Mayland Early College students Ailyah Duncan, Bryson Herron and Toby Rogers learn virtually from Jacob Martinez in a recent tech club session. (Submitted)
“The theme for this session is brainstorming,” Waymo Product Operations Manager and 2009 Mitchell High graduate Jacob Martinez says to a group of Mayland Early College High School students.
Martinez was in his home in the Bay Area as he convened a recent session of the tech-focused student club. The group meets virtually midday every couple of weeks to work on a project or problem they choose while learning to use the tools and methods teams of people in the tech industry, people like Martinez, use to do their jobs every day.
In the aforementioned session, they worked as a team using Figma.
“Carrier pigeon is incoming!” It’s not a real carrier pigeon, of course, but a virtual one working with a driverless car to deliver groceries to a virtual family in Mitchell County.
“You’re helping me do my job,” Martinez said. “Here at Waymo I’m part of a team answering the question, ‘How could a self-driving car help you get groceries?’ Now, how are we going to make the car understand the instructions from the carrier pigeon?”
The point has nothing to do with a carrier pigeon, not really. The point is to learn to use the tool, Figma, to brainstorm as a team and explore options, to be comfortable with the process.
Martinez has been impressed with the work the students have done using the tool.
“Aaliyah, you started to play with the tool immediately, seeing what it could do. That creativity is a huge skill. And, Bryson, you are such a team player, helping everyone. Being a team player is a huge skill you brought to this.
“Toby, your detailed description of how we can get our message to people in the store is how an engineer would think about this. Communication is a huge skill for us in this work. These are all skills I look for when I am working with my teams here at Waymo.”
Aliyah Duncan, Bryson Herron and Toby Rogers keep working on the problem.
“We can have a specialty lot for these cars at the store,” Herron suggested.
“This is definitely something we’re thinking about,” Martinez said. “Specialty parking lots for our cars.”
“We need to keep track of the birds and which ones are doing a good job,” Duncan said. “Maybe a barcode on the pigeon?”
“Love this idea,” Martinez said. “That’s asset management.”
“What about the predator birds? We are going to lose some pigeons,” Rogers said.
“You guys each came up with very different problems throughout this process,” Martinez said. “And that’s great. It’s why we work in teams. If you didn’t all have different ideas we might miss something. Now, some solutions are cheap, some are expensive. I want you to come up with as many of each as you can in a minute. Go.”
The students started brainstorming again.
“The tech club experiment with Jacob this semester has been great for the students,” said Audra Edwards, the MECHS history and Spanish teacher who sponsors the club. “He really relates to them well. They are learning lots of critical thinking skills by working with him.
“The program he has created has the added benefit of the students getting to know a person in the tech industry and learning about all the opportunities the field has to offer.”
According to Martinez, a few of his passions are education, working with students and Mitchell County. Technology and internet access allow him to explore all three from the other side of the country.
He designed the program to expose the students to tech-oriented topics in an easy-to-understand way and to teach them to use tech tools by letting them work together and with him to solve actual projects.
“After moving to San Francisco to work for Google, I remember reading an article in a tech magazine titled ‘The Ultra-Pure, Super-Secret Sand That Makes Your Phone Possible’ talking about the quartz coming only from Spruce Pine. I always knew how special Spruce Pine felt to me as my hometown but this elevated Spruce Pine to another level for me.
“I built the lessons we cover in the tech club specifically to be approachable, applicable, and relevant to the students’ interests and future jobs. We spend time talking about exciting technology like autonomous vehicles, rockets, and virtual reality while building their skills with tools and methods for problem-solving that we use today in the industry. I’ve been so incredibly inspired by how quickly they’ve taken to the material and how creative their contributions have been to our activities.”
MECHS principal Stacie Burleson was all in from the moment she heard Martinez’ proposals. While she didn’t know Martinez when he was a student in Mitchell County, she was familiar with his brother David and his mother, Carol, a long-time Spanish teacher in Mitchell County Schools.
So, she sent an email to students.
“Please respond to this email if you’d like to be part of a problem-solving team with Jacob.” Duncan, Herron and Rogers are three of the students who responded.
“Somebody said a pigeon might have problems with a hawk,” Martinez said, looking out from the screen at the students. “Next time, let’s talk about the hawk.”
If you have time and talent you’d like to share with students in Mitchell County Schools but aren’t sure how you might fit in, contact Lori Gilcrist, Director of Rural Education Partners of Mitchell County, at 467-0970 or lori.gilcrist@edpartnersmc.org.