Teaching and Program Development
After graduation he went into teaching. His friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Ogden, found a small school in the Humboldt Park area that was in dire need of a mathematics teacher. The school was named Rafael Cancel Miranda High School . Bob was volunteering his time at the school besides teaching at DePaul.
Realizing there was a need for education at every level in the community, mainly located in and around the Humboldt Park area, Wayne helped organize a curriculum for adult education classes. This later evolved into college credit classes with Central YMCA Community College. The adult education program became known as Borinquena Campus. Both these programs were run by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. The math program became one of the strongest in the area with Dr. Ogden and Wayne.
After a year or so we needed to find additional space. Arrangements were made to purchase an old Walgreens photo processing facility that was located on Claremont Avenue, here in Chicago. This became the new educational facility and resource center for the community. A great deal of work went into that center to make it presentable and it was all done on a volunteer basis by the community.
Toward the second half of the 1970's Central YMCA was going through financial problems and eventually had to close its doors. Before closing though, Wayne had designed, implemented and directed what came to be known as a "Learner Center " at Borinquena Campus. The Learner Center serviced both the High School and College. It was the very first in the area and probably all of Chicago. The materials took years to write and eventually culminated in a book about mathematics.
After this book was release, Wayne started work on another book for the adult learner. It to was a book on mathematics that incorporated algorithmic thinking to solving problems.
Computer Development - A Curriculum
Around 1978-79 microcomputers made their debut. Actually, the term microcomputer was a misnomer because they were really microprocessors. Most had 16K (1K=1024 bytes; 1 byte = 1 character) of memory. Remember the TRS-80's, Commador and Atari systems?
Wayne purchased a TRS-80 system and tape backup so that students could learn how to program in Basic - a computer language developed at Dartmouth University. He also purchased some other software for writing and later, database development.
As time went by Wayne eventually invested in another disk based computer system called the Model II. It was classified as a business system because of its processor - a Motorola based chip - and the storage - 500K. That was a big deal back then. Later the hard disk made it debut and along came the unix1 operating system (actually a clone that was named zenix).
Having all this "sophisticated" equipment, Wayne decided to offer courses in computer programming for the students. Our's was the first school in Chicago to have a course for high school students that taught Unix, C language, Compiler Basic and a host of other computer related subjects. Classes were held at Wayne 's house.
The concept of networking was brought down to an affordable price so that the school could make an investment in a computer network. Languages could be taught, learning plans could be designed, student papers could be worked on from the computer room, and so forth. We had come a long way and it was a hard struggle.
In 1985 the High School was given an honor as being an exemplary school in the United States . We, who worked so hard to make that possible, felt that finally all our devotion, sweat and even tears, finally came to fruition. However, as quickly as it came, it was taken away by a man named Bennett, who was in charge of the Department of Education. Guess the Department of Education wasn't ready to give an exemplary school award to a Puerto Rican High School.
By the middle of the '80's Wayne had finished writing and copyrighted a computer program consisting of around 10,000 lines of code that he called Rainbow News. People were leaving messages, posting other information, etc. Wayne then had the idea to put this information to press. Rainbow News, the newspaper, was then created. You can go to the Chicago Historical Society to get a sneak peak of what it was about. The subhead for the paper read "The Paper Smart People Read."
Wayne appeared in Crain Chicago Business as well as other noteworthy publications.
The late '80's brought about the publication of Wayne 's second book.
In 1987 the Belmont-Cragin area suffered through another terrible flood. History will show that ten years later it was struck again with even heavier rains.
The start of the '90's Wayne used as his personal research and development period. The school and the programs had the blueprint for success and succeed they did.
In Conclusion
Now you can see that Wayne is a highly involved person who likes to get things done. Much of what you will see in this web site is not only about his involvement in various projects, but also his concern for his fellow human beings.
He is an accomplished teacher, author, software and network engineer, and community activist who has turned his skills toward fighting for what's right in our society. He deplores injustice and works to make it right.
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1. Unix is an operating system that was originally developed by two gentlemen working out of Bell Labs. The language "C" came into being because of their work. The most familiar and perhaps honorary accolade attributed to these gentlemen is the first program most people learn to write that says, "Hello World."
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