Using the internet to unite a force of people for the good

Putting our thinking caps on for what we-the-people can do

We have not had our thinking caps on. The U.S. being controlled by oligarchs can be compared to kings controlling serfs of yore, but our serfs are of a different order. We are educated and skillful. And we have the internet as a classroom and a union hall. How can we use it to unite a force of people for the good?

Some things I’ve written about:

• Pep Talks for Humanity, that cheerlead for our loving nature

• Fireside Chats encouraging us to join together

• Essay writing, that stirred the writers in my how we saved the world contest to start thinking

Another category to spread around on line is real life stories that inspire right thinking and right action, which is what this story does. It’s by Roger Briggs, who’s interested in doing some thinking with me. After you read this, please take the poll so I see if this gets to others like it got to me.

Partnership in Action: The Mighty Tech Team

I had been teaching about twenty years when I had the opportunity to help design and open a completely new science area at my high school, with ten classroom-lab spaces, offices, and a 35-station computer lab. Over one summer the old science area was to be entirely demolished and the new one constructed in time for classes to start in late August. As part of the project the entire school was to be wired with ethernet cable. With hundreds of wall jacks throughout the school, we would have internet access for the first time (this was long before Wi-Fi). But almost no one at our school had a computer. Part of the construction budget – about $100,000 – was for “supplies and equipment” which would typically mean glassware, chemicals, and other science equipment, but our science department decided to spend all this money on computers. We had enough for about seventy of them plus software and printers.

We were free to spend the money in that way, but we would have no tech support – we would be on our own to do everything – ordering, unpacking boxes and setting up seventy computers, installing software, problem-solving, maintenance, and training. In the real world there would be budgets, staffing, and a plan for all this, but not in our world. This would be a monumental undertaking, and we were just teachers with full-time jobs. As the department head, I was the one responsible for making this happen, and by any sane and sensible analysis it would be a disaster. No one in their right mind would take this on.

However, I was confident we could do this because I had one very big card up my sleeve: I knew there were students in our school who were technology experts with knowledge and skills far beyond any adult at our school, or even our District IT Department. These were the “techies” who had grown up with computers – gamers, hackers, coders, web developers – right in our midst. They were mostly boys, mostly lacking social skills, mostly bored with their classes, and mostly getting no respect from anyone. I knew they would love this and with their help we could do it.

I was already well acquainted with some of them, so I started spreading the word that we were forming a Tech Team that would be responsible for ordering and deploying 70 new computers wired into a high-speed ethernet as part of the science area rebuild. This created tremendous excitement. One of the most highly respected techies in the school, and a top student, was Anwar. In the spring as we were finalizing our order, I asked him to come with me to a meeting with Apple as my consultant-partner. The Apple reps were promoting a low-cost family of computers called the 5200 line and our District IT people were recommending these, so all the other schools were enthusiastically buying them. But after the meeting, Anwar told me in no uncertain terms that we should NOT go with that line because the computer chip they were built on was flawed. He said the 7200 line was built on a different chip and would perform much better, and the extra cost would be worth it. I’m not sure how he knew this, but I believed it and took his advice.

We ordered the more expensive computers, and as it turned out Anwar was absolutely right. A year later it was well-known that the cheaper computers everyone else had purchased crashed continually and were notoriously slow, while ours performed beautifully. It seems I had access to far better expertise and advice from my student partners than from the IT gurus I was supposed to listen to.

Near the end of the school year, I held the first Tech Team meeting after school and about 20 techies showed up, including one girl. It was utter chaos with 15 out of 20 of them talking and yelling at the same time. They were so excited! I knew by then who the three key leaders were – Caleb, Anwar, and Mike. Everyone looked up to them. When they spoke everyone listened (unlike me). Caleb and Anwar were excellent students thriving in school, but Mike blew off his class work and spent all his free time coding, building things, and learning what he wanted to learn. He was one of the most curious and voracious learners I have ever encountered. But he was reputed to be a malicious hacker and was banned from touching any computers at school. I knew Mike was simply very curious and gifted and didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. And I knew we needed him on the Tech team. He had in fact broken through the security software used to lock up system folders throughout the district, but only because he wanted to see how it worked. I remember putting him on the phone in my office with the company that made the software so he could explain to them how to patch the hole he had discovered. Mike literally understood everything about computers and could do anything with them, from electronics repair and hardware builds to machine language, internet protocols, server configurations, and coding in any language. In the pecking order of the techies Mike was indisputably at the top.

Mike, Anwar, and Caleb became the core of the Tech Team, and I made it clear to them that we were partners with the shared purpose of making this massive tech upgrade happen. I had deep respect for all of them, and they could feel that and see it in my actions. I sought their advice in making decisions, and they had my complete trust, including free access to my master key that opened any door in the school. Of course, this was strictly against the rules, and it flew in the face of all conventional wisdom about schools, teachers, and students. But I was building a partnership culture and not the usual domination culture of schools with rules and power structures designed to keep students under control and subservient.

Finally, the big day came in late August when the new computers and peripherals arrived – 150 boxes stacked in a hallway near the new science area. I put out the word, and soon a swarm of Tech Teamers showed up and started ravenously opening boxes and delivering computers, monitors, and printers to their proper locations. Anwar was naturally the “floor general” directing everything with calm efficiency. I just did what I was told and ordered pizza. In a few days, the Team set up all seventy computers and five printers on our new high-speed ethernet, and installed and configured all the new software, just in time for school to start.

When we were ordering in the spring Mike told me we had to get a Linux server – I didn’t know what that was, but because I respected him so much I said, “Will do!” When the server arrived, Mike set it up in my office and created our own email services, web hosting, and file sharing for the whole school (a precursor to today’s cloud-based services). Caleb built a website for the school, one of the first in our district, and we were hosting it on our own Linux server.

In a short time, we had accomplished the impossible, and it was only because of the partnership relations I had established with these students. They were empowered, and energized, and passionate, and motivated, all of which would be impossible with a domination orientation.

As the school year progressed the Tech Team kept everything running and helped with training our science teachers. Then we started collecting donations of old computers from businesses and science labs in our community after they upgraded to new computers. I set up a workspace in a storage area and the Team started taking these computers apart, salvaging the best parts (like RAM and hard drives) and combining them into new and better computers. I pitched in as a worker and learned a tremendous amount about the innards of computers. These rebuilt computers were then given to teachers around school who didn’t yet have a computer.

The Tech Team became the IT support team for the whole school. It had evolved into something far beyond my original intentions. These students who previously got no respect were now appreciated and sought after. They now had a strong sense of purpose and got a lot of love and respect in return for their work. It was a total win-win, and no one was making them do any of this, and it didn’t cost a cent. It was magic, and it happened entirely through the power of partnership. This could never have happened under the traditional authoritarian, domination paradigm that a high school was supposed to operate in.

The Best Was Yet to Come

Later that year on a very cold wintery day I was teaching my physics class when a student burst in saying, “Hurry, there’s an emergency in the computer lab!” When I arrived, I saw multiple waterfalls pouring out from a large section of the ceiling, and onto the computers. A water pipe had broken, and water was cascading and spraying everywhere. My heart sank as I witnessed the destruction of so much we had accomplished. It would be a total loss, about $40,000 worth.

Within minutes our custodian got the water shut off, and about ten Tech Teamers arrived from their classes. I was certain it was too late, but Anwar took over and they began rounding up big fans and towels and opening up every computer. They meticulously blotted up and dried out every drop of water in all 35 computers, and by the end of the school day, every single computer had been saved. This was nothing short of a miracle.

I will forever carry with me that image of water pouring down over our computers, and then all those totally empowered teenagers saving the day. What the Tech Team did that day should not have been possible. But the reason it did happen was the Power of Partnership.

Epilogue

The Tech Team ran for two years until the District IT Department finally caught up with us and began enforcing the rules, effectively shutting down the trust and empowerment at the heart of our partnership. But we had successfully transitioned our school into the digital age. Anwar and Caleb went off to prestigious colleges and I lost touch with them. But Mike was far short of the credits needed to graduate, so I supported him in dropping out of school to take a job as a software engineer at a local tech firm. His career in tech went straight up, taking him to Boston and later to Google headquarters in Mountain View where he still does things I can’t understand. We have stayed in touch and last I heard, he was all excited about studying Russian Literature (in Russian, of course). Oh, and Mike did get his GED.

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Another teaching to share widely comes from the justice system in Norway. The lesson you get from Norway’s recidivism rate, that’s close to 20% where more than 70% of those released from U.S. prisons are reconvicted, is that rehabilitation beats punishment for the sake of the greater good.

One more life-lesson to get to everyone, that our super-pundit, Thom Hartmann, passed along, is a wising-up story about parenting a teenager: The Dangerous Truth About Denying Your Child’s Success. Why rejecting their passions might lock them into failure forever…

We are a learning species, picking up steam as we look to create our salvation.

A last tidbit for uniting us is something for the president after Trump. It’s “How was your day?,” and every evening the President would answer that online. That’s in keeping with the system change that’s ahead, where a new quality of human warmth and caring will be compensation for luxuries we give up in the degrowth, of reducing current levels of consumption, that’s vital for our very survival.

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Here’s me in Substack Notes. I urge you to have a look at comments I’ve made to get immersed in the unique point of view I argue for.

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This Substack is looking to a revolution. You could say an evolution, to a next phase of consciousness where we act from our interconnection as one humanity. Stay informed and be alert for how you can be contributory.

One way to contribute is to get my Suzanne Taylor’s Now What? Substack seen.

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