(gentle music)
In 2002, Dos Pueblos High School
in Goleta, California, introduced DPEA,
Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy.
The mission was to provide 21st century skills
by a project-based learning in science,
technology, engineering, art, and mathematics
to its student body.
The program was fully implemented by 2005
along with the senior level robotics program.
The Engineering Academy is very different compared
to other classes in your normal high school.
We spend one whole school year
developing towards one project
which is great compared to other classes where
it's just tests that you take every couple weeks
and you kind of forget what you've learned after that
and this, you have to continue to keep learning
towards one final project.
The way we learn is in a rotation system
so we're spending 10 days in either physics,
art and design, machining, or computer programming.
You're not just learning physics to do equations.
You're learning physics to apply it
to the design you created yourself
or you're programming something that
you actually had the idea for.
You're machining something for your own project.
For me, it's a lot better way to learn more
because you're not working on some
ambiguous concept that you're never actually
gonna see come into fruition.
Students are able to do things that people would never
believe were possible in a high school setting.
Our students compete in this robotics competition.
Every year they create a different sport that
these robots play against each other
and with each other, it's very collaborative.
The basketballs go up through the elevator
and into our hooded shooter.
The hood actuates so that it can be shot
from different angles into the hoop
and then on our shooter here we have
a camera that has vision tracking senses
so that we can track where the hoop is.
This robotics competition is held by a
national nonprofit called FIRST
and it was founded by inventor, Dean Kamen.
He saw that our culture was celebrating
entertainers and sports figures,
but that they weren't celebrating, you know,
scientists and engineers who were really
the backbone of the technology that really
all of us use and love.
The Academy is well recognized and large now,
but in the early days it was very small,
a couple of classrooms on the main campus
with many obstacles along the way,
issues like making sure that the curriculum
is aligned to state standards,
you have facility issues,
you have equipment issues,
and then you just have general skepticism
among people who are used to doing
things in a more traditional way.
But when you listen to the kids and you see the result,
you can see it's really worth the journey.
The Engineering Academy really gave me
the opportunity to cement my passion
for science and engineering.
Doing robotics is what convinced me
to study mechanical engineering in college
and really what convinced me that
it was what I wanted to do with my life.
Robotics for me is kind of the one thing
I really look at in my life where I never
lost focus on it and the work ethic that's
necessary to really achieve success
and to see something completed.
This is something that you really have to
work on together and you really have to be
ready to rethink your design
and constantly improve upon it.
One of the most profound things that I found
when I started doing project-based learning
where the kids were really involved in the project
and the goal was to complete a project
was the kids did not realize they
were actually at school anymore.
They stopped focusing on, "I'm at school
"in an institution with bells governing the schedule,"
and we were actually working beyond the bells,
not motivated by a grade or by a transcript.
They were really motivated, in this case,
"I wanna make this thing good."
By the end of the day when most people work,
they create a product and I don't really care
what industry it is, they're creating something
that people are going to engage with.
Given that that's what ultimately people
are gonna be doing, I think it's critical that
when people go through their high school experience
that they do have the opportunity to draw
from all of these different experiences
and say, "Hey, everything that I learned
"along the way really made sense and it all fits
"and culminates in this thing that I've created."
The reason the Academy has gone from
where it started to where it is now is because of
just the hard work of people who just
believe in making education for our students
more relevant and thus more engaging.
We treat our students as really they're the -
they're kind of the client in this whole
Engineering Academy.
If we're not doing something that they're,
you know, not interested in, why are we doing it?
Education is an overconstrained problem right now
and it's causing a situation where teachers
are not feeling free to really try stuff
and I don't think that's why
teachers got into teaching.
I think they wanted to be creative
and work in this very kind of
special environment with kids.
The teachers in this program, we all kind of
have that multidisciplinary background
which is another advantage.
For example, we're doing a light sculpture
with the sophomores this year.
The concept of the rod art, and the lights,
and the idea of the layout I kind of came up with,
but I didn't know how to make the lights work
because I'm not an engineer.
So when we all got into our group
and started discussing it, our machinist was like,
"Hey, we can make this work this way,"
and our physics teacher was saying,
"Now we can teach them circuitry and electricity."
The CAD teacher was coming in and saying,
"Hey, this is amazing, now we can program this."
So by all of us having something different to offer,
this became this fantastic piece of art
that required all these disciplines
for the kids to achieve.
Allowing for that creativity and freedom of thought
at such an earlier stage in someone's life
is really what makes this a special environment.
Now that being said, this would not have happened
without a number of parents getting very engaged
putting time in and nonprofit foundations
putting resources in, and a district that
allowed it to happen.
Those conditions aren't everywhere
and we have, you know, done our best
to try to convince people to do this,
but it's a bigger challenge to explain to someone
because this took 10 years to get
to what you see today.
In terms of what's happening here
in Santa Barbara County,
there is indeed a ripple effect.
Others come and see, both from within
the district and outside the district,
what's happening and you're seeing spread
of the concept of project-based learning by doing.
We are showing what's possible.
We have teachers from around the country,
our own teachers in our community saying,
"How can we do this?" because they're seeing
the impact that's happening.
And so the third phase of this is just
characterized by the freedom to benevolently
create really a wonderful educational experience
where everybody's goal is to create
the best educational experience for students
and that's our focus.