A high school teacher gives his students projects that offer opportunities to help others. He finds these projects generate a lot of enthusiasm in the classroom.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
One powerful way to engage students is to have them build real-world products that help other people. Students in a technology class at a high school in suburban Denver are doing just that. It is called empathy engineering, and Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin paid a visit.
JENNY BRUNDIN, BYLINE: What you’re about to hear from 17-year-old Bea Ingels is music to a teacher’s ears.
BEA INGELS: This is the coolest project I’ve ever worked on.
BRUNDIN: The project is redesigning the classic board game Code Breakers. The reason it’s so cool? Ingalls says it’s a real request from a client, a nonprofit that makes learning products for people who are blind and low-vision.
INGELS: It’s like I get to work on something that is going to positively impact someone who needs it. Like, this isn’t a fun project because my mom wanted a table. It’s these kids can’t have access to these resources because if any other company made this, it’d be $100.
BRUNDIN: Students are now waiting for feedback on the 10 prototypes they submitted to American Printing House. It’s distributing them to schools of the blind nationwide for testing. Students will refine the design before a local manufacturer takes over.
BRIAN JERNIGAN: Hey, it’s on you now. So this is how it is. In the real world, you’re dumping in. You got to get a product out the door. Divide and conquer. I’m here for you.
BRUNDIN: Teacher Brian Jernigan kicks off the class, and the juniors jump in. Today, they’re building the prototype.
ANDREW HONEA: So picture this whole top circular area, and then just imagine if that was the shape on the top.
JERNIGAN: OK.
HONEA: Suggestions?
JERNIGAN: Would you also like to keep the circular bit at the bottom?
HONEA: Yeah.
BRUNDIN: Jernigan became sold on injecting empathy into student projects years ago. The University of Colorado approached him with a federal grant to explore three D printing to help visually impaired children read. The shift in his high school student designers was immediate.
JERNIGAN: All of a sudden, 100% of the kids giving me 100% of what they had. They all really tried ’cause they were like, oh, my time matters. And that was the magic moment that I saw.
BRUNDIN: Fast-forward more than a decade.
JERNIGAN: You have lasers. You have fine woodworking equipment. You’ve got 3D scanners. You have high-end computers that work.
BRUNDIN: Jernigan secured another grant to transform the old workshop into a modern-day design lab. But hey – these kids have a deadline.
HONEA: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: All the original measurements and what our final measurements are…
BRUNDIN: Let’s get back to it. For those who don’t know the game Code Breakers, someone guesses the order of a row of colored pegs. Student Andrew Honea explains for visually impaired children, color won’t work.
HONEA: So our biggest focus is just making everything tactile.
BRUNDIN: They’re scaling up peg sizes, adding ridges, numbering rows.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEP)
BRUNDIN: For a newcomer, the lab looks like controlled chaos. Everyone works on a piece of the puzzle. Massimo Ayes (ph) has an idea.
MASSIMO AYES: Bit and having a triangle on this one, since it has jagged edges.
INGELS: We do have five pegs. The other problem is I think you’re overestimating how complicated I can make those.
BRUNDIN: They compromise.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: I agree with just doing it off of texture, like a cone or like a circle.
BRUNDIN: When something doesn’t work, students pivot fast.
INGELS: The way I designed it would actually not work incredibly well. It’d be really hard to identify to someone else.
BRUNDIN: American Printing House is excited the project is helping train future designers to build accessibility into their work.
JERNIGAN: So these kids – what they’re getting is an opportunity to put something on their resume that’s real, relevant and will be for the rest of their lives.
BRUNDIN: But Code Breakers isn’t the only accessible project students are working on. Still others are designing personal innovations.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: So I’m designing a wooden satellite that will burn up on re-entry to the atmosphere.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #4: It’s an arm brace to ensure your arms can retain and/or regain stability.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #5: It’s a clip that shortens the bottom of pants without having to hem them.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #6: I’m trying to design a toy where the packaging is built in and isn’t thrown away, so it…
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #7: I’m making a climate-conditions monitoring system to track conditions in pika habitats. And it’s going to be, like, self-powered, and it has – like, camouflaged as a rock.
BRUNDIN: Here at the school, a speech therapist asked for a teaching aid for speech device users. Neo Crooks designed 96 color-coded core word blocks.
NEO CROOKS: This is a product that definitely could turn into money. I don’t care about that. The fact that it’s going to make an impact for what could be nationwide – that’s such a great thing, and that’s just something you get to carry with you.
BRUNDIN: Jernigan says after teaching kids the basic skills, he steps back.
JERNIGAN: It’s not easy. It’s not clear. It’s not black and white. It’s not, hey, how do I get an A on the test? It’s dirty. It’s messy. It’s – it takes time. There’s failures. There’s setbacks. And, you know, that’s life. That’s life, right? And then we pile a little bit of empathy on it, and it just – you know, it fuels them, and it fuels me.
BRUNDIN: Before the kids file out, Jernigan asks for a one-word summary of the class.
JERNIGAN: Learn.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #8: Innovative.
JERNIGAN: Innovative.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #9: Engaging.
JERNIGAN: Engaging.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #10: Great.
JERNIGAN: Great. I love it.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #11: Fun.
JERNIGAN: Fun.
BRUNDIN: For NPR News, I’m Jenny Brundin in Littleton, Colorado.
SIMON: (SOUNDBITE OF EL TEN ELEVEN’S “MY ONLY SWERVING”)
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Jenny Brundin 2026-01-17 12:42:52
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