I’m Kaitlyn Zeichick and I’m a senior at Scripps College. Although I love fuzzy blankets and eating popcorn while watching Netflix (I’m currently binging “You” and “This is Us”), I’m most at home when I’m outdoors. I rock-climb most weekends, making excursions out to Red Rocks, Yosemite, Malibu, Big Bear, and anywhere else I can get to in a car. I also love hiking, and am going to try and hike all of California’s 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet tall) by the end of this year (I’ve done 4 so far). I’m not a runner, but I spontaneously signed up for a marathon in March, so we’ll see how that goes. When it’s raining or I’m at school and have some free time I play piano, read books, and bake cookies.
Going to Scripps has been the longest I’ve ever been at a school, and it’s the eleventh I’ve attended. I went to two preschools, three elementary schools, two middle schools, and three highschools. And I managed to cover a wide variety of different types of education systems in all those transfers: Spanish bilingual programs, Montessori, American public, Spanish public, private, online, and charter with a focus on arts. The Spanish public school was the one that got me interested in education because it was so different from anything else I’d experienced. I’d never been to a school where teachers stood on platforms, students and teachers rotated around classrooms, tests were all in essay format, and grades were read out to the class.
That interest in education is why I’m majoring in Cognitive Science: I love learning about learning, how the mind works, and how teaching styles and tools impact learning. And then I took most of the Computer Science major because I really like puzzles and I’d like to influence the computer science education space since the whole field is a powerful tool for social change. After two computer science education research internships, I realized I’d like to know more about education. What’s its history? What are the goals of education for the different players in the education system? What motivates students? Why is education so stratified? How can we generate change? Hence, Out of the Cave. I’m hoping this class will help answer some of my questions.
Education 