Pilgrim School in Los Angeles
It’s no secret that hybrid instruction can be challenging for teachers and students, but over the course of a fall semester AI Pioneers course, Inspirit Instructor Malachi Mabie succeeded in engaging middle school students at Pilgrim School in their first foray into AI education - from no programming experience to developing web apps.
About the Pilgrim School
Pilgrim School is a mastery-based college preparatory school in the heart of Los Angeles with a diverse community from Early Education through 12th grade. Ryan Grady, the school’s principal, brought Inspirit on to teach an in-school elective for two classes of 6th-8th grade students with minimal prior coding experience. A few Pilgrim School students had taken crash courses in artificial intelligence with Inspirit AI during the summer and came back to the classroom asking school administration to start a similar program in their school.
The partnership between Inspirit AI and Pilgrim School took off from there as Inspirit’s team of curriculum developers built out a custom program for their needs, flexing to fit into their varying block schedules. Emmy Li, Head of Instructional Design at Inspirit AI, says of the collaboration:
“Pilgrim School from the start was very receptive to tinkering with the delivery of content and teaching. As educators, we are constantly striving to make content as accessible, relevant, and interactive as possible. This cohort of students embraced the innovative material and took the initiative to apply it to problems they saw in their own lives and community.”
About the Collaboration
As part of Inspirit’s AI Pioneers curriculum, students explore ways they can meaningfully use AI to help people in the fields of healthcare, social robotics, disaster relief, and autonomous vehicles.
At the end of the program, students showcase their progress with a social impact project. At the core of our curriculum is a focus on connecting with each student’s unique interests and strengths to engage them and build positive association with the course material. This was especially important to Malachi as a virtual instructor teaching a group of co-located students:
Malachi Mabie
Inspirit AI Instructor
“Even though I was joining them via a projector screen every day, I wanted them to understand that I was a real person they could engage with… it was important to me that each student felt a sense of ownership in our class environment and the common goals we were working towards together.”
Project-Based Learning, Grounded in Ethics
Though the AI Pioneers program designed for Pilgrim involved daily lesson plans and learning outcomes, Malachi adapted as needed over the course of the semester and in order to better meet the learning styles and pace of each individual class. “You want them to stay curious and interested and stay involved”. As is the case with all Inspirit programs, every class did involve a hands-on approach to learning: “Here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, and here is a product we can show at the end of the day”.
Equally important to the curriculum is a focus on social and ethical impacts of technology. With each foundational technical concept, the class would discuss ethical impacts of any applications of this technology in society, ranging from autonomous vehicles to algorithms used in hiring algorithms or medical treatment. As an instructor, Malachi always finds himself impressed how much these discussions resonate with students and their ability to recognize the potential impact technology can have on their communities.
Ending on a High Note
In the final few weeks of the semester, students worked together on projects of their choosing to showcase their work and learnings by applying AI to real-world problems. Designed by Inspirit Instructors, graduate students from leading universities with deep academic and professional experience in their respective fields, projects ranged from music and movie recommendation systems to tools for improving natural disaster relief. Malachi was proud to see how excited students were about the assignment, as evidenced by some choosing to work on multiple problems.
Ryan Grady, Pilgrim School Principal
“We are so excited to partner with Inspirit AI this year... We love the balance on technical skills development along with the emphasis on ethics. The projects and lessons are engaging, and the instructors really understand how to work well with this age of students. We highly recommend this program!”
With the success of last semester’s inaugural course, plans for expanding the program for next school year with a larger set of classes are in the works. Building off the enthusiasm for a holistic artificial intelligence class, future iterations of the class will similarly focus on ethics, responsible technology, technical excellence, and collaborative coding.
