Spring 2007 - Milton Academy

E D U C A T I O N“Lights-on”Chris Myers ’80in Denver after schoolChris Myers ’80Founder and CEO, OpenWorld Learning“The children keep exceeding our expectationsof what’s possible. They keep pushing us todevelop a more advanced and more challengingcurriculum in order to keep up with them.”When Chris Myers ’80 describesOpenWorld Learning, the education nonprofitthat he founded seven years ago,his smile and excitement are infectious.OpenWorld Learning (OWL) is an afterschoolprogram for children in grades 3through 5 that combines learning aboutcomputer programming with peer teaching.Chris launched the program “to giveback for what [he] was given, by givingsomething important to other children.”A scholarship student at Milton comingfrom a Boston elementary school, Chrisobserved that “At [his] previous school, concentratingon learning while dealing withthe challenging social environment wasdifficult. At Milton the intellectual stimulation,the peer culture, and the social andemotional components of learning made ita wonderful, influential place.”More than 500 children in the DenverPublic Schools experience creativity, leadershipand ownership through OWL. “I wantto make the fun and challenging educationthat I’ve seen available for affluent childrenavailable for low-income children.” Over 80percent of OWL students qualify for thefederal free and reduced-price lunch program,and over 90 percent of OWL’s studentsare Latino, “the most appreciativegroup of students and parents you couldever dream up,” Chris says. “They arethirsty for knowledge, excited to learn, andgrateful for an opportunity to be part of agood learning environment.”Chris graduated from Harvard with adegree in Latin American history, eager toapply his enthusiasm for Latin Americanlanguage and culture to a career. In 1989he moved to Denver, Colorado, and beganteaching elementary school, which headmits “is not a common career path forsomeone with a Milton and Harvarddegree.”Chris taught at the Stanridge BritishPrimary School: a progressive privateschool “based in the belief that educationshould tap into children’s creativity andimagination and give students ownershipand choices in their own learning.” Christhen taught fourth grade at a traditional,wealthy private school called Graland.“There again,” he explains, “I was facedwith the stark differences between privateand public educations.” With this in mind,Chris led the establishment of the BritishPrimary Program in the Denver PublicSchools, teaching the British Primarymodel to Latino children in an inner-cityDenver neighborhood.While teaching, Chris was introduced to abook called Mindstorms, written by MITprofessor and now OWL national advisoryboard member, Seymour Papert. Chrisbelieves that the book, written in 1980, andPapert’s vision were 30 years ahead of theirtime. “Papert explains how personal computerscan enhance the way children learn.He writes about LOGO—the computer programthat he invented to help childrenlearn math—but also about what constitutesan ideal learning environment. I startedteaching his computer programminglanguage in my classrooms, and the childrenalways responded.”In June 1999, volunteering in a Boys andGirls Club computer lab that was equippedbut not fully used stimulated some ideasfor Chris. He began to think about ascenario where low-income children cameto learn voluntarily, where he was notabsorbed in discipline issues, and where hecould use Papert’s model and LOGO in acomputer-filled classroom.Within six months, Chris had foundedOWL and recruited Denver venture capitalistSteve Halsted as his board chair. OWLhas since grown to include work in nineDenver public schools. “The program has a‘lights-on’ effect,” Chris says. “We’re turningthe lights on to all this existing infrastructure.We’re working with children 12hours a week in school buildings withouthaving to pay for the space, and our publicschool partners contribute $10,000 eachyear to the $40,000 operating cost. Our28 Milton Magazine