Activate curiosity

Engaging Learners with Design Thinking

How can we help our students develop as creative thinkers and problem solvers? This is a fundamental question and one that faculty at the Lyme School in New Hampshire were determined to answer. In early July, we worked with a core group of Lyme teachers and spent a week taking a deep dive into understanding the power design thinking and how it can be used across grade levels and content areas. During the course of our week together, the teachers participated in a wide variety of hands on design thinking activities, deepened thinking in their classrooms using visible thinking routines, and gained experience facilitating design thinking experiences with their students using a lab model.

One of the best outcomes was the opportunity to help teachers shift their thinking about their practice. In a reflective exercise during the workshop week, one teacher shared, “I used to think that I still needed to be “in charge” of the thinking process and that as a teacher, I needed to provide strict structure.  But now I think that it is perfectly ok to give myself and my students freedom to think and come up with creative solutions and different ways of thinking, that they can be in charge of their own thinking!”

Professional Learning at Holy Family Catholic School

Beth and Gary have recently had the pleasure of leading professional learning workshops with the faculty at Holy Family Catholic School in Arcadia, Wisconsin. After surveying teacher needs, we worked collaboratively with the administration to craft workshops that focused on ways to explore formative assessment and enhance literacy instruction across the content areas through the balanced, authentic and intentional use of technology. These sessions featured professional readings, peer dialogue, the use of thinking routines and hands-on experiences with technology tools.

Cultivating a Maker Mindset in Your Middle School (and Classroom)

A Maker Mindset embodies many things we value in a middle school: curiosity, reflection, empathy, empowerment and a growth mindset.  In this interactive presentation at ELMLE Amsterdam, Beth and Gary shared the process they facilitated at the American Embassy School – New Delhi which resulted in teachers and students embracing the maker movement and developing a maker mindset as a part of the school’s culture of thinking. This session was a mix of reflection, visioning, sharing of resources and Q&A in which attendees left with a pathway for facilitating maker based change in their school or classroom.

Moving to Inclusive Student Leadership

All students should have the opportunity to see themselves as leaders. Anchored in this core belief, Beth and Colleen Coady led a student-centered discussion-based session at ELMLE Amsterdam which left participants with new insights and ideas on how to expand opportunities for student leadership. Beth and Colleen shared their highly successful and empowering student leadership model that offers leadership opportunities for ALL students, teaches applicable leadership skills, gives students a voice, and creates a culture of stewardship and community building. Attendees left this session with an abundance of ideas to help their prepare students to meet the leadership challenges of a rapidly changing world.