For over 40 years, the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP or Mayor’s Program) in Cambridge, Massachusetts has been providing teenagers with their first work experience, but 2022 brings a up-to-date offering. Collaborating with MIT’s Personal Robots Research Group (PRG) and Responsible Artificial Intelligence for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) this summer, MSYEP created a STEAM-focused education website at the Institute. Eleven students entered the program to learn coding and programming through the lens of “data activism.”
MSYEP’s partnership with MIT provides Cambridge high school students with the opportunity to explore more paths to their future careers and education. The Mayor’s program is designed to respect students’ time and demonstrate the value of their work by ensuring that participants are paid an hourly rate as they gain job skills in MSYEP workplaces. In conjunction with two ongoing research studies at MIT, PRG and RAISE have developed a six-week data activation program to equip students with critical thinking skills so that they feel prepared to employ data analytics to challenge social injustice and empower their community.
Rohan Kundargi, K-12 social services administrator at MIT’s Office of Governmental and Community Relations (OGCR), says: “I see this as a model for a up-to-date kind of partnership between MIT and Cambridge MSYEP. Specifically, it’s an MIT research project in which Cambridge students are paid to study, research and develop their own skills!
Collaboration between Cambridge
The Cambridge Office of Workforce Development initially contacted MIT OGCR about organizing a potential MSYEP worksite that would teach Cambridge teens how to code. When Kundargi reached out to MIT pK-12 collaborators, MIT PRG research assistant Raechel Walker suggested a data activism curriculum. Walker defines “data activism” as using data, computation, and art to analyze how power works in the world, challenge it, and empathize with oppressed people.
Walker says, “I wanted students to feel empowered to bring their own knowledge, talents, and interests into every activity. For students to fully utilize their academic skills, they must feel comfortable engaging in data-driven activism.”
When Kundargi and Walker recruited students for the Data Activism educational website, they wanted to make sure that the student body – most of whom were people of color – felt represented at MIT and felt like their voices would be heard. “The pioneers in this field are people who look like them,” Walker says, referring to eminent data activists Timnit Gebru, Rediet Abebe and Joy Buolamwini.
When the program began this summer, some students did not realize how data analytics and artificial intelligence were exacerbating systemic oppression in society, nor were they aware of some of the tools currently being used to mitigate these social harms. As a result, Walker says, students wanted to learn more about discriminatory design in every aspect of life. They were also interested in creating responsible machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence fairness metrics.
Another side of STEAM
The development and implementation of the Data Activism curriculum contributed to the research of Walker and postdoctoral fellow Xiaoxue Du at PRG. Walker studies AI education, specifically creating and teaching data activism curricula for minority communities. Du’s research examines processes, assessments, and curriculum designs that prepare teachers to employ, adapt, and integrate artificial intelligence skills curricula. Additionally, her research focuses on how to create more opportunities for students with diverse learning needs.
The data activism curriculum uses a “libertatory computing” framework, a term Walker coined in her position paper with Professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean of digital learning and head of PRG, and Eman Sherif, then an undergraduate student at University of California, San Diego, entitled “Liberty Computing for African American Students” This framework ensures that students, especially minority students, acquire a stalwart racial identity, critical consciousness, collective responsibilities, a liberation-centered academic identity/achievement, and activist skills to employ computers to transform the multi-layered barrier system in which racism persists. Walker says, “We encouraged students to demonstrate competency in each pillar because all pillars are interconnected and build on each other.”
This was the students’ first exposure to learning how to create data visualizations using the Python programming language and the Pandas data analysis tool. In one project that aimed to explore how different systems of oppression can impact different aspects of students’ identities, students created datasets containing data about their intersectional identities. Another activity highlighted the achievements of African Americans in which students analyzed two datasets on African American scientists, activists, artists, scholars, and athletes. Using data visualization, students then created zines about African Americans who inspired them.
RAISE hired Olivia Dias, Sophia Brady, Lina Henriquez and Zeynep Yalcin through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), and PRG hired freelancer Matt Taylor to work with Walker on curriculum development and design of interdisciplinary experiential projects. Walker and four undergraduate researchers conducted an intersectional data analysis of various examples of systemic oppression. PRG also recruited three high school students to test the exercises and share their insights on how to make the curriculum engaging for program participants. Throughout the program, the Data Activism team taught students in compact groups, continually asked students how to improve each activity, and organized each lesson based on student interests. Walker says Dias, Brady, Henriquez and Yalcin have been invaluable in creating a supportive classroom environment and helping students complete their projects.
Student Nina says: “It opened my eyes to a different side of STEM. Before starting the program, I had no idea what “data” meant or how intersectionality could impact AI and data.” Before MSYEP, Nina took Introduction to Computer Science and AP Computer Science, but she has been coding since Girls Who Code first became interested in it in middle school. “The community was really nice. I could talk to other girls. I noticed that there is a need for more women in STEM, especially programming.” Now she wants to apply to universities with good computer science programs to pursue a career in coding.
From MSYEP to the mayor’s office
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui visited the Data Activism learning center on August 9, accompanied by Breazeal. Siddiqui, an MSYEP graduate, says: “Through hands-on computer programming learning, Cambridge high school students have a unique opportunity to see themselves as data scientists. Students could learn how to combat discrimination that occurs thanks to artificial intelligence.” In Instagram postSiddiqui also said, “I had a great time visiting the students and learning about their projects.”
Students worked on an assignment that required them to imagine how data science could be used to support marginalized communities. They turned their answers into block-print T-shirt designs, carving images of their hopes into rubber stamps. Some students focused on the importance of data privacy, such as Jacob T., who drew a birdcage that represents data stored and locked by third-party applications. He says, “I want to open this cage, restore my data, and see what I can do with it.”
Many students wanted to see more representation both in the media they consume and in various professional fields. Nina talked about the importance of media representation and how it can contribute to greater representation in the tech industry, while Kiki talked about encouraging more women to pursue STEM fields. Jesmin said: “I wanted to show that data science is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background or language. I wrote ‘hello’ in Bengali, Arabic and English because I speak all three languages and they all resonate with me.”
“Overall, I hope that students will continue to use their data activation skills to reimagine a society that supports marginalized groups,” Walker says. “More than that, I hope they are empowered to become data scientists and understand how their race can be a positive part of their identity.”