Chicago Learning Exchange

A middle-schooler tells her story through a stop-motion animation program. A young girl codes a Raspberry Pi, a small micro-computer. A young adult protests police brutality and mobilizes his peers online. The digital revolution is here, but who is being prepared for it? In 2020, technology-enabled learning moved from the margins to the center due to COVID-19. 

I’m applying for the Elevate Prize because my organization, the Chicago Learning Exchange (CLX) has been working at the margins in technology learning and can seize this moment to center racial equity in the future of learning. As a new-ish Executive Director, I’m looking for co-conspirators and skills to build out my strategic vision for Chicago’s 21s century learning opportunities and to change the narrative of what Chicago is known for. 

CLX has a ten-year history of impact and being a model for innovative learning. We were the city that piloted the digital badge infrastructure, a microcredential, serving 30,000 youth annually. We were the city that created YOUmedia, a 21st-century learning lab in libraries that have scaled nationally. I’m ready to move the - work we are doing from the local stage to the national stage with the Elevate Prize.

13 years ago, I was gearing up to head back into my classroom as an educator. I connected The Great Gatsby to Kanye West. I hung posters of young girls in hijab—the Muslim headscarf I now wear. I formed partnerships to extend my classroom walls. I was a new teacher, but even then I knew I wanted to change the way youth were learning. A decade later, my journey continues as Executive Director of the Chicago Learning Exchange (CLX)—a nonprofit organization dedicated to racial equity by inspiring and remaking learning for a rapidly-changing world.

My work with CLX is about elevating humanity for thousands of Chicago youth now and into the future through 21st-century learning. Our overarching goal is to remake learning in Chicago. This means we leverage the city's whole learning landscape -- from our parks to libraries to community centers -- as places of 21st-century learning. To build equitable access in the face of structural inequities is a tall order, but I am not setting this vision on my own: I am building it with a collective of 200+ organizations that has a ten-year history to this same vision of an “elevated Chicago.”

The dual and interconnected issues of the COVID-19 global pandemic and systemic racism have illuminated many injustices and charged people to reckon with it. Chicago youth, like many around the country, are at the forefront of learning, leading, and protesting. Although the story is not often told, many youth credit their civic consciousness and engagement to out-of-school time (OST) programs, mentors, educators, and organizations. Real-world learning and civic engagement often happen outside of the classroom. However, current conversations and strategies in building an equitable recovery amidst a post-pandemic future are not leveraging or supporting our city’s robust OST ecosystem, even though they continue to support and build collective youth power. 

At this critical and unique moment focused on recovery and rebuilding, we either have an opportunity to wake up, design, build, and change the status quo for Chicago’s primarily Black, LatinX and immigrant youth, educators, and families -- or, we can “go back to normal.”  

As CLX’s Executive Director, I am challenging “returning to normal”, focusing on issues of racial equity in digital learning and the important work that out-of-school time organizations and mentors play in building youth 21st-century skills, identity development, and power.

To promote community-led systems change at various levels, CLX helps connect the learning ecosystem while keeping the learner at the center. We engage key stakeholders in a young person’s life, by networking, connecting, and offering professional development to educators and organizations to build their capacity. CLX also invests in innovations for youth development programs; champions hands-on learning to increase awareness and access, and equips youth with 21st Century skills - through digital badges. We create the conditions for youth to find and follow their passions, connect with supportive peers and adults, and see pathways for the future. 

CLX’s approach takes a systems-level view while empowering the individual educators and youth workers who transform the lives of Chicago youth. Even though OST leaders continue to support youth academically, socio-emotionally, culturally, and politically, they themselves lack the support they need (Baldridge, 2020). Because of this, the formal space that CLX provides for youth workers and leaders to connect, process, and build is unique, but vital. Just as a spider depends on its web for sustenance; a young person depends on a web of relationships to shape and guide virtually every aspect of life.

During a time when schools were closed, people and communities came together to empower children to drive their own development and learning by supporting a wider range of stimulating and playful experiences, through the village or an ‘ecosystemic approach’. 

Since our inception, we have been advocating for and championing this very approach to 21st-century learning and holistic development. We work at the intersection of technology and relationships because we know that mentorship is essential to humans' need to belong and skill development is critical for future opportunities and lifelong learning.

Relationships are essential to learning, so CLX helps support the people, the out-of-school time mentors and educators, who make up the infrastructure to support thousands of Chicago youth. Through the Elevate Prize we want to institutionalize the “essential workers”, which has come to the forefront during the pandemic.

Serving future generations cannot be achieved by an individual or isolated institution. Research clearly supports a more coordinated effort through a learning ecosystem, where a community of different providers makes resources available to strengthen children’s holistic, 21st-century learning. This is our impact thus far, and which we hope to keep creating.