I am not a maker. I am a maker. I am not a maker. I am a maker.
I fear making. I feared making. I fear making new things. I feared making new things until I made them.
I wasn’t good at making things when I was a kid. I didn’t know that what I made was valuable. I didn’t know that I could keep making more things and that I would find more and more value in the things I make the more I make them.
I am a maker.
I am a valuable agent for student empowerment through making.
I am an intellectual.
I spend my time carefully analyzing, reflecting upon, and practicing teaching that will maximize students’ abilities to leverage their minds to create the world around them into something that inspires hope for our communities and the world abroad.
I am their collaborator, facilitator, and coach.
The work that I do is integral to the mission of ensuring all students develop the knowledge, skills and proficiencies required for college, career, civic, economic, and most importantly, creative success.
My students are makers.
My students are thinkers.
My students construct their knowledge, develop their identities, and inspire their communities with the artifacts they create in their learning space.
My students are empowered as they build an understanding of the world in which they are viewed as valuable contributors to their own futures.
My students, with making at their fingertips, will have the ability to extend and transform the human experience.
My students will bend boundaries and be active participants in communities that are at the forefront of our ever-changing technologies and futures.
My community is full of makers.
Culture matters.
A commitment to a strong maker education will build a powerful culture of inclusion and inspiration.
When students are given agency to construct and drive their own learning, the possibilities for achievement and social and economic contribution are endless.
(Inspired by Paulo Blikstein, my fellow FabLearn comrades, the FabLearn conferences I have attended, and my current situation as a seemingly misunderstood and undervalued educator)
Please, tell me, what would YOU add to this manifesto?