Baker-Butler Elementary School Administration's Blog: A visit with Pan Clothing & a new design challenge

On Friday our school hosted the founders of Pan Clothing, Jacky and Tanner. It was a great visit, and our students enjoyed learning more about them and their mission to eliminate illiteracy.

They are both seniors at Hampden-Sydney College, and they founded Pan to improve the lives of elementary students in Haiti. They sell clothing, and for each item they will provide 5 textbooks to students in Haiti.

Through this process our students also learned about Haiti, and they compared & contrasted their lives in Charlottesville with students their age in Haiti.

Students in our third grade (Ms. Fagan & Ms. Graybill) and fourth grade (Ms. Wright & Ms. Roesch) classes spent time interviewing Jacky & Tanner. This was part of the Discover phase, which is the first stage of the DEEPdt (Discover, Empathize, Experiment, Produce) design thinking process. The students interviewed Jacky & Tanner to try to determine their needs, what they needed for their company, and what students in Haiti needed. The students took notes on lots of post it notes, and then they used graphic organizers to sort, to classify, and to organize their thoughts in common themes.

The students had a great first visit with Pan Clothing, and we are looking forward to their next two visits over the coming two months. The goal will be for our students to move through all 4 phases of DEEPdt process. The next steps will for students to Empathize what the needs are of Pan Clothing, and finally for them to Experiment and Produce solutions for these needs.

Our students are excited to design for Pan and to help students in Haiti.

We'll continue to share updates from this exciting new design thinking challenge with Pan in the coming months.