If children are the future, then it makes sense that the best ways to educate them are constantly evolving. Local educators are working hard to not only give children a proper education, but also challenge themselves to be progressive and find ways to innovate the process.
Upper Arlington Research and Design Lab
It’s been a year and a half since the Research and Design Lab began at Upper Arlington High School, but it may as well have been a decade considering its accomplishments so far.
The R&D Lab is a conceptual space that brings teachers and students together in order to brainstorm innovative approaches to learning. The project was funded by a generous donor, along with the UA Education Foundation and UAHS PTO.
The instructional leader for the project, Laura Moore, certainly sees it as a success. In fact, since its inception, the R&D Lab has already contributed to four remarkable projects.
The Global Classroom
“Instead of having academic experiences in isolation,” says Moore, “many (students) were energized about trying to think of ways to have more collaboration between courses, or to have more collaboration between the school and the outside world.”
Thus, the Global Classroom was born.
This year, through the R&D Lab’s brainstorming sessions and some committed teachers, the environmental science and business courses collaborated on a semester-long project. They researched how products travel from the ground to the shopping bag and used both environmental and business perspectives to explain their findings.
Student Help Desk
The Student Help Desk provides solutions to students with computer problems.
Since the transition to a one-to-one system, it has been difficult to keep up with student computer problems.
“Dr. Diane Kahle, who teaches computer science, put forth the idea of creating a student help desk,” says Moore. “The idea being that not only would it provide a service to our school community, but it would also give those students who are volunteering an opportunity to be able to develop real-world skills.”
The idea has been such a success that Kahle is looking into making it a class of its own.
Print Shop
“They had these beautiful printers and no mechanism to officially run it,” says Moore. “So the art department put forth a request to open up this print shop.”
The shop caters to everyone and even has its own graphic designer through an interning senior student.
Laura Moore leads a student trip to Chicago Ideas Week, the event that inspired UA Idea Day.
UA Idea Day
Perhaps the R&D Lab’s biggest success, UA Idea Day on Feb. 9 was inspired by a student trip to Chicago Ideas Week. These students also helped a great deal in planning the event, which included over 30 different speakers, more than 30 workshops and plenty of innovation.
“I’m just so optimistic about where we’re going to go,” says Moore. “The sky really is the limit.”
The Big Think
Grandview Heights teachers are also keeping up with the changing learning environment by participating in an annual educational symposium. The Big Think, formerly the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference, brings teachers from many local schools together to brainstorm innovation in education.
“Last year we rebranded it as the Big Think, where ‘everything is interesting,’ because we wanted to broaden the opportunity to innovate,” says Grandview Heights City Schools Chief Academic Officer and Big Think Conference Administrator Jamie Lusher.
Another reason for the rebrand was to draw in more collaborators and school districts. Though the conference included Hilliard City Schools, Grandview Heights City Schools and the Educational Service Center of Franklin County when it began 10 years ago, it has grown to include South-Western City Schools.
The Big Think Conference held in 2017 featured Michelle Gielan, founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research.
Of course, Grandview schools have been an important part of the conference from the start. Over the years, teachers, students and administrators have brought many innovative projects and ideas into their classrooms, which they often present at the conference. One especially successful project has been the classroom tower gardens.
“We have a really strong presence in project-based learning,” says Lusher. “We actually have tower gardens in all of our classrooms. We built them with the farm-to-school grant, so our students actually presented on how they developed and designed the community garden with the prototypes.”
Tower gardens aren’t the only impressive part of Grandview’s involvement in the Big Think. Grandview’s teachers have presented on many other topics, including 21st century skills and mindfulness, which has been a recurrent focus in both the classroom and the business world of late.
“I think that we, percentage-wise, have the highest number of presenters in the conference,” says Lusher, “which is really commendable for our staff because they’re doing some great things.”
This year, the Big Think Conference will be held Aug. 8-9 at Hilliard Bradley High School and will feature inspirational speaker John O’Leary. Educators can register at thebigthinkevent.org
Valerie Mauger is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at jwise@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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