Famous American...Puppets!

During the Month of March, our second grade students have been studying numerous Famous Americans including George Washington, Rosa Parks, Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller.  Students chose two of the subjects from the unit to research further.  Thanks to a grant from the Edgar and Eleanor and Shannon Foundation, second graders received materials to make puppet representations of their two research subjects.  Then students wrote scripts for the puppet subjects to interview one another.  As a final step in the project, students taped their puppet interviews.  These interviews will be shared with classmates and students in other grade levels as an interesting way to review the contributions of the Famous Americans. 

Baker-Butler teachers learning about Design Thinking at UVA

Today we had an amazing opportunity and experience to partner with the University of Virginia around design thinking.

As a school, we are learning more about design thinking (DT), which is a methodology for people-centered problem-solving. First popularized by IDEO and often centered around the d.school at Stanford University, design thinking is a creative process to solve problems through empathy.

Over the past few years, our school has been learning more about DT through a variety of sources. Two significant influences on our school have been the work of Mount Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta as well as Mary Cantwell. Both Mount Vernon (and Brett Jacobsen and Bo Adams in particular) and Mary have been exceptionally helpful in sharing ideas and resources with our school as we strive to learn more about DT.

Recently Baker-Butler has established a partnership with the University of Virginia to learn more about DT. We are working with Elgin Cleckley at the Architecture School and Jennie Chiu at the Curry School of Education to provide ongoing professional development for our teachers to learn about DT and to begin to imagine how to use it with BBES students.

Today we took the first step in this journey by taking a team of 8 teachers (Williams, Harman, Fagan, Eiden, Graybill, Crews, Wright, Roesch) to the Architecture School at UVA to participate in Professor Cleckley's Foundations in Design Thinking course. There our 8 teachers were matched with 8 groups of 4-6 UVA students, who modeled the DT process by interviewing our teachers and then offering feedback on ideas they generated. After class our team then met with Professors Cleckley and Chiu to reflect on the morning session as well as to answer specific questions. He also gave a tour of the A-School, including many innovative learning spaces. The afternoon was devoted to our BBES team reflecting on the next steps in this process for our team and our school.

We had a fantastic time today and our team is energized for our next steps. We are looking forward to our next meetings over the coming months with this new partnership at UVA, and we continue to be grateful for all of the people who have supported us in this journey so far.

Check out the pictures below of our day!

Touring the A-School

Outdoor learning spaces

A-School students using laser cutters

Part of the impressive woodshop and fab lab

Exploring new furniture and ideas

Baker-Butler teachers participating in DT sessions with UVA students

Baker-Butler teachers reflecting on the day as a team, researching DT, 

and making plans for our next steps

This is a fold down table that doubles as a display board when it's upright

These display boards pivot and turn so that both sides can be used