Lamont's Story

Lamont was almost thirteen years old on the summer evening that he came into the activity center at the housing development where he lived.  He came to get pizza and soda, and not as much because his mother had told him to meet her there. In fact, Lamont and his mother were there to learn more about the Austin Learning Academy (ALA) and the programs it would offer to families at the center over the next year.

ALA’s mission is to teach young and old alike the technological knowledge and skills that are mandatory for success in today’s society. Lamont's mother signed up because she wanted to brush up her academic skills and pursue her interests in fashion design. She thought Lamont might be interested in the "build-your-own" computer program offered by ALA. After all, he had an old, non-working computer at home that he had already taken apart in an effort to fix.

So in the summer of 1997, Lamont and his mother were introduced to computers differently than most Americans. It was a time when rhetoric of a Digital Divide was loud and mostly tangled. It was also a period when many Americans awakened to the possibilities of the Internet. Lamont’s fascination with technology, however, is significant because it was never supposed to happen.

Lamont is growing up in Southeast Austin, Texas, a working class community whose schools leave much to be desired. Lamont is a big kid, and he is especially proud of his full head of corn-row braids. Many teachers at his nearby middle school thought he was imposing and hard-to-handle. He had been suspended from school a couple of times during the previous school year for an accumulation of minor nuisance violations of school rules.

So technology came to Lamont not in the classroom, where many children of affluent families discovered computers, but in his visits to two of the six family learning centers operated by ALA in several neighborhoods around Austin. The other ALA center where Lamont spent time that summer was about eight miles from his house. It was in East Austin, around the corner from his cousin's house. In both cases, the center was only a few minutes' walk from households where Lamont spent much of his time.

Lamont, an average student who had never experienced any academic motivation within the classroom, took to computers over the next year and became a "wiz" in his own right. He built a computer that summer in the ALA program. His newfound hobby soon translated into dreams for his future. He and his mother decided that he would attend his neighborhood high school, despite the option to transfer to a new high school that was accepting some of his classmates. Lamont and his mother knew the neighborhood school was a better option because it had just started offering advanced technology and computer courses. Lamont wanted to enroll in the advanced computer science and web design classes offered at the school.

However, the initial response to his request for educational advancement was placement in the school’s vocational computer courses. From the school district’s point of view, Lamont was not the kind of student for whom their innovative computer classes were designed.

Prior to Lamont's family being involved with the ALA, this frustrating decision would likely have been accepted as the "way it goes." Lamont would have taken the vocational classes offered and continued his lackluster academic performance, with little motivation or expectation to do otherwise.

But with the Academy’s help and encouragement, Lamont and his mother arranged a meeting with school administrators. At first, Lamont and his mother were told that from brief observation of Lamont’s school record, he would not be up to par in the advanced computer classes. But Lamont and his mother took control of the meeting and challenged this assertion: Lamont offered to show the administrators the full extent of his knowledge of PCs.

He literally took apart a computer and put it back together again in the principal’s office.

By taking a closer look at what was behind this demonstration of individual and organizational competence - what our research teams calls community competence - we can learn how to be more effective in developing this capacity in low to moderate income neighborhoods.

Implications of Lamont's Story

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Implications of Lamont's Story

Austin Learning Academy

this page last updated
April 13, 2002