Mashea Ashton

Please click here to donate in support of Keenan’s funeral and memorial service costs.

We are deeply saddened by the death of Mr. Keenan Anderson, a 10th grade English teacher at Digital Pioneers Academy. Keenan’s passing occurred while he was home visiting family in Los Angeles, California over winter break.

The details of his death are as disturbing as they are tragic. He suffered cardiac arrest after being forcibly restrained and repeatedly tased by police following a traffic accident. Keenan is the third person killed by the Los Angeles Police Department in 2023, and we’re 12 days into the new year.

Keenan is the third member of our school community to fall victim to violence in the past 65 days. Two of our high school students – fourteen-year-old Antione Manning and fifteen-year-old Jakhi Snider – died during separate incidents of gun violence this fall.

Our community is grieving. But we’re also angry. Angry that, once again, a known, loved, and respected member of our community is no longer with us. Angry that another talented, beautiful black soul is gone too soon.

Keenan was a deeply committed educator and father of a six-year-old son. He had over eight years of experience as a teacher and leader. In less than six months at Digital Pioneers Academy, he established strong relationships with scholars and staff. He was beloved by all.

I have been in close contact with Keenan’s family. We are committed to supporting his family and working together to honor Keenan’s memory.

Our school community will inevitably ask some really important questions in the days and weeks ahead: How could the police have de-escalated this situation? How are we going to stop losing our black boys and men to violence? How do we grieve and move forward as a community?

We all deserve answers to these questions. Keenan’s family deserves justice. And our students deserve to live, to live without fear, and to have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.

For now, I ask that you join me in keeping the Anderson family and the Digital Pioneers Academy community in your thoughts and prayers at this incredibly difficult time.

Mashea Ashton

Katie still recalls the moment at Digital Pioneers Academy when something clicked for her and she was like “Oh my God. I’m coding!” With no previous experience in computer science, she had to get lots of support from her teachers to find success. She knew she was smart and hardworking but she never saw herself as a computer scientist.  

This would be an inspirational, if unremarkable story, except for one important detail: 

Katie isn’t a student at DPA.  

Katie Adenrele is DPA’s Assistant Principal in charge of our computer science program! 

At DPA, we recognize that teachers with little formal training in computer science can still be trained to be really effective teachers of the subject.  

Katie Adenrele’s degree is in communication and her time in education before DPA included roles as a college counselor and a PE teacher.  

Katie first joined us as our Director of Talent. One of my requirements is that every leader at DPA has to spend some time in the classroom. And I told her that if she’s going to be good at recruiting computer science teachers, she better spend time as a computer science teacher.  

At DPA, we teach computer science through a project-based curriculum. We ask scholars pointed questions to get scholars on the path to the right answer. A lot of the teacher planning thus becomes scripting questions to probe the concept scholars are struggling with.  

As Katie put it, “the key to learning computer science is doing scholar work. You don’t put work in front of kids that you have not done.” Of course, you can’t just throw a teacher in the water without some swim lessons and a life jacket.  

As she started out, Katie received weekly – even biweekly – coaching and support from a computer science curriculum specialist. Eventually, she learned computer science well enough to be able to lead the department.  

So what do we look for now when we are hiring computer science teachers? A computer science certification is a nice-to-have but it isn’t a requirement. We look for teachers who bring certain mindsets to teaching.   

Willingness to work hard: DPA is still a start-up organization. We are looking for educators who want to roll up their sleeves, work hard and, in many cases, learn by doing.  
Flexibility: We look for educators willing to take on some challenges outside your comfort zone. You have to be someone who embraces that challenge. 
Collaboration: We provide our computer science teachers with a whole lot of support and coaching. But you have to be the kind of person who likes working with other people and accepting candid feedback. 

All of that feedback led to that aha moment when a former college counselor and PE teacher with no background in computer science suddenly realized she could code.  

It’s that lightbulb moment of inspiration that she is now helping our teachers bring to our students.

I believe that computer science should be available for EVERY CHILD.   
The idea of “computer science for all” sounds daunting at first. In 2020, only 423 high school students in Washington DC took the AP Computer Science exam. This must change. 

Part of what makes our goal seem so daunting is that when people think of computer science instruction, they imagine intensive bootcamp coding classes. It feels out of reach.  

I’m here to tell you that at the middle school level, computer science is very accessible.  At Digital Pioneers, we don’t have dedicated computer science teachers in our lower grades. Our math teachers teach math and computer science and are able incorporate project-based computer science concepts into the curriculum. The teachers love it. And so do the kids.  

We start early because it’s helpful to think of computer science as a foreign language. The malleability of our scholars’ young brains means the earlier you introduce the material, the stickier it becomes. You don’t expect students to become fluent in Spanish with just 4 years of high school Spanish. But immerse them in it when they’re young…that’s another story entirely.  

Computer science should be a course that begins as early as elementary school.  It should be a core subject, much like math and ELA. It also should be a graduation requirement.  

Not an elective.

Not an after school program. 

A computer science education should not just be for kids who attend affluent private or suburban schools. 

It should be for EVERY CHILD.

When I spoke at a recent conference, I wrapped up my talk with an exercise in order to make a point about why I’m so passionate about computer science education.

I asked everyone to raise their hand if they’ve heard of Jeff Bezos. 

100% of the hands went up.  

I asked everyone to keep their hands up if they’ve heard of Elon Musk. 

Still everyone. 

Then I told them to keep their hands up if they’ve heard of David Steward. 

All but a handful of hands went down. 

David Steward is the CEO of World Wide Technology. World Wide Technology provides advanced technology solutions for the manufacturing, commercial, government and telecom sectors. He is the second richest black man in America. He was born poor in the segregated South and is now worth around $6 billion.  

He should be a household name, and yet, as everyone in that conference hall proved, he isn’t. 

When asked about his company’s success, Steward observed: “Talent is equally distributed; opportunity is not. We need to change that by inspiring and igniting untapped potential.”

Computer science education is the ticket to opportunity in the 21st century. If we want more black billionaires who innovate, create, solve complex problems and make the world a better place, then we need computer science education for all. It’s that simple.

My sister and I failed kindergarten. 

That’s how I began my keynote address in front of 300 education and tech leaders leaders on September 21 at CSEdCon. 

I opened with this story because my journey to founding a computer science-focused school began the morning our principal delivered this news to my mom. Failing kindergarten impacted the direction of my entire life in two important ways: 

First, it exposed me to the idea of school choice. Once my mom learned they planned to hold my sister and I back, she researched and worked diligently until she found another school that would better meet our needs. Every family and every scholar deserves that. In Washington, DC, students have that choice.  More than half the students who attend public school are enrolled in a public charter school that they applied to and get into through a lottery. 

Second, it forever altered the perception I had of myself. At an early age, I was told that I was not smart. A school that creates that feeling in a child isn’t a school any child should have to attend. I would never want my own children, Dylan and Duke, who are twins starting middle school, to have this experience. And if it’s not acceptable for my kids, it’s not acceptable for anyone’s kids. 

Inspired to give students a school experience that empowered – not discouraged – learning, I became an elementary school teacher in Virginia. After teaching, I spent 15 years working in various leadership roles in education, including the CEO of the Newark Charter School Fund. My family and I moved back to DC in 2016 to be closer to family, but professionally, I was not exactly sure what I would do next. And here’s where computer science enters my life:  

One day, I read an article about how innovation is changing the world economy in ways that were unimaginable a decade before. In DC, I read, there were over 10,000 vacancies for high-tech jobs in the metro area that would pay an average salary over $100k per year. These aren’t just jobs. These are careers. And they are careers that can break the cycle of poverty and build generational wealth, an opportunity many Black and Brown families have not had due to years of systemic racism and oppression.

This realization fundamentally shifted my perspective about the importance of computer science education for students–especially students from low-income families. 

So there I was – it was January 2017 – and the idea for Digital Pioneers Academy was born. In the months after that, I developed a 500 page charter application that outlined a vision for a computer science immersion school, with every student taking computer science and adopting a curriculum that emphasized computational thinking skills like problem solving, collaboration and critical thinking. 

The rest, as they say, is history.   

Not bad for a girl who failed kindergarten.

If you know anything about me, you know I believe that student culture begins with adult culture.  

For a network leader, the first day of school brings so many emotions. As I walked around our beautiful new building, I was inspired because I observed our team living our values like optimism, and creating authentic positivity and a joy of learning.  

At DPA, on day one, we expect teachers to begin teaching the curriculum and students to begin practicing habits of learning. 

So as I walked around, I was excitedly looking for three specific teacher practices and routines of learning that we emphasized throughout our 100+ hours of summer professional development.   

Speak with a strong voice. Our team communicates with confidence and clarity so that scholars know exactly what is expected of them and feel a sense of urgency to get work done. 
Give scholars the criteria for success. This means setting the bar high for excellence and not accepting “good” as good enough.  
Circulate with purpose. Scholars should be doing the hard work while the teacher is ensuring all students are on task and checking for understanding.  
It’s one thing to talk about these best practices in a summer PD session; it’s another thing to see it happening across our 22 classrooms serving 540 scholars. 

English teachers taught all sixth graders a lesson on archaeology. The teachers started the class describing archaeology and the hands-on lesson plan. They displayed six photos of archaeological sites and artifacts throughout the room, and students did a gallery walk. Students shared out what they observed and read a grade-level article about each photo. On day one!

These ideas aren’t new or revolutionary, and we still have so many areas to grow, but that doesn’t make me any less inspired by seeing our team practice the values we preach.  

Tell me about your day one or week one lesson. What are some of the habits of learning that you tried to instill in your students?