3D ThinkLink Helps At-Risk Youth Redefine Failure

Failure is not final. We never fail to emphasize that message in our 3D ThinkLink classes. 

A favorite motivational poster in our 3D ThinkLink Creativity Lab features a picture of Yoda with this quote: “You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried.”

In fact, that’s not a line from a Star Wars movie, even though it sure sounds like something Yoda might say. 

But what about “Failure is not an option”? Apollo 13 Flight Director Gene Kranz never said that, either. A screenwriter for the Ron Howard movie came up with the line, but Kranz thought it captured the spirit of NASA’s Mission Control Center so well that he used it as the title of his autobiography. 

What Kranz did tell his team as they scrambled to save the astronauts aboard the crippled spacecraft was: “This crew is coming home … And we must make it happen.” And they did – but not without overcoming plenty of obstacles along the way. They didn’t let failures keep them from ultimately achieving success. 

Fast-forward to the era of private spaceflight. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who recently watched one of his Falcon 9 rockets explode on the launch pad, has declared: "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

In fact, 15Five CEO David Hassell contends that for today’s entrepreneurs, failure is not an option – it’s required. 

These varied views of failure can be difficult to reconcile for the young people we serve. Most of them have experienced a great deal of failure in school and at home. It’s no wonder that they’ve learned to fear failure and to give up when they make mistakes. 

Our 3D ThinkLink Initiative is designed to help at-risk kids redefine failure. We’ve seen how learning 3D design and printing gives them the opportunity to work through problems by trial and error without worrying about flunking a test or being punished. Nobody’s 3D project turn out right the first time. But the inevitable mistakes are always instructive, and sometimes even beautiful. 

Students in 3D ThinkLink Creativity Lab

With the CAD software and user-friendly printers we provide for 3D ThinkLink classes along with hands-on help from highly engaged teachers in the classrooms, our students can easily evaluate failures, improve their designs and print again until they’re satisfied with the results. 

The key is for students to develop the confidence to keep trying in the face of failures, knowing that each mistake can lead to improvement. That’s a profoundly different way of thinking for most at-risk youth.  
   
Bob Lenz, Executive Director of the Buck Institute for Education, explained on the Edutopia blog what he means when he says failure is essential to learning.

I'm not talking about dead-end failure, the kind that results in loss of opportunity, regression, or stagnation. Instead, we see failure as an opportunity for students to receive feedback on their strengths as well as their areas of improvement -- all for the purpose of getting better. When reframed as a good, constructive, and essential part of learning, failure is a master teacher.

How do you make failure students' friend? Set a high standard and don't be afraid to tell students that they haven't met it. But in the next breath, give detailed suggestions on what they can do to improve. And, most important -- though so often given short shrift -- allow students the time, space, and support to make the revisions. In such a culture, failure does not mean, "You lose." It means, "You can do better. We believe in you. Here is some feedback: revise, and try again."

That’s why our 3D ThinkLink curriculum includes lots of design lab sessions. Students need time to go through the process of incremental improvement so they can internalize the larger lesson about failure.

3DThinkLink class at the PHILLIPS School

We know it works because of the results we’ve seen. For instance, here’s what a student from our first class for teens with autism at the PHILLIPS School in Annandale, Virginia, told us: 
  
“What I liked about the 3D program was that it taught me that I could innovate. It’s teaching me ‘don’t give up on your design.’ … Like when you lose your data, you can always get it back – just keep going. I am using this now, every day. It is OK to lose data because you can always do it again. It helped me tolerate the loss – to start again, to start over.”

We hear the same thing from other organizations that offer 3D printing programs for at-risk youth. The McCarthy-Dressman Foundation and ChickTech recently provided workshops in app development and 3D printing at Helensview Alternative High School in Portland, Oregon, to help students gain confidence and learn from failures. Surveys done before and after the classes showed a 22 percent increase in students reporting “I can work through problems.”

The PHILLIPS School’s evaluation report included this teacher’s account of the change he saw one student undergo during our pilot project. 

“During the 3rd session, the student suddenly ran back into the classroom, buried his head on the desk and shut down. He would not talk to me. He has a habit of never revealing or identifying the problem. I talked to the 3D Design Teacher who said the student got frustrated trying to create something. Then, during one of the final 3D classes, I was observing the class and this student had stopped working on the project and was doing other things on the computer. When the 3D Design Teacher went to him, the student showed him the project, identified the problem and together they problem solved. The student was able to finish and print his design – this is a major change. I have seen it in other areas as well. The student does not shut down as often.”

The final quotation on this subject comes from a time long before Elon Musk, Gene Kranz and Yoda. “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure,” said Abraham Lincoln. 

It is life-changing when students learn how to use their failures to pave the way to success.

Understanding Additive Manufacturing Is a Plus for 3D ThinkLink Students

YouthQuest’s 3D ThinkLink training gives at-risk teens an advantage in the tech-driven job market where demand for 3D design and printing skills is growing fast.

Our students from Maryland’s Freestate, DC’s Capital Guardian and South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe Academies learned about the additive manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, and traditional subtractive manufacturing during last month’s Vocational Orientation field trips. 

In this video, Bill Nye the Science Guy explains why additive manufacturing is the way of the future.




3D Systems Director of Corporate Communications Tim Miller told the students who toured the company’s headquarters in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that demand for workers who understand 3D printing is skyrocketing. Job listings for positions requiring 3D printing skills jumped more than 1,800 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to Wanted Analytics. 

Tim Miller leads a Vocational Orientation
tour of 3D Systems

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers also reported:
… knowing how to use a 3D printer has become an in-demand job skill. A recent report from data company Wanted Analytics found that in one month 35 percent of engineering job listings from a variety of fields, including biomedical, software, and transportation industries, required applicants familiar with 3D printing and its additive manufacturing processes. The same report found that companies are having a difficult time finding candidates with the right skills.

Fortunately for our students, many of these jobs do not require a 4-year college degree, as noted in the Potomac Laser blog:
Interestingly, the new tools being implemented are often automated and the workers who run them do not need advanced degrees. These operators who have an underlying STEM-based skillset can enter the workforce with a high school diploma or associate’s degree at a pay scale averaging 61 percent higher than workers in non-STEM jobs with similar education. 

Students explore additive and subtractive
manufacturing at The Foundery in Baltimore

As our students discovered during their Vocational Orientation visits to businesses and universities, additive and subtractive manufacturing methods are often used in combination. For instance, 3D printing may be used in developing prototypes of a finished product that will be mass-produced through traditional manufacturing techniques. 

CAD (Computer Aided Design) software is used in both types of manufacturing. Our students learn Moment of Inspiration, a professional-level CAD program, so they understand the concept of giving computer-controlled manufacturing devices the instructions to create objects, whether they’re 3D printers or subtractive CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines. 

In addition to technical skills, the 3D ThinkLink Initiative gives students an advantage by emphasizing the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills. Research by PayScale ranked those at the top of the list of skills hiring managers say are lacking in recent graduates.

Introducing the 3D ThinkLink Youth Mentor Program

Our 3D ThinkLink training includes 30 hours of classroom instruction and labs, a four-hour community service project and a day of Vocational Orientation. Students selected for advanced training spend a week in our 3D ThinkLink Creativity Lab to deepen their understanding of 3D design and printing, and to further develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills.

But then what happens?

We want our students to retain the benefits of their 3D ThinkLink experience after they’ve completed their training. In fact, we want them to spread those benefits to others.

3DThinkLink students introduce youngsters to 3D printing
at the 2014 USA Science & Engineering Festival

That’s why we’ve launched a program to exponentially increase our foundation’s ability to reach at-risk youth.

The goal of our Youth Mentor Program is for the life lessons we instill in our students to be passed along from person to person, spreading through under-served communities.

We’re going to give our most motivated and capable advanced students the tools they need to continue learning about 3D and to share their knowledge with their family, friends and neighbors. 

Each student in our Youth Mentor Program will receive a Tech Pack, which includes a 3D printer, design software, laptop computer and training.

Your donation of $500 will buy a Tech Pack for a deserving student. To contribute to this important new program, please contact YouthQuest Operations Manager Juan Louro at juan.louro@youthquestfoundation.org or (703) 234-4633.

We know that mentoring is especially beneficial for at-risk teens.

By turning our students into mentors as they make the transition to adulthood, we will build up their self-esteem and empower them to inspire younger kids and even older people.

They will drive positive change from within their communities by giving back and being role models, as well as resources for 3D design and printing.

Student Snapshot: Adonis Gonzales

This is the first in an occasional series about outstanding young people who have completed our 3D ThinkLink class.

NASA had the Mercury 7 – the first class of American astronauts. YouthQuest has the Original 8 – our first 3D ThinkLink class.

One member of that groundbreaking group is Adonis Gonzales. We met him early in 2013 when he was a 17-year-old Cadet at Maryland’s Freestate ChallNGe Academy.   

He told us he always wanted to become a master electrician. But he had given up on high school, staying home “watching TV or sleeping” instead of going to class. Eventually, he said, the principal told Adonis he’d missed so many days that he couldn’t come back to school. After working a series of brief odd jobs, Adonis realized he needed more education in order to provide “a better future” for himself, his girlfriend and their baby daughter.

Adonis enrolled in Freestate, where instructors recognized his potential and selected him for our 3D ThinkLink pilot project.

“When I first went into the class, I saw the computers and printer and thought that it was going to be too hard,” he said in an interview with the Fairfax Connection. “But then the instructor said that if we could imagine something, then we could create it. The first thing I made was a heart with my daughter’s name on it.”

“Your mind can go farther than you think,” Adonis told us after his class took Vocational Orientation tours of a 3D Systems production facility and Prototype Productions, Inc., in Northern Virginia.

Adonis has been in an electrician apprenticeship program for more than two years and says he uses the problem solving skills he learned in our class to work through obstacles on the job.

“It helps me be creative with my mind and materials around me,” he said about his 3D ThinkLink experience.

Adonis also took our “failure is not final” message to heart. He didn’t pass his GED exam the first time he took it – or the second time. But he didn’t give up and he learned from his mistakes until, on the third try, Adonis earned his GED.

The Original 8 - Freestate ChalleNGe Academy, June 11, 2013

What Can 3D Printing Build? Better Lives for At-Risk Youth

The most important part of our 3D ThinkLink Initiative isn’t 3D printing. It’s all about thinking.

Poor decision-making – what our Co-Founder and President Lynda Mann likes to call “stinkin’ thinkin’” – has led to all sorts of trouble for the at-risk kids we work with. Our project is a fun, hands-on way of showing students how to learn from their mistakes.

A collection of failed phone case prints
in our 3D ThinkLink Creatvity Lab

The process of turning an idea into a 3D-printed object is fraught with failure. 

We have boxes filled with parts that didn’t turn out right the first time, or the second or third or fourth time – and we’re not alone.

In our classes, kids who once quit trying when they failed discover new ways of overcoming obstacles and reaching goals. 

We know our students will benefit from these critical thinking and problem solving skills throughout their lives, even if they don’t continue with 3D printing.

Listen to what some of our students and teachers say about the life lessons learned through the 3D ThinkLink Initiative.