Eli – Giving New Life to an Old Computer
By Jodi Asbell-Clarke
The following is an excerpt from the book Reaching and Teaching Neurodivergent Learners: Strategies for Embracing Uniquely Talented Problem Solvers, by Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Senior Scientist at TERC, published November 14, 2023 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
The spring of grade 9 is a hard time to teach at Hillside. Most of the kids are just riding out the last semester of junior high. They have grown too big for the school and already have their eyes set on high school. That is when we first tried project-based learning. When we started PBL in the grade 9 Tech Ed class, which was taught once a week by a first-year teacher, we had signed out the computer lab for each class.
A boy named Eli sat slumped in his chair near the back of the lab, hoodie up over his head, waiting for the hour to be over. He rarely interacted with other students. Eli didn’t have an IPP, but he wasn’t doing particularly well at school. He was just getting by. While the other kids joked and flirted and tussled with one another, Eli withdrew deeper into his hoodie. If allowed to sleep through class, it seemed he would have been out cold in no time.
My initial conversations with Eli were met with monosyllabic responses and blank expressions as I asked him about project ideas and favorite hobbies. He didn’t seem to want to engage on any level. I showed him instructables.com, a site with a bunch of DIY projects meant to spark his imagination, but two class periods went by without a glimmer of interest. On the third week of class, the school janitor, Mr. Bruce, happened to be clearing out a few of the 15-year-old computers that were defunct and collecting dust in the corner of the lab. Eli poked his head out from under his hoodie. “What’re you doing with those?” he asked Mr. Bruce. I was startled at the sound of Eli’s gravelly voice. “There’s a warehouse down by the school board buildings full of old dead computers,” Mr. Bruce replied. “I’ll probably just bring ’em down there.”
Here, I should pause and say something about the Hillside school janitor, Mr. Bruce. He had been at the school for decades. A slight, jolly, and non-intimidating man, Mr. Bruce was beloved. His office on the ground floor of the school, with every speck of wall adorned in memorabilia from his favorite hockey team, was a sanctuary for many Hillside students. It was a place they could always go to hear a simple hockey story or joke to break up the stress of their day. Mr. Bruce was a friend to everyone in the school.
Eli sat up and asked Mr. Bruce, almost jokingly, if he could take one of the computers apart, likely anticipating the answer to be “no.” Mr. Bruce looked at me quickly and then responded with a wink, “Yeah, no one down there is gonna miss an old computer anyways.” And with that, a project was born.
Eli spent every minute of Tech Ed class, along with ample time during lunch and after school, taking apart that old computer and documenting each component. He cleaned and tightened everything he touched. He catalogued all the computer’s components using a system he had devised to track each piece, sorting them by envelopes so he wouldn’t lose anything along the way, and looking them up on the Internet to see what they were. At the end of each 55-minute period, he carefully gathered up all the loose pieces and stored them in an organized fashion so that he could come back to the next week and start where he left off. He spent his evenings watching YouTube videos about how computers are built. He created charts to remind himself how everything should be put together, and he came to each class ready to work.
And then he rebuilt the computer. Along the way, he tested each of the components in a separate, functional computer to see if it would work. It reminded me of trying to figure out which Christmas light in a long strand was the one that was burnt out, causing the rest of the string to go dark. In the end Eli, with the help of the school board IT guy who happened to visit along the way, found the video card that was fried and had stopped the computer from working. They replaced the card with another one they salvaged from a different computer, and they fired up the machine. The look on Eli’s face when the old Windows 95 logo appeared on the screen was jubilant, something I hadn’t known was possible when I’d first met him. He had done it and he was proud.
The following is an excerpt from the book Reaching and Teaching Neurodivergent Learners: Strategies for Embracing Uniquely Talented Problem Solvers, by Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Senior Scientist at TERC, published November 14, 2023 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
The spring of grade 9 is a hard time to teach at Hillside. Most of the kids are just riding out the last semester of junior high. They have grown too big for the school and already have their eyes set on high school. That is when we first tried project-based learning. When we started PBL in the grade 9 Tech Ed class, which was taught once a week by a first-year teacher, we had signed out the computer lab for each class.
A boy named Eli sat slumped in his chair near the back of the lab, hoodie up over his head, waiting for the hour to be over. He rarely interacted with other students. Eli didn’t have an IPP, but he wasn’t doing particularly well at school. He was just getting by. While the other kids joked and flirted and tussled with one another, Eli withdrew deeper into his hoodie. If allowed to sleep through class, it seemed he would have been out cold in no time.
My initial conversations with Eli were met with monosyllabic responses and blank expressions as I asked him about project ideas and favorite hobbies. He didn’t seem to want to engage on any level. I showed him instructables.com, a site with a bunch of DIY projects meant to spark his imagination, but two class periods went by without a glimmer of interest. On the third week of class, the school janitor, Mr. Bruce, happened to be clearing out a few of the 15-year-old computers that were defunct and collecting dust in the corner of the lab. Eli poked his head out from under his hoodie. “What’re you doing with those?” he asked Mr. Bruce. I was startled at the sound of Eli’s gravelly voice. “There’s a warehouse down by the school board buildings full of old dead computers,” Mr. Bruce replied. “I’ll probably just bring ’em down there.”
Here, I should pause and say something about the Hillside school janitor, Mr. Bruce. He had been at the school for decades. A slight, jolly, and non-intimidating man, Mr. Bruce was beloved. His office on the ground floor of the school, with every speck of wall adorned in memorabilia from his favorite hockey team, was a sanctuary for many Hillside students. It was a place they could always go to hear a simple hockey story or joke to break up the stress of their day. Mr. Bruce was a friend to everyone in the school.
Eli sat up and asked Mr. Bruce, almost jokingly, if he could take one of the computers apart, likely anticipating the answer to be “no.” Mr. Bruce looked at me quickly and then responded with a wink, “Yeah, no one down there is gonna miss an old computer anyways.” And with that, a project was born.
Eli spent every minute of Tech Ed class, along with ample time during lunch and after school, taking apart that old computer and documenting each component. He cleaned and tightened everything he touched. He catalogued all the computer’s components using a system he had devised to track each piece, sorting them by envelopes so he wouldn’t lose anything along the way, and looking them up on the Internet to see what they were. At the end of each 55-minute period, he carefully gathered up all the loose pieces and stored them in an organized fashion so that he could come back to the next week and start where he left off. He spent his evenings watching YouTube videos about how computers are built. He created charts to remind himself how everything should be put together, and he came to each class ready to work.
And then he rebuilt the computer. Along the way, he tested each of the components in a separate, functional computer to see if it would work. It reminded me of trying to figure out which Christmas light in a long strand was the one that was burnt out, causing the rest of the string to go dark. In the end Eli, with the help of the school board IT guy who happened to visit along the way, found the video card that was fried and had stopped the computer from working. They replaced the card with another one they salvaged from a different computer, and they fired up the machine. The look on Eli’s face when the old Windows 95 logo appeared on the screen was jubilant, something I hadn’t known was possible when I’d first met him. He had done it and he was proud.
11/1/2025
AuthorJodi Asbell-Clarke is co-founder of EdGE at TERC, a research and development group exploring the intersection of STEM and neurodiversity. Her academic background includes an MA in Math, an MSc in Astrophysics, and a PhD in Education.
SummaryThis is the sixth blog post in a series of excerpts from Jodi Asbell-Clarke’s book, Reaching and Teaching Neurodivergent Learners: Strategies for Embracing Uniquely Talented Problem Solvers. It introduces Eli, who found pride through self-direction.
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