Citizen Schools: Cognizant’s Vice-President of Sustainability and Educational Affairs Shares Experience as a Citizen Teacher

“We believe that there’s a shortage of technology workers for our industry,” says Mark Greenlaw, one of the many Cognizant employees who reserve 90 minutes each week to volunteer with middle school students through the national nonprofit Citizen Schools. “Becoming a Citizen Teacher was really important to get right down there where the action is, rolling up our sleeves and not just sitting on the sidelines,” he says.

Talking about the apprenticeship called TechnoSwag—his first experience as a teacher—Greenlaw recalls, “There were six graders from a diverse set of backgrounds from this neighborhood. Kids chose an image and put that on an iron-on transfer for a piece of fabric.  They had to design a pattern of LED lights. We used a little device called LilyPad Arduino, an open source micro controller. Then they used conductive thread to sow from each of the leads on the Arduino out to each of the leads on the LEDs. And then they had to program it.”

Having done those projects himself, Greenlaw says he had never been able to get more than four LEDs to light up at one time because that was all a rechargeable lithium ion battery allowed. Then a boy, whom Greenlaw had taught how to do the programming, had all eight LEDs lit at once. On being asked by Greenlaw how he did that, the boy replied, “They really aren’t all lit. I just lowered the delay time down to 10 milliseconds, so it looks like they all are lit.”

What was really impressive, says Greenlaw, was that he figured out how to overcome that challenge. “He actually taught me something,” says Greenlaw. “Our employees feel that the opportunity to be a Citizen Teacher gives them meaning and purpose in what they do. I was really surprised to see how much the kids had got in my heart and my mind, and it was all consuming.”