Dewey Winburn comes clean

Kids with the American Institute for Learning's theatre troupe play hackeysack outside the AIL installation.

This is Part I of our interview with Dewey Winburn, the gentle presence who put together the recent successful South-by-Southwest (SxSW) MultiMedia Conference and a visionary at the American Institute of Learning in Austin.

If you're not familiar with the Institute, its work is important: Bringing disadvantaged kids in contact with cutting-edge technology to nurture the next generation of creative genius.

Austin Axis publisher Glenn Pieper is the interviewer in our question-and-answer session with Winburn. We intend to do a four-part series of installments as updates throughout May, so tune in. (We'd like to tell you this is clever marketing on our part, but the truth is, Dewey wouldn't shut up)

Glenn Pieper: You look a little shell shocked.

Dewey Winburn: Yeah, well, when you do 20 hours a day for the last four days and realize that the next 15 are gonna be that, then you start to feel it.

GP: I thought from your normal schedule, that would be kind of a cutback.

DW: (laughs) That might be true.

GP: You know, I'd like to hear a little bit about who Dewey Winburn is and what A.I.L. is and how you got started in all this stuff in general. And maybe talk about your New Media InVision Award.

DW: Oh, well, uhh ...there's a long history to it all. I started off as a ...

GP: OK, we don't want the long version. (laughter)

DW: OK, I'll do the synopsal highlights. I started off as a public school teacher and my real passion was working with kids that had been kicked out of traditional schools or kids that were in the detention centers at W.R. Robbins or or F.R.Rice here in town.

GP: Is this because you had a personal history of this in your life?

DW: That's correct, somewhat. I actually didn't leave the public school, although I hated it. I found, once I got out of public school, the world of reading, writing and books. I went to Europe and had a sort of renaissancian experience. Then I decided to go to college after that. So that was one of the things. So I was really fascinated with learning and motivating kids in learning how to learn. One of my mentors is a guy named Elliot Wiggington, who wrote the FoxFire books in the 70's. I should say that his students wrote the FoxFire Books. Nine volumes of books through DoubleDay Press. They have their own television station, their own radio station, their own travelling theater company, their own bi-monthly publication.

GP: Was he a personal mentor?

DW: Yes - personal mentor. I got to spend some time with him. They created quite a community in rural Appalachia. His whole emphasis was on project based learning. So, engaging students in real world projects that gave them the intrinsic motivation to do what they do because people would take a look at what they're doing.

GP: Right.

DW: So, I translated that into the classroom when I began teaching at the Creative Rapid Learning Center in downtown Austin. Gosh, almost 10 years ago now.

We did a variety of projects with ACTV (Austin access tv). We did our own publication, we did home building projects. Just a variety of things that eventually led in 1988, when we were doing a national joint study partnership with IBM, to my first interactive piece with the old Info Windows System. Students were involed in the design team for all that and I got my hands wet with multi-media production.

GP: Are you working with high school students at this point or college students.

DW: Actually, kids that have been asked to leave Austin Independent School District. They are all kids who were not successful in that environment, I would say. For the most part, the environment was to blame, while to a large degree ... no, a significant degree, their own choices were to blame. I mean, to the fact that we're supposed to assign blame.

GP: Did you find it difficult to overcome that background, that stress. I mean, are these kids violent, have they caused you guys problems in your program?

DW: (guffaw) Oh yeah. I mean I'm a wacky guy and part of the reason that I'm wacky is because my strategy for my view of teaching is "TEACHING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY." Neil Postman wrote a great book about that. You know, when you have guys that are on parole or probation and their out to be tough and they carry knives to school, and this, that and the other. Well ... there are two strategies that you have. One is a real humble, genuine spirit of trust with them. Allowing them to fall in front of you and not ...

GP: ... not laugh?

DW: No, not just laugh.

GP: Patronize?

DW: No ... NOT KICK 'EM OUT AGAIN. You know, give them an opportunity. There's a point where you draw the line in the sand, but ... you allow them 3 or 4 opportunities so that it's real clear to them that they're making the choice. That's one of the most important things they learn.

GP: So the opportunity to fail and pick back up again?

DW: Yeah, I mean, that's one of my biggest things in life. Learning that failure is an opportunity to understand what you need to work on. That's kind of a hard one to learn. Especially for people with low self images and stuff. If you love them and work with them, then they get that opportunity.

Then the other thing is if you're just zanier that they are. Just absolutly zanier than they are, it keeps them off guard. Then their ways of trying to make you feel threatened, whatever ... you know, you're freaking them out, so ...

GP: (In my best Monty Python) Would this be something like -- How to defend yourself against a man with a banana?

DW: (belly laughs) Yeah, except the bannana is 6" long and made out of steel.

So you look at it and you go, "Man, that thing is sharp. Do you shine that thing? What kind of stone do you use to shine that thing?"

So the kid says to you, "DON"T GIVE ME THAT SHIT MOTHER-FUCKER!"

"OK, well .. .do you want to cut me? I mean, when you cut me what's going to happen? You're going to go to jail again, are you already on parole?"

So you get into this conversation with them about consequences. I mean, that sort of thing has happened, although it wasn't like every day you walked in a people were pulling knives on you. Mainly, it's people desiring...I don't want to paint the wrong picture. There are a few of those glaring examples ... I tackled ... well, there was a big fight one day. There was this one kid running down the halls - chassing another kid with a 56oz Budweiser bottle. Running after him. He was just about to catch him, so I did this diving football tackle on the kid and it smashed the bottle on the floor ... you know, I'll never forget that ... Eric was his name. (trails off in a brief memory)

I mean, there were episodes like that, but then MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE ... there were experiences like: A three generation graduation of a grandmother, a mother and a daughter all getting their G.E.D. one evening in caps and gowns, at the Hyatt regency, with Pomp and Circumstance playing and I'm crying. You know ... they're standing up on the stage. More often than not, it was a lot of single parent mothers, a lot of kids that were kinesthetic learners rather than learners through text. They didn't know that, so the project based learning approach that I have was very successful with many of them. That eventually led into a certain vision on my part to...I began to wonder this question and this has been my question for a long time.

There's a lot of hype around multi-media. They said, "Oh, it's great! The retention levels are high, the efficiany is high, ... this, that and the other. The interest levels, the motivation levels." You know, all those things are tested on various kinds of tests as being higher than other modes of learning. So I began to wonder. With all the hype of all this stuff, can this technology make a difference in the critical social problems that face young adults. CAN IT?

So I went about the quest of writing a grant and it was funded through the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse to create two titles. A title on drug and alcohol addiciton and a title on recovery from drug and alcohol addicition.