Bill MacKenty

I’m finished at Hunter

As of 4:00pm today, I've finished my tenure at Hunter College Campus Schools (the high school and the elementary school).

I worked there for four years as an instructional designer, helping to integrate technology into the curriculum. If you'd like to see a normal day for me, take a peek here.

I loved this job. The kids are amazing. Like, genuinely amazing. I will never forget the conversation I had with a 7th grade student (13 years old) about advanced cross-side scripting and brute force attacks. This was no script kiddie, but a well developed hacker. I met several others like him, who were profoundly gifted. One of my favorites is a student who zapped from one idea to the next - he wants to compile code on anything he can find, I think. He was dealing with very high level code concepts in 10th grade (16 years old) - so much so, he had to take classes at Hunter College because we couldn't feed him anymore. The students were the intellectual cream of the crop in New York City. It was such an honor to work with them, and support the fine teachers who guide them everyday.

I ended up working more on the technical side of things than the integration side of things (a common occurrence, I think), but I saw the implementation of interactive whiteboards in every room, robust wireless network implementation, laptops for the teachers, transition to a fully OS X platform for the elementary school, and so many other things...

I loved the faculty there. I really did. I recount the daily struggles and triumphs at our school. We had a chemistry teacher who is the nicest person, and he was delighted to learn how to incorporate pictures into his powerpoint presentations - he did wonderfully, and the students are able to see copper in different states because of his hard work. We have teachers who still don't even turn on their computers, and others who can't get enough.

I worked with an active administration team, who was supportive, and engaged in the success of the students.

It was a little frustrating working within the CUNY bureaucracy, but I learned quite a bit from my time at Hunter. I am left with a specific sadness as I leave; these kids and teachers deserve the very best (really) - it is my genuine hope they get everything they need.