from General Mills and packaging high-volume manufacturing. And then when Starlink started, they’re all, “Right, well, who knows anything about packaging?” Right? “We know so much about rockets, we need someone with this technical background.” And that’s essentially how I bridge over to SpaceX.

Eric Cross (31:11):

And so while you’re working at SpaceX, you’re working on Starlink, which I know you mentioned that—you said that it’s providing internet globally, which in and of itself, we—especially those of us that live in major cities—we kind of take for granted. Internet is like a utility. But we don’t maybe realize that in many parts of the world, internet is not reliable or even accessible.

Juan Vivas (31:33):

Right. Right.

Eric Cross (31:34):

I see every once in a while, I think, the StarlinK satellites sometimes are visible?

Juan Vivas (31:38):

Yep.

Eric Cross (31:39):

Low orbit?

Juan Vivas (31:39):

Yeah. Yeah. You can go—they’ll kind of be like a little train of bright stars that move along together. Yep.

Eric Cross (31:46):

And that must—that must feel…I mean, we all have jobs and we’re all doing different things, but you’re working on a project and you’re engineering something that actually can provide a lot of opportunities or close a gap in some parts of the world where they don’t have access to internet. They’re gonna be able to have access and be connected all over. I dunno, the word would be “existential.” Existential value. Like, what you’re doing is actually providing a service for people. Humanity. Like, addressing a critical need in many, many places around the world.

Juan Vivas (32:26):

Yeah. We’ve had stories where we have sent Starlink kids to a small school in a village in rural Chile, right in South America. And for the first time ever, they’ve had internet. We have supported disaster relief in Europe. I think this past summer, Europe had really bad floods. We sent Starlink kits out there. You know, the vision of working at an Elon Musk company and SpaceX and Starlink—this is all stuff that is being done for the first time in history. We have never, ever done anything like this before until now. And to be able to provide those that don’t have the access to—to your point, it’s kind of wild, right? Like we, we just take it for granted. “Oh yeah, I just have internet. Let me log on.” There are people on Earth right now that have never been on the internet. Or don’t even know what the internet is. And that’s essentially the, the gap that Startlink is starting to close.

Eric Cross (33:26):

Yeah. We think about that while my students are doing TikTok dances. <Laugh> And there are people who, you know, never, never been connected. And, it kind of makes me more like, just inside, if I can ask: What’s it like working at SpaceX? I showed my students what it’s like working at some of the Silicon Valley companies. ‘Cause just to show them there’s slides and food and, you know, they kind developed this ecosystem inside so that it’s really kind of homey to kind of keep you there, you know. When you’re working and there’s bikes and things like that. And that’s a very Silicon Valley type of thing. But, you know, in listening to you talk about SpaceX and Elon, you know, you’re with a really visionary kind of company, and when I hear you talk about it, there’s I can hear this passion, this, “we’re doing something.” Is that culture, like, pervasive everywhere? Are you around folks that kind of are on that same wavelength? Because I definitely get it from you as you talk about what you do.

Juan Vivas (34:28):

Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I think, as an engineer, you know, going to SpaceX and working at SpaceX, it’s essentially—personally, I believe right now in the US it’s like the mecca of engineering, right? Like, it is where engineering in this most, you know, shape and manner, it’s being applied. I think what’s really interesting is that the way that Elon looks at it is just iterate, and iterate fast, right? Like, fail and fail fast. I think as an engineer, you always want to have things perfect, right? And so you spend a lot of time in making a decision or investigating something or whatever. And working at SpaceX is the complete opposite. It’s just you know, “Assume, state your assumptions—like, what are you assuming right now? What are the risk at it? And just make a decision and then see what the result is.” You know, so it’s an environment where you learn, really quick.

Eric Cross (35:28):

You said something that I think was powerful and I hope, I think <laugh>, this is definitely, I’m gonna get a clip of this <laugh> of you saying it. Because it speaks directly to, I think, what a lot of students struggle with in the classroom, is there’s this competition or feeling that you always need to be right. And you need to be right the first try, on the first time. And a lot of times it’s because students will compare themselves to each other, or there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to be successful. But you said, “Fail and fail fast, iterate, state your assumptions.” And it sounds like this critical part of being an engineer or in what you do, like there’s no room for ego or attaching your identity or your sense of value or worth or ability to whether you’re able to solve a problem in the first try.

Juan Vivas (36:13):

Yep.

Eric Cross (36:14):

Like, you have to be OK with the cycle, is kind of what I’m hearing from you. Is that, is that right?

Juan Vivas (36:19):

Yep. Exactly. It only took six months to develop the product from scratch and launch it to the public, which is insane. Nowhere in the world will any company ever iterate that fast and come up with a brand-new project. But it’s because of that mentality—like you’re saying, it’s not about like just trying to make it perfect and have all this information. And I think Elon has learned this personally, you know, through Tesla and the beginning of SpaceX. It’s, “I can wait to have all this information, and most likely I’m still gonna be wrong after I make the decision.” So it’s, “Might as well take the risk, do the decision, and then just see where you learn from it, right?” And then you keep applying that, applying that. So it’s like you iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate until you get what you want.

Eric Cross (37:00):

I think this is even, like, great advice. I’m taking this personally because I get paralysis by analysis <laugh>.

Juan Vivas (37:06):

Yep.

Eric Cross (37:07):

You know, I’ll research something to death but then not actually execute. Like, I need to make a decision and do it and then course-correct along the way. Somebody once told me it’s a lot easier to turn a moving car than it is a car that’s sitting still. And so as you’re kind of flowing, you’re just making these adjustments along the way until you end up on the path that you want to be. So I think that there’s so many gems in the things that you’re saying right now. What I’m thinking through the lens of my seventh graders that want to work in any STEM field—I mean, really, any field in general, but especially engineering, especially the STEM fields—knowing that, pick it, make a decision, move forward, and then course-correct along the way. That’s what science looks like in the real world.

Juan Vivas (37:49):

Yep. Exactly. Yep. And definitely most important—and I feel like this is sometimes where, not necessarily education in general, but it’s just, we want students to, “OK, you need to get it right the perfect time, right?” But it’s like, every student is gonna think differently. A student is gonna take a different assumption based on their background and experiences. And I mean, you know, we can go a lot deeper in that, but the way a student is shaped, they’re gonna take certain assumptions. So that’s where it gets interesting. OK, why are you assuming that? Where’s your thought process in this?

Eric Cross (38:25):

And we all come from different backgrounds and mindsets and filters and biases that cause us to look at something a certain way. And it’s not just like calling it out, just going, “Hey look, this is what it is.” Like autopsy without blame, this is what I’m working with. Let’s discuss it openly. Right? And if we started that process earlier, you know, younger, in classrooms, we can de-stigmatize the right answer being the best answer more, as opposed to focusing on process as opposed to outcome. And then you kinda get used to wanting to go through the process. I look at it like video games and I talk to my students. I say, “You know, you don’t pick up a video game that’s brand-new and then play it and then you die once and you’re ‘Ah, I’m never gonna play this game again.’ You know, it just doesn’t work that way. You’re going through this iterative process, and no matter what you play, you’re trying things differently. You’re data collecting. And then you’re making new decisions based on the data that you collected.” And for some of my kids, they’ll just raise their hands, say, “No, I just get mad and throw the controller across the room.” <Laugh> But I go, “Yeah, and then you’ll try it again.”

Juan Vivas (39:33):

The best way to know how not to do something is to fail. And so you already…I mean, what is that famous quote? I think that’s why Thomas Edison’s, “Oh, I, did not fail 99 times. Right? I only found 99 times…” I mean, that is that is true. And I feel like at work in a SpaceX, that is something that probably the core of it comes from there. It’s you know, any failure, quote unquote, that you may take it as a failure, it’s really not. You’re just “OK, we, we tried that. It didn’t work. Like what are we gonna do next?” So it’s just like taking that learning and like moving off with it quickly.

Eric Cross (40:09):

I heard a couple of teachers say, “Things fail: First Attempt In Learning: F A I L.” And then another teacher, one of my mentor teachers, she said, “There’s no such thing as failure, just data, in science.”

Juan Vivas (40:20):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly. Yep.

Eric Cross (40:23):

And so I’ve always taken that to heart. And I share that with my own students, just, “A ‘no,’ a lot of times, will tell you more information than a ‘yes.’” ‘Cause if something works in the first try, you may not exactly know why it worked. It just did.

Juan Vivas (40:34):

Yeah. Yep.

Eric Cross (40:37):

So yeah. Well, I went on your time, brother. Dude. <laugh>. The time flew. It was…

Juan Vivas (40:46):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (40:47):

There were so many things I was trying to write out as you were talking, that I just felt like, “This guy is sharing so many gems!” But yeah, I want to thank you for taking time outta your day and for sharing that information for your passion for what you do. And, I don’t know, I think that students and teachers that listen to this will get an insight from a perspective that really matters. ‘Cause ultimately we’re, we’re trying to really prepare our students for real life. Maybe I’ll email you privately if I order a Tesla, if you can move me higher up the Cybertruck line. <laugh>

Juan Vivas (41:22):

Yeah. No promises.

Eric Cross (41:24):

<laugh>

Juan Vivas (41:25):

Yeah. No, I appreciate you guys having me, having me here, and be able to speak on my experience. And hopefully it sparks a couple, one, even if it’s just one teacher that will spark another student, that is already success there. So.

Eric Cross (41:42):

Well I know, I know what you said resonates with me and it fills my cup. And I’m excited. So I’m already thinking of some ideas of things that I can do, just because of this conversation, and I know other people will as well. And, again, this is Juan Vivas, who’s a supply development engineer at SpaceX. He’s worked at some amazing places. And someone who believes deeply in not only the power of the technical skills, but the heart skills, and how community makes a huge impact in his life. It made a huge impact in him ultimately becoming a scientist, and now working on a project at SpaceX, Starlink, that is going to provide access to the world, to the web. And that’ll ultimately help us solve more problems and innovate and create some solutions that will benefit everybody. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you.

Juan Vivas (42:30):

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. Appreciate it.

Valeria Rodriguez (00:00):

There’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to. It tells me no matter what, I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. Some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character.

Eric Cross (00:19):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria is a science educator, instructional technologist, and illustrator, who is currently part of a steam team where she teaches third through fifth graders in Miami, Florida. Valeria has presented and led workshops at education conferences like NSTA, ISTI, and SXSWEdu. In this episode, we discuss how she uses real-world projects to make lessons more meaningful, and why teaching students how to sketchnote increases their conceptual understanding in science. I hope you enjoy this pun-filled conversation with Valeria Rodriguez.

New Speaker (00:58):

Now you’re in Miami and you have a biology background. We’re like kindred spirits. Like we do the same thing. I teach biology here in San Diego at a middle school called Albert Einstein Academy. So I’m in a seventh grade classroom teaching life science.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:11):

That’s so cool. That’s how I started.

Eric Cross (01:13):

Is it?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:13):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I started teaching middle school science for seven years, doing life science in my biology background.

Eric Cross (01:20):

How’d you get started? Like where did you kind of begin?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:22):

Well, I went to UF for undergrad as a runner, and I thought I was gonna go to the Olympics, but you know, running in college is hard. And you quickly like realize a path as a full-time athlete is really hard. And one of the days that I was having one of those, like “come Jesus moments” of what am I gonna do with my life, I walked by a sign that said life is calling. And I’m like, okay, <laugh>

Eric Cross (01:52):

You literally had a sign.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:53):

There was a sign. So I was like, I’m reading the sign. I’m following the arrows. And it was for the Peace Corps. And so I went to this meeting and everything that I’ve ever done student government, athletics school education, my backgroundmy family’s from Columbia–everything in that meeting came together and they’re like, we need all these skills. And I’m like, I have those. Those are my skills. And they’re like every Peace Corps volunteer teaches. And so I went in as an agriculture volunteer to Panama because of my major and my background in biology. And while I was in the Peace Corps doing the work, I was teaching at the local school. And I realized that the most sustainable way to create any change is through education. When I came back, I was like, well, what do you do if your first job in the world is in the Peace Corps? Like my background was, you know, managing a machete in a field and teaching second through eighth grade in one classroom, on a chalkboard, you know, in English and in Spanish, while teaching the teacher and the students. So I found that going into teaching allowed me to put some of those skills, that wide array of skills that I had collected until that moment, into practice. And it allowed me to do the arts, do the running, do the science, do the connecting with the community in one place here in the states.

Eric Cross (03:34):

I don’t know if I’m just romanticizing, but you were in Panama and you were doing this amazing teaching. I don’t know. Do you compare it to teaching now in the classroom? Is there anything that ever like makes you wish that you were kind of in that environment again? Or are you kind of, do you like the more kind of technology side of things?

Valeria Rodriguez (03:48):

I tell my students all the time that I miss it, because when I was in Panama, I was in Licencia. They looked at me like this, all knowing being. If they couldn’t come to class because the kids literally had to work, they would bring me their assignment, like run it to me and then run back to their parents. Like, “I had to turn it in, but I have to go to work.” And I’m like, oh my gosh. And like here, sometimes I feel like, you know, I have to negotiate and convince my students to want to give me their work. And maybe it’s because we take a lot of things for granted. I mean, I didn’t have running water in my community. Here, you know, we have everything. I miss how we appreciated — like, my parents would send suitcases of materials for me to hand out to my students, like color and stuff, notebooks, things like that — and the kids would like, hold that notebook, like pristine and here sometimes my students aren’t as careful with materials. And I’m like, why are you breaking the crayon box? <Laugh>

Eric Cross (04:54):

I’m thinking about that. Just even just bringing pens and crayons and how that’s valued. And then a culture that’s built around esteeming teachers, and you’re this essential member of the community — and you feel that. It’s palpable.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:08):

Yeah. And here, sometimes I ask students like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And you get all sorts of answers, but in my community, it’s gonna sound funny, but they were like, we wanna be a teacher. Like, that means that we would know a lot of stuff and they would put their hair up in a bun, ‘cause I always have it in a bun, and they would write stuff when they were playing and they would act me out <laugh> and I’m like, do I, do I do that? <Laugh> I genuinely got a very rich experience in the time that I was there. And what I learned the most was how to try to not do as much, it’s like a lesson that I’m still trying to learn because like I’m here with the U.S. Mentality of go, go, go.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:58):

And they’re like, but we already did, you know, two things like now we stop. And I’m like, but, but why? And they’re like, you can do that tomorrow. And I’m like, but no, like we’re gonna run out of time. For me. It was a lot of struggle of like slow down. And as a teacher, I feel like I’m always like on the treadmill at a thousand speed. And sometimes I have to tell myself like slow down, be in this moment, like a parent texted me today that her daughter was walking with her dad and said, daddy, let’s talk about the layers of the soil. And I was like, I need to stop right now and acknowledge that this happened. She’s in third grade and she’s asking her dad, you know, she could ask him about anything, and she’s asking him about soil. That’s essential for everything. And we don’t even think about soil here. Like my community had tons of erosion and every year there were less and less crops being able to be produced. We’re not talking about that here. And yet, my student asked her dad here in Miami, <laugh> about soil. And that conversation happened because of our class.

Eric Cross (07:03):

And you allowed yourself to be present and experience and feel that that communication came to you.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:09):

Yeah. We put so much stuff out there and we don’t know where it lands. If it lands on dirt or soil, <laugh>

Eric Cross (07:16):

There you go. I like it. Yeah. Bringing it back. But you’re, I think you’re what you’re saying. Resonates with a lot of educators that’ll be listening to this is that there’s so much that you do. And there’s even times when we do get the feedback, there might be a letter or a card or something, but like, to your point, like we look to the next thing instead of stopping, being present and allowing yourself to absorb it. I think I need to put that up on my, like on my wall, like this, just be present. Now you came back and then you went into the classroom here and you started off teaching science.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:46):

I didn’t go straight into the classroom. I knew that I wanted to continue teaching. But I wasn’t back here in Miami. When I moved back, I moved to Austin. And I ended up getting married and there, I started teaching Spanish as a second language like corporate classes. And I was kind of like tiptoeing around, like, do you dive into education? ‘Cause The idea of a teacher here is very different than the teacher idea that I had while in the peace Corps. So he, a lot of people were like, you can do so many things. Why would you teach? And I was like insulted <laugh>. I was like, wait, what do you mean? Like even to this day, I’ve started a blog post, maybe 20 times with that statement because people all the time are like, you’re so talented. Why do you teach? And it drives me crazy because it makes me feel like they’re looking down on my choice <laugh> but I came to terms with it that it’s just like a societal thing. Cause of that quote, like those who can’t do teach. And I was like, let me let this go.

Eric Cross (09:01):

I find though that educators who come in as a second career, come in with a, a, a variety of skill sets that I, I think you can only get when you’re outside of academia. I mean, you can, you can develop them, you know, going kind of K12 education college and then into the classroom. But those soft skills, the business skills, a lot of those things you really develop. And it’s funny ‘cause your, your story almost sounds like some of the people that I know that work in big tech firms, they have this eclectic story and then now they’re, you know, working for Google or Facebook or something, but that actually was a as set to them because they are able to see the world through multiple perspectives. And I’m hearing kind of a distinguish between art of teaching and the science of teaching. Like you had the, maybe the art connecting ideas, these things, and then the science, like the quote unquote like formal teaching. Okay. That had to get built on later. Like am I hearing that right?

Valeria Rodriguez (09:55):

Yeah. The that’s what rocks I’m teaching the rock cycle right now. So I’m, I’m under a lot of heat and pressure <laugh>

Eric Cross (10:02):

We got the funds, we got the funds rolling. All right. All right. So bringing in the, so the, the art side or the science side we have, and then we just have this amazing illustrator. Now you mentioned your website and we’re gonna post it somewhere, but just so we have it here to, and you say, what is your website where all your majors and sketch notes can be found,

Valeria Rodriguez (10:21):

Www dot Valia, sketches.com.

Eric Cross (10:23):

Okay. So folks that are listening, if you wanna check out the art, there’s some awesome stuff on there, as well as Twitter and Instagram. And we’ll make sure we have it handles in the, the bio of the podcast and the notes. Your art’s amazing. I looked, I checked it. I saw inauguration. I saw astronauts. I saw all kinds of different things. How do you use that in the classroom

Valeria Rodriguez (10:45):

To draw connections? The ones? So what I do is I airplay my iPad onto the board. And sometimes as I’m talking, I’ll draw things, draw things I’m saying, or assignments I’ll sketch out different ideas, or maybe like the schedule I’ll have an icon of some sort that represents things. I use it for everything and anything, because just the way that I tell my students that science is everywhere. I, we don’t realize how programmed we are to use images to for, for information they’re in the street. Bathroom signs, we see the zoom little link, like the image, the icon of zoom. And we know that it’s a call the apps. You know, our phone doesn’t have the words for everything that we’re opening. We just have a list of images that represent information. So we’re programs for this. And all I’m doing is showing my students how we’re programmed for it because we’re so used to seeing images, to represent things that we’re taking it for granted again.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:03):

And sometimes my students will like, I’ll write something and I ask them, make your own visual vocabulary. So I give them the word of the definition for every unit, the younger ones, I give them the definition they have to plug in the word and an image, the older ones, I give them the word they have to plug in the definition and an image. But I don’t tell them what to draw because they need to create an image that will help them to remember the definition. Not me. I tell them, I wrote the list. I know the words, you’re the one that needs to think of something that’s going to help you to remember this. You need to draw a connection to this information. Like I use it and I mess up all the time. And I, I scratch things out because I feel that my students or the student that I’ve had in general are risk averse.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:57):

They don’t want to make mistakes. And drawing is one of those things that it taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes. Like people won’t buy commit to buying houses or they won’t commit to things because they’re gonna make a, I’m like, you can sell the house. You can move again. I mean, I’ve lived in a lot of cities. I’ve been married, divorce, gone out with people. It’s worked out it hasn’t you know, there’s, there’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to <affirmative> that it tells me no matter what I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. And if a line doesn’t necessarily go in the direction, I want it to, I can continue shaping it so that the overall image is in the direction I want. And I can look past those line here and there that some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character. I, I cycle and I have scars everywhere. They give me character and I keep writing. The overall image in my head is I’m a cyclist, not I’m banged up. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (14:14):

I feel like there’s so much to mind in what you just said. This was like a mini-Ted talk. And I couldn’t write fast enough because there were so many gems of the things that you said, but let me say something worse. And this is I’m gonna be surface with this because, and it’s your fault because you got me thinking in puns and you said, take it for granted. And I said, take it for granted because you’re talking about the rock cycle. So that’s what I heard way back. Anyways, you have your students creating what, but it’s low tech, which is really cool because a lot of times we think of creating content and it’s kind of high tech, but they’re creating something. And this is for us, like as biology folks, like you’re using kind of like this neuroscience that exists about students, creating an art to help them learn.

Eric Cross (14:55):

And this is something that I, I feel gets missed a lot in. When we talk about the quote unquote, the formal teacher training is the element of how creating an art can actually lead to improved learning in the classroom. It’s something you have to go to like a conference to kind of go and see or something, but it’s not as, it’s not as pervasive everywhere. And that thing about risk averse. I feel like I, you spoke to my own life. What I see ‘cause with my own seventh graders, I see the same fear or anxiety when I ask them to draw. As I do, when I ask them to give me a hypothesis about a phenomenon that I’m gonna teach and I say, it’s okay to be wrong, but I see them drift to the Chromebook and want to Google it. You know what you just said about just try it and you can always change and giving character, I feel like is just a great message for everybody to hear

Valeria Rodriguez (15:48):

Today. Students made fossil, right? ‘Cause They’re learning about rocks and we made using plaster, but then I put the green screen up and not only did they make it and they excavated them, but then we put it on the green screen. And they’re like all of a sudden at a dig site,

Eric Cross (16:04):

What I’m seeing right now for those of you who are listening is, is students who are on, is this on IMO?

Valeria Rodriguez (16:10):

This is on we video

Eric Cross (16:12):

Video and they’re holding up fossils that they made. But in the background, because there was a green screen, there’s an overlay of like a, a rock dig site. So the students legitimately look like they’re paleontologists or something somewhere.

Valeria Rodriguez (16:24):

Exactly. And so it’s, it’s not just creating lines, right? The sketching transfers to so much be because even the want, not wanting to make a mistake with their fossil. One of the kids today, when he took off the, the Plato, ‘cause we put the Plato at the base. Then we put in either a shell or some sort of artifact that they were going to fossilize. And then we put in the plaster when he took off the Plato, a piece broke off and everybody’s like, I can’t believe you broke your fossil. And I’m like, not the first. Okay. Do you know how many of these guys and girls have been out there? And all of a sudden they find a dinosaur bone and they’re walking and they fall. And this fossil that took billions of years is all of a sudden broken. I’m like this selfie, the original selfies, these animals died in commitment to their selfies.

Valeria Rodriguez (17:19):

And here you are dropping the bone. So they were all laughing, but it was to go away from the fact that, oh my God, you broke it. You made a mistake. You drew the wrong line. You asked the wrong question. Like no big deal. Keep digging, shout out to the teachers that try doing the projects that they have. They don’t feel completely comfortable with or you know, that they take risks doing. Because even though in theory, it’s like suggested and schools want that or communities want that when it comes down to it, people also expect us to do things at work. But part of our job is also taking risks. Like we did a tethered weather balloon launch the other day because we couldn’t get approval to release the weather balloon in the atmosphere since we’re near an airport. And it was too short of a time.

Valeria Rodriguez (18:14):

And I remember a parent said, oh, you’re not releasing the balloon. And I was like, well, this is a lot of work too. <Laugh> we, you know, we’re, we’re doing the tethered launch. This is a hard project. So the other day when I heard that comment, like I went back to my class and I was like, you know what? I took a risk to do this project. I could have played it safe with a handout of a weather balloon <laugh> or you know, a YouTube video. It’s it’s the, the fact that we’re continuing to push. And so I wanna like really thank the teachers that keep trying to do the hard things that aren’t like tried and tested because it’s scary. Yeah.

Eric Cross (18:57):

Yeah. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for them to have adults that they see in positions of authority or that they respect or admire model failure. And I don’t mean failure in the, like the negative pejorative sense, but like things just not working out and then seeing how you respond to it, ‘cause you’re modeling, taking a risk. But like with real stakes, it’s authentic. I had students swab the campus and we put it in auger dishes and Petri sealed it up and then let it grow room temperature, but we kept it you know, cool enough at 75 degrees. So it wouldn’t be able to survive any, anything pathogenic. And then students, you know, I took pictures of them and then showed them the results. So the students never interacted with it and some things grew and some things didn’t, it was mostly, you know, fungi and some bacteria, but I showed them like, how come mine didn’t grow? And I was like, well, you know, it could have been how we swabbed. It could have been some things don’t grow the temperature, we kept it at, but some of the experiments didn’t yield the cool results. And that was okay. But I front loaded the expectation so that if everything did go great, sweet, but managing expectation, I found really helps to mitigate the pressure.

Valeria Rodriguez (20:01):

Yeah. Well another project that we’ve participated in is growing beyond earth where we’re planting seeds that contribute to like a huge set of data for cultivars that are being considered for growth on the international space station. And my students are like, well, you know, we just have six little pots, like what is this? And I’m like, yeah, we have two little seeds in each of these pots. And we are one data set in like hundreds of data sets that they’re collecting. But we are contributing two research on the international space station. You don’t have to be the next bill gates or the next, you know, Steve jobs. Like everyone thinks they’re gonna be the next big thing. Like you can also be a seed. That’s part of a really big project and that is okay. Like everyone can’t be the next big thing

Eric Cross (20:48):

And the other. And the other thing, I think what Gladwell talks about this in outliers and there’s another book called bounce, but a lot of the people that we see is successful or famous, we don’t realize that their background and their exposure to things was one of the things that led them there, both jobs and gates had access, you know, gates had access at, at the university of Washington to like one of the first computers and then jobs at, at Hewlett Packard. The story go goes on and on, but we don’t see the lineage of some of these people and where they come from. We just see the end result. You just see LeBron James winning a championship or something. We just want the, the end result the, the glory, but not the sweat that it takes to get there. They don’t, we don’t really see that as much, which leads me to like the next thing I wanted to ask you is how do you, and I kind of saw it just now, but how do you engage your kids in the classroom?

Valeria Rodriguez (21:36):

Well, I think I’m funny. Some of them don’t do

Eric Cross (21:38):

They like the puns

Valeria Rodriguez (21:39):

<Laugh> some of them do. And some of them don’t get them. They get them later. And I see when they get it, I like to engage them by bringing in real people, real examples of things, real research when possible. Right. I can’t put them in a real dig site. So the green screen helps me do that. But one of my students yesterday, other day before was like, you have such cool friends because I’ll say, oh, one of my friends does blah, blah, blah. Or, or, oh, when we go to Kennedy space center, we’re gonna, you know, talk to one of my friends. Who’s doing research on, you know, chilies in space and they’re like, wow, your friends are so cool. And I took that moment to tell them, be mindful of the people that you collect as friends in your life, like make good choices, surround yourself with awesome people, people so that you can share ideas. Like you connect with friends who you inspire you to do more. I try to engage them by giving them examples of things that people around me are doing that connect to what we’re doing. Do

Eric Cross (22:43):

You, do you explicitly or intentionally teach soft skills or is it just something that you just kind of organically do natural or are you mindful about making sure that you’re doing that

Valeria Rodriguez (22:52):

A hundred percent? You have to be explicit about it with amplify? Actually, we, we did a poster for incorporating social, emotional skills and other soft skills into the classroom because sometimes we just like other things like writing and, and reading, you know, we silo all these things in education and the school counselor, can’t be the one to deal with everything. You know, you have to deal with things as they surface. And sometimes my kids ha are frustrated because I ask them to think I don’t have yes or no answers. I have, you know, we are gonna launch a high altitude weather balloon. We don’t know how high it’s gonna go. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. We don’t, we don’t know if we’re gonna find it when the <laugh>, when the balloon bursts and it lands in the ocean, are we gonna find it? Is the GPS tracker gonna work?

Valeria Rodriguez (23:47):

Are we gonna lose all that money? I don’t know, but we have to do all the steps and find out. But with kids, they don’t have the skills yet. And I can’t wait for the counselor to come in and talk about handle the frustration that they’re feeling over. Not knowing the correct question to ask, because by the time they go meet with her, the moments pass, I have to stop and say, Hey, like check in with, with what you’re doing. It’s okay to be frustrated. You can’t take it out on a classmate. You can’t take it out on me.

Eric Cross (24:14):

So you were, you, you were intentional about teaching these skills to your students and you had the relationship. So it makes sense that you were the one to bring it across ‘cause you see them more than anybody does. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve imagined. Teaching is for a long time. It’s been okay, you’re the science content expert. You’re the English expert, but so much as teaching evolves, there are these skills or like EQ emotional intelligence that you kind of have to have kind of coming in. Because like those moments, like no having the presence of mind to stop and why a young person through identifying how they feel, why, where it came from. Those aren’t always covered in those aren’t really covered in your methods classes when you’re in college, getting your, your degree or something. Now when you’re you’re sketch noting and for teachers who are, or one, could you just maybe give like a brief explanation of sketch, noting for somebody who may not be familiar with it, like how I was sketch any different than just drawing a picture randomly or something.

Valeria Rodriguez (25:10):

Okay. So you’re creating visual summaries. You’re using text and images combined in different ways to take notes. And before you know how we had like these shorthand things that the squiggly meant an indent and something else meant something else. And we had these lists of things when they would edit our papers, that represented things. It’s kind of like that for your brain. So you’re making a list of maybe icons or small sketches that represent things for you. So as you’re taking notes, you hear things. And when people talk now and they, they say, you know, I’m on the fence about this. Like I literally see a fence. And when they’re talking, I write the note, it’s almost like a T toe with pointy tops and I put a stick figure on top of it. And so later when I look at it, I think, oh, that’s right. My friend is on the fence about that decision

Eric Cross (26:08):

For a new teacher or even a, a, a experienced teacher. That’s interested in sketch noting, where, where would you recommend? They start like the structurize? Like, do you give creative freedom? Are they doing this paper and pencil vocabulary words? Are they up? Like, what are some just kind of maybe three basic things to kind of get started for someone who was just curious about it.

Valeria Rodriguez (26:29):

So it has to be simple because if it requires a lot of energy to go in, then you’re gonna be more hesitant to do it. For example, I wouldn’t start summarizing a video because it’s moving really fast or a live presentation is really hard. So with students, I would start with here’s a paragraph, make a visual summary of it, or here’s a vocabulary list, make an image to represent each word. Then you would move into, well, you know, here’s a unit summarize the three main topics in unit. Then you can move onto like a little YouTube video. That’s like 10 minutes a Ted talk, make a visual summary of the Ted talk because they can pause it.

Eric Cross (27:11):

Mm. Okay.

Valeria Rodriguez (27:13):

The hardest thing is live presentations, ‘cause in conversations you can say, oh, can you say that again? Sketch, noting. You start seeing how people organize or don’t their thoughts when they speak. Because when you start writing things down and all the information is about one thing and then like two blue ORPS about something else. You’re like, wow, that was really unbalanced. So then when you start teaching, you tell them what you’re gonna tell them, you tell them and then you tell them what you told them. So they can check that they put the notes in the right places and you tell them what you’re gonna tell. So they can prep the pathway that they’re gonna set up their notes and I have to be explicit. And I have to say like, I’m gonna talk about the rock cycle. So if I were you, I would put, you know, these four boxes. Oh, but there’s three types of rocks. See? I’m like, yeah, but magma. So let’s put it in the cycle, you know? And, and then I’m like, if I were you, I would put an arrow from here to here because this is how, you know, after erosion and then, you know, heat and pressure. But then it connects like this. So the arrows are gonna help me to remember the directions

Eric Cross (28:13):

As we wind down. There’s there’s one question I wanna ask you there, you are bringing together this science, the, the art, the social, emotional learning, the relationships with your students outside content, like there’s so many different things that you bring in the classroom that is clearly gonna make you a memorable educator for your kids. It just, it’s just, I’m just listening to your learning environment. And it’s so rich who is one teacher that really expired you. So

Valeria Rodriguez (28:38):

There’s a few people that stand out overall. I had very encouraging teachers. I had that one teacher that didn’t like my drawing <laugh> she also stands out <laugh>

Eric Cross (28:49):

We have those too.

Valeria Rodriguez (28:49):

Yeah. So I have colleagues that stand out to me that inspire me every day to like keep trying. And then I had a teacher in high school who I actually work with her daughter now at the school that I work at. And I didn’t even know her mom would make us write almost the whole class. And it was world history. And I remember hearing her say when she was talking about the Roman empire that it fell because it reached more than it can grab. So it kept extending too far out. And I heard that, like I think about, yes, I can keep reaching for things in education and reaching for things in my classroom. But I have to come back to like, what can I hold? I don’t wanna reach further than what I can hold. And yes, I have to believe in myself. And I tell my students to believe in themselves,

Eric Cross (29:38):

I’m in this, I’m in this sketch noting mindset. Because when you said what Ms. Brown shared with you, I thought of a hand reaching out, but then things kind of slipping through it. And I another hand with like a fist right next to it. So even in our conversation here last hour, I I’m thinking in pictures now. And so I’m like, if I can do it, they can do it. Like if you know, ‘cause I am just not the person who spends a lot of time committing to draw. Because a lot of times when I was that student who tried to draw and we get frustrated and look around and now I feel like this is, I wanna try this again. I wanna share this with my students and encourage them. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I look forward to continuing to see the sketch notes that you do. And maybe I’ll, I’ll show you one of mine. Like eventually I don’t know if you can see that there that’s my stick figures. Those of you who are listening right now, I drew, I was drawing stick figures and taking notes while Blair was dropping all of this, these like gems and wisdom in here. So

Valeria Rodriguez (30:31):

Maybe we can do a challenge that once people hear this podcast, they can tag us somehow in the sketch note that they create I’m in. So we see what they a take from it. Because that’s the other thing about sketch noting, you think you’re emphasizing something and all of a sudden people are walking away with something else that resonated to them. And you’re like, wow. And here I was thinking that this was what we were talking about. And this is what really jumped out at them.

Eric Cross (30:57):

Your kids are lucky that you’re in front of them, not just because of how you teach, but how you access all of these different parts of their creativity and their thinking and apply, integrate all of these soft skills and social, emotional skills and just life skills and your experience connecting them to the outside world. They, and like you said, and how we started, you know, where you started in Panama, the students realized what you represent and what you meant to them. And I feel like your students, when they get older, they may not realize it in the time, but as they get older and reflect back, they’ll be telling stories about you. So yeah. Thanks for making time and thanks for being here.

Valeria Rodriguez (31:34):

Well thank you too, ‘cause I know you’re in the classroom and making time to do other things outside the classroom. Isn’t always easy, but it’s what keeps us going in different ways.

Eric Cross (31:49):

Thanks so much for joining me in Valer today. We wanna hear more about you. If you have any great lessons or ways to keep student engagement high, please email us@stemamplifycom.wpengine.com. That’s TM five.com. Make sure to click, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join our brand new Facebook group science connections, the community for some extra content.