Engineering A Better School
Recently, in my bioengineering course, we were having a lively discussion about “ideation” - thinking of novel, crazy, outside-the-box solutions to problems in the world we saw as urgent. As I watched my students come up with solutions to their problems - a color sensor for burnt toast, a pressure sensor to detect fouls on the soccer field, low-cost motion sensors to detect speeding cars - I was struck with a question: Why don’t we do this type of “engineering design” more of
Parts of Whole: Designing Systems that Support Great Schools
If you go into any school in America, you will find myriad programs and initiatives; be they academic, behavioral, administrative, or extracurricular. Proponents of systems-design theory argue that how well these different programs fit together to promote student achievement is the measure of a great school. In other words, in great schools, each part fits together to form a dynamic whole. To divorce curriculum and pedagogy from social-emotional learning, for instance, or tr