Lifelong Lifelong Kindergarten
In our Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, we develop technologies and activities to expand opportunities for young people from diverse communities to develop as creative, curious, caring, and collaborative learners. Inspired by the way children learn in kindergarten, we’ve worked to extend kindergarten-style learning to people of all ages, through initiatives like Scratch, LEGO robotics, the Computer Clubhouse network, Learning Creative Learning, and OctoStudio.
What underlies the success and impact of our work? It’s the people: Over the past 30+ years, our Lifelong Kindergarten group has been able to attract graduate students and staff who, themselves, are very creative, curious, caring, and collaborative learners.
These very special qualities of the Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) community were evident last week when we gathered together for the first-ever LLK reunion, a three-day event at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.
We invited 107 LLK alums (former grad students and staff), and we were delighted with the response: 85 alums traveled to the reunion, a participation rate of 80%. Alums came from all over the world (including Kenya, Japan, Denmark, Israel, England, and Canada), and all over the United States, and they brought spouses, partners, and children, so the gathering had 135 participants overall.
The reunion was a time for LLK alums to reconnect with old friends — and to make new friends from different LLK eras, stretching from 1992 to today. In addition to connecting with people, alums also connected with ideas, sharing stories on how to cultivate creative learning experiences in different contexts.
The event was part academic conference, part maker workshop, part summer camp. There were multiple parallel activities throughout the days, with sessions proposed and organized by LLK alums.
There were discussion sessions exploring topics like “AI and Creative Learning” and “Creative Learning in Classrooms”, and playful hands-on workshops including “Playing with the Sun” and “Zooming in on Nature”. There were also opportunities for nature walks and pickleball during the day, and stargazing and dancing at night. The photo booth and crafts table were busy throughout the event.
LLK alums have taken many different paths after leaving MIT: Some are now faculty at universities (at Harvard, Princeton, University of Colorado, and many others), some work at large tech companies (including Apple and Google), some work at nonprofits (including Digital Promise and Scratch Foundation), and some run their own startups (including Chibitronics and Playlab).
Despite these different paths, I was struck by how many of the alums had integrated LLK values and ideas into their lives and their work. Some had spent just a few years with our group at MIT, but they turned Lifelong Kindergarten into a lifelong experience: Lifelong Lifelong Kindergarten.
Before the reunion, we asked alums to contribute a slide to an online LLK Reunion Book. In their slides, many alums wrote about the transformative nature of their LLK experience, not just opening up new career paths and new friendships, but also shifting the ways they think about learning, collaboration, and play — and about themselves. In many of the slides, alums highlighted how they had integrated LLK’s 4P’s of creative learning into their lives: working on projects, based on their passions, in collaboration with peers, in a playful spirit.
LLK alums discussed these issues further at a reunion session titled “Everything I ever needed to know I learned in Lifelong Kindergarten,” organized by LLK alums Rick Borovoy and Lis Sylvan. One common theme in the session was how the LLK had established a culture of trust, care, and respect among students and staff, creating a “safe space” where they could try new things, rethink their assumptions, and explore new possibilities.
At the session, Marian Muthui described her surprise when she started as an LLK masters student in 2018. “Growing up in Kenya, I was always pushed to study hard to get a good job. It was all read and study. There was no room for play,” she explained. “Lifelong Kindergarten was totally different. It was so collaborative, everyone was bouncing ideas off one another. Play and exploration were always encouraged. Failure wasn’t a problem: if it doesn’t work out, you pivot.”
Today, Marian is the head of manufacturing for an electric vehicle startup in Kenya, overseeing the production of electric buses. That might seem like a big step away from LLK’s efforts to design and support creative-learning experiences for kids. But Marian emphasized how her LLK experience has shaped her as a manager and a leader.
“I lead a team of 15 people, and I’ve tried to create a culture around LLK values, where everyone feels they have an opportunity to grow,” she explained. “I want people to challenge themselves and work hard, but enjoy what they’re doing. I’ve encouraged collaboration across the team, and tried to bring playfulness into everyday activity.” Marian even implemented a weekly “recess” time, as in LLK, when team members get together to playfully explore new activities. Meanwhile, in her “spare time,” Marian helped create a free online magazine called Queengineers which showcases women engineers in Kenya, to help young women (ages 14–18) get a better understanding of “what a career in STEM could mean for them.”
On the final day of the reunion, Rupal Jain and I facilitated a session on “Imagining the Future of Creative Learning.” We all acknowledged that the world is facing some big challenges today. There are global trends, including the proliferation of AI and the rise of authoritarian governments, that could reduce the humanness of society, diminishing people’s voices and choices. The LLK approach to creative, curious, caring, and collaborative learning is more needed than ever before, and also more threatened than ever before.
How can we support and sustain creative learning in these challenging times? At the session, we agreed that we need to amplify the efforts of other “kindred spirits” around the world. We brainstormed about other initiatives that can serve as “bright spots,” providing us with inspiration and ideas. LLK alums suggested a range of innovative educational initiatives we can learn from — and perhaps collaborate with. Some sources of inspiration can come from outside the world of education and learning. As an example, Rupal pointed to the Freedom to Marry movement, which successfully transformed the ways many people think about marriage, leading to profound societal change. What lessons can we learn for our efforts to transform the ways people think about learning?
To end the reunion, we brought everyone together for a final full-group activity inspired by the School of HONK, a Cambridge-based community organization that describes itself as “a weekly meetup and parade when friends and neighbors learn to play lively, spontaneous music together.” Over the past decade, a number of LLK students and staff have been active participants in School of HONK, and we’ve come to see School of HONK as a great example of interest-driven, experiential, community-oriented learning, well-aligned with LLK’s 4C approach.
So we decided to end the reunion with a musical parade, organized by two current LLK members, Sean Hickey and Carmelo Presicce, who have been active in School of HONK. We passed out kazoos to everyone at the reunion, and Sean and Carmelo quickly helped everyone learn how to play a song on their kazoo, accompanied by Sean on the tuba, Carmelo on percussion, and a few other LLK alums on drums, trombone, and trumpet. Then, we all paraded around the hotel grounds, in a heartfelt musical performance, much to the amusement (and bemusement) of other guests at the hotel.
For me, it was a perfect ending to our LLK reunion. The parade was a joyful, social, expressive, memorable experience — as was the reunion overall. In today’s world, there are clearly big challenges in helping young people develop as creative, curious, caring, and collaborative learners. But after spending three days with LLK community members from the past 30+ years, I am feeling more hopeful.
I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone who helped organize the LLK Reunion. Kate Shanaghan and Belinda Norris did a wonderful job as event coordinators, and many members of the Lifelong Kindergarten group helped in developing and executing the ideas and plans for the reunion, especially (alphabetically, by first name): Carmelo Presicce, Carolina Rodeghiero, Champika Fernando, Eric Schilling, Federica Selleri, Karishma Chadha, Natalie Rusk, Rupal Jain, and Sean Hickey.
