Kinet-X: Three Juniors’ Mission to Teach STEM to Younger Minds

“Seeing a kid’s eyes light up when their code works is a feeling that you really can’t match.” ––Adam Abbas, junior

Stuyvesant serves as an intellectual incubator; students are given the opportunity to learn and grow alongside professionals in various fields. Renowned in particular for its computer science department, Stuyvesant allows students to hone in on their engineering interests through a multitude of courses and extracurriculars, both inside and outside of the school.

Unfortunately, this sea of opportunity is relatively exclusive to Stuyvesant and other specialized high schools. For example, out of over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only about 2,100 are certified to teach computer science. In schools that do offer the course, teachers often aren’t required to hold a degree with a concentration in the field. Computer science and engineering courses are even more scarce in elementary and secondary schools.

Juniors Adam Abbas, Chauncey Lau, and Allan Wang quickly identified and tried to reconcile this gap in education. When the trio joined Stuyvesant’s Robotics team, they were shocked to discover how little the incoming members of the team actually knew. In January of 2016, Abbas, Lau, and Wang originally came up with the idea to run a small Robotics training camp for incoming Stuyvesant freshmen.

However, upon further research and the discovery that lack of STEM education was a trend countrywide, they decided to do what they could to change that. “We realized that the issue, [ a lack of STEM education], applied to everyone, not just people interested in robotics. So, we expanded our idea to teach basic STEM concepts,” explains Lau. Months of planning, hours of email drafting, advertising, marketing, meetings with tech companies, and late nights culminated into the group’s initiative: Kinet-X.The idea for a small training camp for Stuyvesant newcomers evolved into a four-week summer immersion program.

“I remember thinking that we had to have snacks set up. Before we started teaching on our first day, we ran everyone through a brainstorming workshop. We wanted to see the level of our students and also to get them to start thinking in the less traditional, memorization based way,” Abbas said. “I was really scared that when I started teaching they just really wouldn’t enjoy it. A lot of people just don’t like CS, and being responsible for trying to inspire a room of kids is tough. There really wasn’t anything I could do other than follow my lesson plan and just make sure everyone was having the best time possible.”

“One big problem was finding a place to host our program. We thought about using a co-working space, but that would bump up the price [of the program] significantly,” explained Lau. “We reached out to a couple of places and found that people were willing to help us out. We worked with Beam Center, an amazing place with all of the materials and space we could ever need.”

That summer, Abbas taught web development and JavaScript to a group of five students, Lau introduced soldering and circuitry, and Wang continued to work on marketing of the program.

The three friends had all been exposed to basic engineering and computer science education: Abbas took computer science courses in middle school, Lau learned from his father, an electrical engineer, and Wang taught himself code at the age of eleven.

“When I was younger, my father was pretty busy with work. When he did get home, he’d always be tinkering with something, so my interactions with him always involved teaching me something related to technology,” Lau recalled. “He once yelled at me for creating a short circuit, which is basically when you connect a battery to itself. I didn’t understand why, so I did it again by myself, and the battery got really hot and burned me.”

The trio’s own hands-on experiences with STEM in childhood is reflected in how teaching is approached at Kinet-X: all lessons revolve around project based learning, as opposed to the typical lecture based classroom setting.

“We’ve made solar powered cars from parts from old computers, which was pretty cool because they had to find things that can act as wheels, chassis and other things from scrap. I want them to realize that not only is this really fun, but also super useful,” Lau said. “I like showing my students what happens when you mess up, so they don’t get too curious and hurt themselves on their own. That’s the only way to teach kids without them getting bored and hating the topic.”

Now, Kinet-X offers twelve weekend sessions of the same curriculum to a group of ten 10-13 year-olds. Kinet-X’s program targets all middle schoolers, regardless of socioeconomic background. The program gets no outside funding and covers costs of equipment and other expenses through tuition rates: $1350 for the summer. However, financial-aid is offered for those who cannot afford to pay full price.

The Kinet-X day is split up into two parts—engineering and programming. Students spend three hours in the beginning of the day going over engineering concepts such as soldering, circuitry, and electricity. They are then given an hour lunch break that they can use to relax, socialize, or work on their projects. Post-break, students finish the day with a three-hour programming session, where they spend their time learning programming concepts and applying them to projects and other activities.

“When I am teaching off of a PowerPoint, I try to make it as engaging as possible, with puzzles and thought-provoking questions woven between the bullet points and factoids,” Abbas explained. “In the engineering portion, entire lessons can be spent soldering a circuit together or building a project.”

“The best part is when you see how focused the kids are and how much they want to solve the issues they’ve come across,” Lau said. “The worst part is when they start getting a bit too rowdy and become safety hazards; but, that doesn’t happen too often, and it’s easy to calm them down.”

What makes Kinet-X unique is its teachers—the closeness in age between teacher and student, obvious aptitude of the instructors in their subject areas, as well as the passion those instructors hold––evident when Abbas’s eyes lit up whilst describing their mission. “We focus more on inspiring our students, rather than just passing on knowledge and information for them to spit back out at us,” Adam said. “We want them to fall in love with STEM and pursue it outside of our classes. We want our students to come back to us and ask to help-out, or for more resources, or for assistance on a code that all of us wrote together. Personally, I want to see my students a year from now and feel like my class stuck with them.”

For their 2017 summer immersion program, Kinet-X has expanded to include an intermediate level to their curriculum. “Our students kept telling us they wished they had an opportunity to take our classes again and learn more,” Abbas explained. The intermediate course introduces Python and Arduino to students.

The trio plan to continue to expand their program to include a greater variety of classes and grow their following to include more students. Publicity from various publications, including foreign language newspapers and the Wall Street Journal, help Kinet-X attract an even greater following.

As a result of the program’s rapid growth, Abbas, Lau, and Wang all plan to remain in New York City post-high school to further expand and develop their vision. “It’s a big part of our lives, and we’d really like to continue it when we’re in college, if we get in,” Lau said. “That being said, if we’re not able to work on it personally, we’ve taken precautions to make sure it continues with other people in charge.”

Though juggling a new start-up and other responsibilities, like school-work, seems daunting, staying conscious of Kinet-X’s impact helps its founders stay grounded. “When I was on the robotics team, I was helping myself and my team, and learning new things. But it wasn’t fulfilling work or knowledge for me. Kinet-X lets me actually make a difference. I learn so much through teaching, and seeing a kid’s eyes light up when their code works is a feeling that you really can’t match,” Abbas said.

Their advice to anyone looking to start their own business is to start with a passion, and see what ways it can be utilized to make a difference. “What problems are there? What do people wish was changed?” Abbas said. “You might end up only working on a project on a small scale, but if you keep trying to solve issues and follow what you already know and do, you’ll eventually find what works for you and be able to continue on with it.”