Part 4:  Parts and Crafts

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

The Parts and Crafts organization offers another example of Somerville newcomers who were trained as professionals and are bringing with them new ideas. In this case, the new ideas mesh with long-standing elements of Somerville culture.

As with Sprout & Co., Parts and Crafts’ (P&C’s) focus is on how we learn best. And its leaders believe that we have a lot to learn from the apprenticeship programs in which people who work in the trades develop their craft.

Katie Gradowski and Will Mcfarlane founded P&C. They were subsequently joined by Terry Murray, an ex-engineer who designs spectacular kids’ projects, and Kieran Mead-Ward, who Will describes as being “responsible for the mental health of the camp.” They all attended elite universities and were dissatisfied with their educational experiences.

They think that people learn best when they take an active part in their own education, when they pursue something that they are interested in, ask questions, and find solutions. One of the best ways to do this is by building something or fixing something interesting with their own hands and minds.

Doing so gives immediate feedback. It either works or doesn’t. If it doesn’t work, it provides evidence of why it didn’t.

At the heart of a good learning experience is doing something until you get it right. In teaching yourself something, you don’t just learn that thing. You learn how to teach yourself. You learn what you can do, both in discovering your own potential and in acquiring specific competencies.

In today’s schools, kids who fail at a particular lesson often don’t have an opportunity to keep at it until they master it. Sometimes, they don’t even understand why they failed, despite their teachers’ going over completed tests and homework in front of the entire class. The class is then obligated to move on to the next lesson, and the failing student doesn’t receive needed individual attention.

If the subject is one like math, and if the student didn’t learn the previous lesson, he or she can’t learn the next lesson because the previous one is a building block that the new lesson requires if it is to be understood.

Schools face constraints that in many ways prevent them from taking a different approach. One constraint is the curriculum and testing required to be accredited.

Another is economics that place limits on the student/teacher ratio.  When a few teachers are responsible for a relatively large number of students, the teachers must be vigilant in preventing the unruly ones from undermining the others’ learning opportunity. This takes time and focus away from teaching and learning.

In contrast, P&C has a high kid/adult ratio. Its programs are structured like a summer camp. They include an after-school program and spring- and summer-vacation camps.

But they are not only about having fun. Kids want to do serious things and be taken seriously. By “serious,” I mean doing something that makes a real-world difference rather than just learning abstract subjects. Building or fixing something is real and observable.

Somerville is full of serious people who are skilled at doing something with their hands, who can take something from being an idea to being a real thing, and who are enthusiastic about doing so. Some are people who learned to tinker in academic disciplines like engineering and biotech. Some are master tradesmen who learned their skill through apprenticeship and practice.

P&C recruits them as volunteers and puts them together with kids. When young people get to see the rewards of really knowing and following through on something, they learn the value of rigor and attention. They can take the new means of learning that they have acquired back to school and be more active in their own education.

Because of the high kid/adult ratio, adult P&C volunteers can better see what individual kids want to do and help them achieve it. One element of this is to understand what a particular child is ready for and can do responsibly.

As you might imagine, this has practical significance with regard to soldering irons, glue guns, and power tools. But it also involves not setting kids up for working beyond their abilities, failing, and getting discouraged with the whole thing.

Katie and Will began their program in Cambridge. But Somerville’s culture of deep craft is an important reason why they came here. In Cambridge their most enthusiastic supporters were academics. Here they are tradesmen and artists.

P&C’s organization is “nonhierarchical.” Will says, “Everyone who is with us every day should have a say in what the community is and how it’s run.” This means kids participating in managing it.

Deciding what to do and how to do it enables them to feel empowered. It allows them to focus on what they are most interested in and, therefore, where they will learn best. It requires that they learn how to get other people to do it with them. It obligates them to negotiate about how tools and materials will be shared, in ways that everyone feels good about.

This approach involves a careful balance between kids taking the lead and adults guiding and supervising. Just giving kids freedom doesn’t work. They often don’t know what to do with it. And if they don’t know where to start, or what to do when they get stuck, nothing happens.

P&C sustains itself by charging fees for their various activities. But they don’t want money to limit who can participate. So they have a sliding fee scale based on what a family can afford.

Current participants come from a wide range of economic backgrounds, but a limited range of racial and cultural backgrounds. This is because most people learn about P&C by word of mouth from current participants. P&C’s leaders would like to include more people of color. But because of the program’s limited income, they have scant time to both manage it and conduct outreach, even though they could accommodate more participants within their current financial structure.

The P&C folks are not antagonistic toward existing schools. Indeed, they praise Somerville High School’s vocational program. But they would like to find ways in which their activist-learning orientation could be more fully applied. They have begun working with the Healy School and would like to engage more with other Somerville institutions.

On a broader level, they would like to see the trade apprenticeship model applied to the professions and to self-employment.

As with its participants, P&C learns from its mistakes, develops new skills and, like a good apprentice, continually improves its craft. If you are skilled in a trade, P&C would love to recruit you as a volunteer.  Such a relationship offers a way for old Somerville and newcomers to collaborate on something that they both care about.