Beyond STEM: St. Christopher's BUILD Program and the Art of Learning Through Doing

Peter Frank 00:00:02
Ed, welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:00:05
the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

Peter Frank 00:00:08
technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

Peter Frank 00:00:12
We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

Peter Frank 00:00:15
special guests from the Independent School community,

Peter Frank 00:00:17
and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Peter Frank 00:00:21
And now please welcome your host, Kristina llewellen, hello

Peter Frank 00:00:25
everyone,

Christina Lewellen 00:00:25
and welcome back to talking technology with

Christina Lewellen 00:00:27
Atlas. I'm Kristina llewellen, the president and CEO of the

Christina Lewellen 00:00:31
Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.

Bill Stites 00:00:34
And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Bill Stites 00:00:36
Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Bill Stites 00:00:39
Jersey, and

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:41
I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:43
and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:46
Virginia.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:46
Hello and Good Morning, guys. I have

Christina Lewellen 00:00:48
missed you, and I always look forward to seeing you each week.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:51
So how's everybody? How you doing? I'm doing

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:53
very well. That's good. It's smiley spring. It is

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:58
finally

Christina Lewellen 00:00:59
getting there, and Bill. We're gonna

Christina Lewellen 00:01:01
drop this pod in a while, so it'll be some time, but it was

Christina Lewellen 00:01:04
your birthday. It was can you tell everyone what your darling

Christina Lewellen 00:01:09
bromance gave you your BFF, Hiram? Oh, yes. What did Hiram

Christina Lewellen 00:01:15
get you for your birthday?

Bill Stites 00:01:16
Hiram sent me a melee weapon for the zombie

Bill Stites 00:01:23
apocalypse. It's about as long as my forearm has got multiple

Bill Stites 00:01:30
cutting surfaces as well as a nice sharp pointy end, because,

Bill Stites 00:01:35
as they say in Game of Thrones, sticking with the pointy end, I

Bill Stites 00:01:41
literally got this box. It looked like a small box of roses

Bill Stites 00:01:45
one might send their loved one. That's what it looked like. And

Bill Stites 00:01:48
it was sent from my loved one, and it was, in my mind, equal to

Bill Stites 00:01:53
a bouquet of roses. It was my new melee weapon of choice. My

Bill Stites 00:01:57
wife looked at it, and she's just simply said, Oh no, what

Bill Stites 00:02:02
did Hiram do? And I pulled it out, and I showed it to her, and

Bill Stites 00:02:07
she looked at me, and she said, What are you going to do with

Bill Stites 00:02:11
that? I'm going to sharpen it up, run around and pretend I'm

Bill Stites 00:02:15
in the zombie apocalypse in my backyard. I'm going to play like

Bill Stites 00:02:18
a big kid, and then when Hiram comes, we'll just act stuff out

Bill Stites 00:02:21
like we did when we were in the VR zombie at the last Atlas

Bill Stites 00:02:24
conference. You can't

Christina Lewellen 00:02:26
go wrong, Peter, producer, Peter, I think

Christina Lewellen 00:02:28
you need to make a little note that if the guys are fighting

Christina Lewellen 00:02:31
with weapons in the backyard, I think we're gonna need to record

Christina Lewellen 00:02:34
that. I mean, oh my god, y'all well, and

Bill Stites 00:02:38
we've got a picture, so I'm happy to share

Bill Stites 00:02:40
pictures. I'm sure Hiram can provide purchasing advice for

Bill Stites 00:02:43
those concerned about the zombie apocalypse and when it comes and

Bill Stites 00:02:47
what you need to do. This will never need to be reloaded. This

Bill Stites 00:02:50
will never need any type of spark to ignite anything. This

Bill Stites 00:02:54
is the perfect weapon. And

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:56
as Nicole mentioned, World War Z is the

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:59
book to read 100%

Christina Lewellen 00:03:02
is it a toy or is it a real weapon? Oh,

Bill Stites 00:03:05
no, no. No, no. It's legitimately forged steel.

Bill Stites 00:03:11
No. Chrissy, check your text messages because you've got a

Bill Stites 00:03:14
picture of it in your phone. I thought it was

Christina Lewellen 00:03:17
a toy. I mean, it's kind of colorful.

Christina Lewellen 00:03:19
Jen, you sent a weapon in the mail to Bill. What is wrong with

Christina Lewellen 00:03:23
you?

Bill Stites 00:03:24
Oh, and it came in a zombie box. It was designed

Bill Stites 00:03:27
for zombie aficionados.

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:30
This is out of control, it is, but you brought

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:33
it up. It's about as close as to Lobo as you could get. That's

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:36
what I was thinking.

Christina Lewellen 00:03:38
For all of you curious listeners, we will

Christina Lewellen 00:03:41
put a link in the show notes to the picture that was dropped in

Christina Lewellen 00:03:45
our group chat a few days ago. I'm not sure how I feel about

Christina Lewellen 00:03:48
mailing weapons to people, but Bill Happy Birthday anyway.

Bill Stites 00:03:52
Thank you very much. I will tell you side note

Bill Stites 00:03:55
for a wedding gift. I did get a potato cannon from one of my

Bill Stites 00:03:58
groomsmen, so it's right in line with the type of gifts I get.

Bill Stites 00:04:02
It's a perfect segue. It is, and that came from a friend called

Bill Stites 00:04:06
Evil Paul. That's his name, and my wife loves him, as she does

Bill Stites 00:04:10
with Hiram.

Christina Lewellen 00:04:11
Okay, y'all bill is fired up today. I mean

Christina Lewellen 00:04:14
potato cannons, and do not bring a potato cannon to the Atlas

Christina Lewellen 00:04:19
conference. Okay, I don't have enough insurance for that. All

Christina Lewellen 00:04:23
right, so here we are today, recording another fiery podcast,

Christina Lewellen 00:04:28
and we're really excited because we've been wanting to do this

Christina Lewellen 00:04:30
for a while. Some of you who have been listening to us for a

Christina Lewellen 00:04:33
bit know that on occasion, Hiram will talk to us about his stem

Christina Lewellen 00:04:37
and innovation program at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Christina Lewellen 00:04:41
Virginia. He refers to it as the build program. And what I think

Christina Lewellen 00:04:45
is really cool is that we've decided to actually talk about

Christina Lewellen 00:04:48
that program. We've talked about some of MKA stuff with Bill and

Christina Lewellen 00:04:52
his team before, so now we're going to spend some time on

Christina Lewellen 00:04:54
Hiram school with some of Hiram colleagues. So Hiram, I'm going

Christina Lewellen 00:04:58
to actually give you just a second. To to tell us a little

Christina Lewellen 00:05:01
bit about what build stands for, and you've got a couple of

Christina Lewellen 00:05:05
friends with you there in the office, so please introduce us

Christina Lewellen 00:05:08
to your colleagues.

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:09
Thank you so much, Kristina, and we're very excited

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:11
to showcase the build program. I think it's fair to say, when the

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:16
acronym build was developed, we were trying to really brand STEM

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:21
or STEAM or stream, because it went through multiple

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:24
iterations, yeah, into something that was very, very meaningful

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:28
for our community. We are an all boys school, J, K to 12, and so

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:34
we came up with the concept of build, which stands for boys

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:38
using innovation to learn and design. And since we also belong

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:43
to the international Boys School coalition, it really resonated

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:47
very well with that community. And one of our very own Ty

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:51
Campbell at the Gilman school is also part of the ibsc. As a

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:57
result, we came up with the bill program for branding purposes.

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:00
Really focused a great deal on how to execute this concept

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:05
across the lower the middle and the upper schools. And as a

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:10
result, I've brought in with us my colleagues from each of the

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:13
divisions, and our upper school person is also the build

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:17
coordinator across all of the curricular strands, and we're

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:21
all here to showcase and share what we've encountered and

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:24
learned that's really cool. I'll start with our lower school. So

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:28
we have Gayle Warren in our lower school. Good

Gail Warren 00:06:31
morning. I had the pleasure of working with JK

Gail Warren 00:06:35
through fifth grade boys and teachers. We have a unique

Gail Warren 00:06:38
approach to our build program in the Lower School. We have a

Gail Warren 00:06:43
Learning Commons model. I can speak more to that a little bit

Gail Warren 00:06:47
later, but it's definitely a wonderful program that we

Gail Warren 00:06:50
collaborate with our librarians, and we have instructional techs

Gail Warren 00:06:54
as well. Yeah.

Unknown 00:06:55
David Shin, in the middle school, hi Kristina.

David Shin 00:06:58
Hi Bill. Good morning. Nice to meet you. My

David Shin 00:07:00
name is David Chen. I teach in the middle school. I'm a science

David Shin 00:07:03
teacher here at St Christopher, nice

Jim Guion 00:07:06
to meet you, too. Hi. Kristina bill, I am Jim Guyon. I

Jim Guion 00:07:10
am the JK 12 build coordinator, Upper School teacher and

Jim Guion 00:07:14
instructional technologist. I teach few classes in the Upper

Jim Guion 00:07:18
School, and I work with teachers in the Upper School and across

Jim Guion 00:07:21
all the divisions to help integrate our build program

Jim Guion 00:07:24
across the curriculum.

Hiram Cuevas 00:07:25
Awesome and Christina, one of the

Hiram Cuevas 00:07:27
interesting things is, from a departmental perspective, it's

Hiram Cuevas 00:07:30
not in a computer department. It's actually incorporated in

Hiram Cuevas 00:07:35
the arts department as part of our overall JK through 12 model.

Hiram Cuevas 00:07:41
That's really

Christina Lewellen 00:07:42
cool. So you guys are obviously stringing

Christina Lewellen 00:07:45
this all the way through the life cycle of your students,

Christina Lewellen 00:07:49
right? That you start at the Lower School, and you have a way

Christina Lewellen 00:07:52
that this applies to them, and then to middle and then to high

Christina Lewellen 00:07:55
school. Tell me the origin of build, what that kind of stands

Christina Lewellen 00:07:59
for, and what has it come to mean? How long have you guys

Christina Lewellen 00:08:01
been doing it? Build

Jim Guion 00:08:03
actually stands for boys using innovation to learn

Jim Guion 00:08:06
and design. And like everything we do here at St Christopher's,

Jim Guion 00:08:09
our build program is informed by what we know about how boys

Jim Guion 00:08:12
learn. And so it's really based on the idea that we are trying

Jim Guion 00:08:17
to spark boys sense of curiosity and wonder. We know that boys

Jim Guion 00:08:21
learn by doing, and so our project across the curriculum,

Jim Guion 00:08:25
in all levels, is based on skills, space, Project centered.

Jim Guion 00:08:30
It incorporates best practices for what we know about boys,

Jim Guion 00:08:32
which is project based, learning, technology infused,

Jim Guion 00:08:35
applications, competition and hands on experiences. And so

Jim Guion 00:08:38
we're trying to bring that to our boys right across the

Jim Guion 00:08:41
curriculum, by getting their hands dirty, by actually getting

Jim Guion 00:08:44
them to build things and make things and think about how to

Jim Guion 00:08:47
design things. There's a lot of iteration. There's a lot of just

Jim Guion 00:08:52
actually doing things and being okay with failure. Having

Christina Lewellen 00:08:56
this program across all levels had to be

Christina Lewellen 00:08:59
pretty intentional, and I know we'll get into some of the

Christina Lewellen 00:09:01
specifics on that. But was this something that you had all

Christina Lewellen 00:09:04
buttoned up with a bow and said, Hey, here's our new build

Christina Lewellen 00:09:07
program, and went out to your community and your teachers with

Christina Lewellen 00:09:11
it all at once, or was it something that sort of grew over

Christina Lewellen 00:09:13
time?

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:14
Well, we were always interested in developing

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:16
a STEM program and finding opportunities for our boys to

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:20
engage in design thinking. And the challenge that we had is we

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:24
kept seeing this particular niche go into several

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:29
iterations. You had steam, you had stream, you had stem, and at

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:34
one point, the head of our upper school said, Why don't they just

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:37
call it school? Because they were trying to incorporate so

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:41
many different things that we needed to really hone in on what

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:46
we wanted to do. Make sure it was mission driven. Make sure it

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:49
satisfied how boys learn best, and the genesis of build

Hiram Cuevas 00:09:54
occurred. So

Christina Lewellen 00:09:56
now, can you guys talk to me a little bit

Christina Lewellen 00:09:58
about how it. This plays out in each of those divisions, because

Christina Lewellen 00:10:03
obviously you have the representation there. Let's

Christina Lewellen 00:10:05
start with the Lower School, with Gayle. How do you guys fly

Christina Lewellen 00:10:10
the build concept to your lower school? So I feel like

Gail Warren 00:10:14
ours is a really organic approach to the build

Gail Warren 00:10:17
program. We had the Learning Commons model, which essentially

Gail Warren 00:10:21
is the librarians and the technology instructional

Gail Warren 00:10:25
technologists in the Lower School, we meet with every grade

Gail Warren 00:10:28
level once a month, and so we are hoping that we're not

Gail Warren 00:10:33
teaching anything in isolation. We don't want it to be skill

Gail Warren 00:10:36
driven in that aspect, we actually talk to them about what

Gail Warren 00:10:39
their curricular needs are, and we build our build program from

Gail Warren 00:10:44
that, for instance, in kindergarten, they are studying

Gail Warren 00:10:47
communities and habitats, and they may be building igloos. And

Gail Warren 00:10:52
fifth grade, they're learning about Ancient Greece. And so we

Gail Warren 00:10:57
have the boys develop a breakout room, and we dress at our

Gail Warren 00:11:00
costumes, and we build Aqua Dots and catapults competitions. So

Gail Warren 00:11:04
we do all kinds of things with our teachers, and it's really

Gail Warren 00:11:07
been an awesome thing. It's been at least a decade in the making

Gail Warren 00:11:12
as far as the Learning Commons, and it has definitely grown.

Gail Warren 00:11:15
It's more like I said begin with. It's more organic, and

Gail Warren 00:11:19
every year, I feel like we add and morph and evolve, which has

Gail Warren 00:11:24
been really a great process to be a part of, really fosters

Gail Warren 00:11:28
curiosity with the boys. A lot of it's project based, which is

Gail Warren 00:11:33
just incredible. Some of the things that the boys come up

Gail Warren 00:11:35
with, and I think that really has helped. As far as our

Gail Warren 00:11:39
curriculum overall, we're seeing such growth as far as the

Gail Warren 00:11:44
application process with other subject areas we work with

Gail Warren 00:11:48
everything from art to social studies and history and science

Gail Warren 00:11:53
foreign world languages that we have. We just did a program last

Gail Warren 00:11:56
night. It was our Saint celebrate the world. And there

Gail Warren 00:11:59
were lots of components of build within that process where we

Gail Warren 00:12:02
invite community members in parents and the boys get to

Gail Warren 00:12:07
actually showcase them and their families what their heritage is.

Gail Warren 00:12:11
And so it's an awesome process to see

David Shin 00:12:14
Hi again. This is David. I'm really encouraged,

David Shin 00:12:18
and I think Jim and Gayle and Hiram can agree to this, that

David Shin 00:12:21
COVID Or no COVID, zoom or no zoom, the idea of curiosity and

David Shin 00:12:27
wonder has not died. And I'm so optimistic that whether it's a

David Shin 00:12:33
boy school or a girl school or CO ed school, like the idea that

David Shin 00:12:37
we really have amazing kids who wonder and who are curious about

David Shin 00:12:42
things is really cool. And I think schools should really

David Shin 00:12:46
foster that and encourage that, and love that. In the middle

David Shin 00:12:50
school, the idea of tackling a problem through a project, and I

David Shin 00:12:55
guess you have to grade it, because there's a report card,

David Shin 00:12:58
so there's part of that too. But in the science department, we

David Shin 00:13:01
have really low tech stuff, like we drop a raw egg off of our

David Shin 00:13:06
second floor balcony and the third floor balcony and, Oh man,

David Shin 00:13:10
it's like, so low budget, and it's still so so much fun. And

David Shin 00:13:15
we still calculate kinetic energy, potential, energy,

David Shin 00:13:19
force, velocity, acceleration, really, really neat, like

David Shin 00:13:23
science variables. And then we also use some high tech stuff,

David Shin 00:13:28
like computer assisted design software through some a company

David Shin 00:13:32
called white box, in the beginning of the year, we design

David Shin 00:13:35
bridges, and you get first place if your bridge is the lightest

David Shin 00:13:40
and carry the most weight. So we do a competition using those

David Shin 00:13:45
bridges. So we go kind of from high tech to low tech, and the

David Shin 00:13:51
theme of curiosity and competition and just the love of

David Shin 00:13:56
like, I wonder, what happens if I rip this parachute in the

David Shin 00:13:59
middle? You know, is it going to go faster straighter? What's the

David Shin 00:14:02
physics behind this? So I love that part of our curriculum. My

David Shin 00:14:06
least favorite part is like, I still have to grade them. But

David Shin 00:14:10
beyond that, they're still really happy if their egg drops

David Shin 00:14:13
without cracking. So I love that part. Hi. This

Unknown 00:14:17
is Jim in

Jim Guion 00:14:18
the Upper School. This is just my second year

Jim Guion 00:14:21
here. So over the last two years, the build program in the

Jim Guion 00:14:24
Upper School has incorporated largely Well, every ninth grader

Jim Guion 00:14:28
goes through my classroom, they get essentially a quarter of

Jim Guion 00:14:31
instruction in the build Lab, which is basically an

Jim Guion 00:14:34
introduction to all of the tools that we have there, which is

Jim Guion 00:14:37
everything from just basic build tools like screwdrivers and

Jim Guion 00:14:40
hammers, and we also have 3d printers and laser cutters and a

Jim Guion 00:14:43
lot of different tools, sewing machines. We have a kitchen, a

Jim Guion 00:14:46
little bit everything, and I try to get the kids hands on every

Jim Guion 00:14:49
tool over the course of their time with me. In addition to

Jim Guion 00:14:52
that, we want to give them an introduction to sort of a

Jim Guion 00:14:55
structured problem solving method that they can use just

Jim Guion 00:14:58
across their lives. But in this classroom specifically, and for

Jim Guion 00:15:02
us, that's the design thinking model. And so we try to

Jim Guion 00:15:04
incorporate that. I try to teach them that through the projects

Jim Guion 00:15:07
that we're doing, just get them through to go through a

Jim Guion 00:15:10
structured process, to solve problems, working their way

Jim Guion 00:15:12
through what is an iterative process, one that has failure

Jim Guion 00:15:16
built into the model, because particularly our high school

Jim Guion 00:15:19
kids don't have a lot of opportunities in their academic

Jim Guion 00:15:22
life to fail being able to do something that the process is

Jim Guion 00:15:26
the point. Yes, of course, we want there to be a thing at the

Jim Guion 00:15:29
end, but how you get there is more important than necessarily

Jim Guion 00:15:32
what's at the end. So that's a big part of what we do. And so I

Jim Guion 00:15:35
do that in that ninth grade class. I get every single ninth

Jim Guion 00:15:38
grade I also have an elective that's open to anyone, and then

Jim Guion 00:15:41
a good part of my day is just being in that lab and being a

Jim Guion 00:15:44
resource for students who have other projects in other areas

Jim Guion 00:15:49
that involve making a poster or making a model or doing

Jim Guion 00:15:52
something else, and being a resource in that room for that

Jim Guion 00:15:55
opportunity. We're at the point now, though, where I'm finding I

Jim Guion 00:15:58
have now students that have been through the program since Lower

Jim Guion 00:16:02
School, and so some of those introductory skills are becoming

Jim Guion 00:16:06
less and less important. And so what we're thinking about now

Jim Guion 00:16:09
is, how does that program morph into something that's different?

Jim Guion 00:16:11
How do we use our time better? How do we be a better resource

Jim Guion 00:16:15
for the kids? Because I'm not having to teach, here's how you

Jim Guion 00:16:17
use a 3d printer. I'm not having to teach, here's how you use a

Jim Guion 00:16:20
CAD program. They've already seen that, and they've heard

Jim Guion 00:16:23
some of these ideas of how design thinking works. And so

Jim Guion 00:16:26
how do we build on what we've already done? And so that's

Jim Guion 00:16:29
where we're at. Now,

Bill Stites 00:16:30
Jim, I want to dig in on something because you

Bill Stites 00:16:33
mentioned something earlier. You kind of just expanded on it

Bill Stites 00:16:35
there, and it's something that I'm very intrigued by, and I've

Bill Stites 00:16:40
tried to talk to as many people about what it means to them, and

Bill Stites 00:16:43
that has to do with the idea of being okay or embracing failure

Bill Stites 00:16:49
as something that you can learn from how do you have those

Bill Stites 00:16:53
conversations with the students? How do you have those

Bill Stites 00:16:56
conversations with the teaching faculty there, in terms of using

Bill Stites 00:17:01
failure as a teaching tool, as a method for learning and growing.

Bill Stites 00:17:06
From what do those conversations look like?

Jim Guion 00:17:08
So with students, those conversations are very

Jim Guion 00:17:10
often you seem like you're paralyzed here. What is your

Jim Guion 00:17:14
concern? Why is it difficult to start? Why can we not get moving

Jim Guion 00:17:17
forward? And a lot of times, if you can tease out where that's

Jim Guion 00:17:20
coming from is it is a genuine fear of failure. The idea that

Jim Guion 00:17:24
your first draft has to be a perfect draft is really powerful

Jim Guion 00:17:26
with a lot of our kids, many of whom consider themselves to be

Jim Guion 00:17:30
and by all accounts, are high performing students. And so

Jim Guion 00:17:33
being able to just say, look, it is okay. It's a draft. It's

Jim Guion 00:17:36
supposed to be a draft. In fact, if you did it right the first

Jim Guion 00:17:39
time, what would you learn from it? You'd know only what you

Jim Guion 00:17:41
know now. And so being able to sort of divorce that from what

Jim Guion 00:17:46
is traditionally a writing assignment or a math assignment,

Jim Guion 00:17:50
being able to divorce that and put it together with building a

Jim Guion 00:17:52
bridge or designing the ultimate desk organizer, being able to

Jim Guion 00:17:57
divorce that from what's a traditional sort of academic

Jim Guion 00:18:00
goal, and then say, Look, do you know if this is going to work?

Jim Guion 00:18:03
No, we'll try it. And then if it doesn't, then you know something

Jim Guion 00:18:06
you didn't know before you know what doesn't work. There's a

Jim Guion 00:18:09
great quote by I think it's Edison. I haven't failed. I've

Jim Guion 00:18:11
learned 10,000 ways it doesn't work. I think that's just

Jim Guion 00:18:14
fabulous, and I use it a lot. The only way to learn is to try

Jim Guion 00:18:17
something, have it not work, and then figure out how it can and

Jim Guion 00:18:21
so how I bring that to the teachers is the idea is, look,

Jim Guion 00:18:25
in this project, how many drafts are you doing? Are they all

Jim Guion 00:18:27
graded? How much feedback are they getting? And a lot of our

Jim Guion 00:18:30
teachers are already doing that. But putting that in terms of

Jim Guion 00:18:33
explicitly, in terms of a methodology for solving a

Jim Guion 00:18:36
problem, put it in terms in a structured way to go about

Jim Guion 00:18:39
getting to a goal with multiple iterations, I think it just

Jim Guion 00:18:42
helps reframe a lot of what they're already doing. Really.

Jim Guion 00:18:44
The

Bill Stites 00:18:45
other question that I have for that is something for

Bill Stites 00:18:48
all three of you. And Gayle, you kind of mentioned it with

Bill Stites 00:18:51
regards to the Learning Commons, in terms of going in and working

Bill Stites 00:18:54
with the classroom teachers. And Jim, you talked about it from

Bill Stites 00:18:58
the science perspective. And the egg drop is actually something

Bill Stites 00:19:01
we do, not at quite the technical level that I think you

Bill Stites 00:19:04
might be doing, but we do that with our third graders in terms

Bill Stites 00:19:07
of introducing those concepts. Jim, you said you have the kids

Bill Stites 00:19:10
for a quarter in the ninth grade. What does this look like

Bill Stites 00:19:14
in the context of, how does this get into the classroom, whether

Bill Stites 00:19:19
it's at the lower the middle or the upper school, are they

Bill Stites 00:19:22
pulled out classes? You've got them for a quarter to introduce

Bill Stites 00:19:25
it. At the lower school, you know, what does that look like?

Bill Stites 00:19:28
And at the middle school, what does that look like? Because in

Bill Stites 00:19:30
a lot of these cases, we'll hear about schools that are putting

Bill Stites 00:19:33
together like a maker space, or they've got stem but it's

Bill Stites 00:19:37
generally done in isolation. It's pulled out. It's a set

Bill Stites 00:19:40
class that really doesn't connect. What does that look

Bill Stites 00:19:43
like across the different divisional levels?

Gail Warren 00:19:46
Well, in the Lower School, it's not a pull out

Gail Warren 00:19:48
program at all. Like I said, we meet with each grade level once

Gail Warren 00:19:52
a month to talk about where they are in their curriculum, and we

Gail Warren 00:19:56
actually push into the classroom. We are a partner

Gail Warren 00:19:59
with. Teacher quite often. The first time we do it, it's really

Gail Warren 00:20:03
us modeling it for the teacher as well as for the boys that

Gail Warren 00:20:06
we're working with. But we are definitely in the classrooms at

Gail Warren 00:20:11
first, some teachers are a little leery about it, but they

Gail Warren 00:20:14
are quick to just love it and get right on board with us.

Christina Lewellen 00:20:19
That's a question that I had for you is

Christina Lewellen 00:20:21
about that rollout, that change management, tell me again, how

Christina Lewellen 00:20:24
long you guys have been doing this in a really, like,

Christina Lewellen 00:20:26
formalized way, and was the teacher piece of it harder in

Christina Lewellen 00:20:30
the beginning, easier now, because it's a part of the

Christina Lewellen 00:20:33
culture, like, how did you guys manage that?

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:35
So in many instances, it's similar to the

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:38
computer lab model that we experienced back in the day

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:42
where we would interface with the teacher, say, what exactly

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:45
are you trying to get done in the classroom? So we had a

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:48
little bit of that already in place with that model, and this

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:52
married along very easily to get to that next stage, because this

Hiram Cuevas 00:20:57
was ownership by the teacher. It wasn't driven by Bill, it wasn't

Hiram Cuevas 00:21:03
driven by the computer teacher or the computer lab. It was

Hiram Cuevas 00:21:06
driven by the curriculum and the needs of the individual

Hiram Cuevas 00:21:09
teachers. So there was already good buy in going into the

Hiram Cuevas 00:21:12
project, and we've been doing this now for just over 10 years.

Hiram Cuevas 00:21:16
Bill

David Shin 00:21:16
kind of going back to the idea of failure. I coach

David Shin 00:21:19
tennis here, and if you ask anyone at our school, who do you

David Shin 00:21:24
think is like, the least athletic person on campus, I

David Shin 00:21:28
would probably say, like, David shins up there, like, in the top

David Shin 00:21:31
three, like, for sure. So, like, I'm probably, like, the last

David Shin 00:21:35
person you would want on your team. So Hiram,

Christina Lewellen 00:21:38
do not give him a weapon, please. Yeah.

David Shin 00:21:42
No, you don't want me with a machete. What I

David Shin 00:21:45
realized when I'm coaching tennis is that it's a really,

David Shin 00:21:49
really perfect example of when you miss hit something, and you

David Shin 00:21:54
lose a point, you feel that failure, but you know that the

David Shin 00:21:58
next ball is coming, the next points come in. So I value this

David Shin 00:22:02
idea of failure so much, so I think it goes along with

David Shin 00:22:06
athletics, and the very little I understand about athletics that

David Shin 00:22:10
I love so much, that you got the next ball, the next point, the

David Shin 00:22:14
next serve to do, and you just keep rolling. And that I think

David Shin 00:22:19
really works well with a program like build or like STEM or

David Shin 00:22:23
STEAM, whatever you call it, in the classroom, because you're

David Shin 00:22:26
not playing basketball inside the classroom, but you could

David Shin 00:22:28
build a bridge in a science room and have that be very relevant.

David Shin 00:22:32
And you can see that just because you broke part of your

David Shin 00:22:36
bridge does not mean that you're a failure and that your parents

David Shin 00:22:40
don't love you, you still can do what you can to either fix that

David Shin 00:22:45
problem or just start over. And it's no big deal. It's just

David Shin 00:22:47
sticks and glue. So it's really that idea of, I'm not scared to

David Shin 00:22:53
fail. If I get an A minus versus an A, life will go on and we're

David Shin 00:22:58
gonna be just fine. And I think build and stem or whatever you

David Shin 00:23:02
call it, is just a perfect tool to get that very important

David Shin 00:23:07
lesson in life that failure is good and good for growth and is

David Shin 00:23:11
part of learning. So how do we get the teachers more involved

David Shin 00:23:16
and more buying in? I think the idea of failure is such a big

David Shin 00:23:19
part of education now that it's not something we have to win

David Shin 00:23:23
people over, just like we know the importance of athletics is.

David Shin 00:23:27
I mean, we don't have to convince people to play

David Shin 00:23:29
basketball. People play basketball. It's a very popular

David Shin 00:23:32
thing to do. I think people and teachers make that correlation

David Shin 00:23:36
really well nowadays, that part of learning is failing, and that

David Shin 00:23:40
building something or designing something's a great way to get

David Shin 00:23:44
to that part of education.

Christina Lewellen 00:23:46
If I could just ask one final high level

Christina Lewellen 00:23:49
question on the failure topic, my co hosts know that I'm a big

Christina Lewellen 00:23:54
fan of Scott Galloway, and he's a business professor and an

Christina Lewellen 00:23:58
entrepreneur and a podcast host, Scott Galloway talks lately a

Christina Lewellen 00:24:02
lot about young men in our country, and you obviously have

Christina Lewellen 00:24:07
as an all boys school are raising and educating young men

Christina Lewellen 00:24:11
as they head out into adulthood, and this topic of failure

Christina Lewellen 00:24:15
specific to boys and young men, I'm Just curious if, in

Christina Lewellen 00:24:21
particular, has your team ever had conversations about that?

Christina Lewellen 00:24:25
Because obviously, failure is a part of innovation, regardless

Christina Lewellen 00:24:28
of gender. But I think that just stopping down and recognizing

Christina Lewellen 00:24:31
that the kind of tough guy image of young men, it's almost as if,

Christina Lewellen 00:24:37
in some ways, we're breaking the mold of them perceiving that

Christina Lewellen 00:24:40
they shouldn't fail, or that they're not allowed to fail,

Christina Lewellen 00:24:43
like the whole you're not allowed to cry thing. I'm just

Christina Lewellen 00:24:45
curious if you guys have had conversations about that,

Christina Lewellen 00:24:47
because I would imagine that creating a safe culture of

Christina Lewellen 00:24:51
failure, it's not just that you're creating a failure

Christina Lewellen 00:24:54
culture. You're creating a safe space to fail. And I'm just

Christina Lewellen 00:24:58
curious if you have any thoughts. Us about that specific

Christina Lewellen 00:25:01
to boys and young men.

Jim Guion 00:25:03
I've had those explicit conversations with boys

Jim Guion 00:25:06
in my classroom because part of being okay with yourself failing

Jim Guion 00:25:09
is understanding that you have to have empathy for other

Jim Guion 00:25:12
people's failings as well. And so I've had those explicit

Jim Guion 00:25:16
conversations where we're in a group, boys love to joke with

Jim Guion 00:25:19
each other, and there is a line where that crosses from simply

Jim Guion 00:25:22
joking into something else, and so that line in my classroom,

Jim Guion 00:25:25
when we start to approach that line, those conversations happen

Jim Guion 00:25:28
right away that yes, what he did didn't work. It may have turned

Jim Guion 00:25:33
out funny, but if we're not all laughing together, then we're

Jim Guion 00:25:35
doing it wrong, right? We are all going to come to a point

Jim Guion 00:25:38
where we have hit something that we don't yet know how to do.

Jim Guion 00:25:41
That's what we're trying to do. That's what we're getting. We

Jim Guion 00:25:44
are stretching ourselves to a point where you're not going to

Jim Guion 00:25:48
know how to do it right the first time, and if you're not,

Jim Guion 00:25:50
you're not reaching far enough. And so those conversations

Jim Guion 00:25:53
explicitly happen in my classroom, and I'm sure in

Jim Guion 00:25:55
everyone else's

Gail Warren 00:25:56
I can speak to the Lower School, we also have those

Gail Warren 00:25:59
conversations. You know, our boys can be anywhere from four

Gail Warren 00:26:02
to 11, and that's actually part of the process. When we talk

Gail Warren 00:26:06
about a build project and we're working on something, we have

Gail Warren 00:26:10
something called our core values in the Lower School, and we

Gail Warren 00:26:13
adhere, as Jim mentioned, to like the kindness piece of it,

Gail Warren 00:26:16
not just your failure, but your partner. It's a collaborative

Gail Warren 00:26:20
model. We're really intentional about talking about that, that

Gail Warren 00:26:25
the first time you try something, it's probably not

Gail Warren 00:26:27
going to work, but that's what scientists do all the time. And

Gail Warren 00:26:30
so we try, try again. It's worked very well. I feel like

Gail Warren 00:26:33
we're so boy centered. I always say to my friends around town,

Gail Warren 00:26:38
we do boys. Well, we know boys, and we try to make that a boy

Gail Warren 00:26:43
centered environment, and it's safe to fail. It's good to take

Gail Warren 00:26:46
a risk there.

David Shin 00:26:48
So Kristina, we talk about masculinity a lot at our

David Shin 00:26:51
school, obviously, because it's a boy school, and the guy that

David Shin 00:26:54
came by to Richmond last week was Richard Reeves. I don't know

David Shin 00:26:58
if you've ever read any of his books, but he talks a lot about

David Shin 00:27:01
this kind of like masculinity and how boys are not doing well.

David Shin 00:27:05
There's higher rates of suicide, higher rates of mental issues.

David Shin 00:27:09
And I do a lot of research around international boy school

David Shin 00:27:13
coalition. And just recently, we had a conversation with several

David Shin 00:27:17
coaches around the world about how athletics programs or being

David Shin 00:27:23
in a team environment and then not doing well or losing is just

David Shin 00:27:28
the right place and time for coaches to intervene. So rather

David Shin 00:27:33
than looking at the typical like boy spaces in the locker room

David Shin 00:27:37
where you have terrible jokes or whatever, that really offend a

David Shin 00:27:41
real positive part of athletics, or anytime you're in a team and

David Shin 00:27:46
you fail, is that it puts you in a safe but vulnerable place. And

David Shin 00:27:51
it is the place where you have those guards down and you can

David Shin 00:27:56
talk to them like a human being and really have an effect on

David Shin 00:28:00
really, the rest of your life, not just a little point that you

David Shin 00:28:03
just missed. So I love having those moments with kids,

David Shin 00:28:07
especially in the Middle School, where they are making decisions

David Shin 00:28:11
about the rest of their lives, just about their character and

David Shin 00:28:15
who they're going to be and who they want to be, and who they

David Shin 00:28:18
believe that other people are seeing them as and using those

David Shin 00:28:21
moments as times where we can really make changes in their

David Shin 00:28:25
lives. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:28:26
that certainly stretches beyond your

Christina Lewellen 00:28:29
traditional STEM program. So forgive me the question, but I'm

Christina Lewellen 00:28:33
the only non educator on this call at the moment, and so I'm

Christina Lewellen 00:28:38
curious, what is a Learning Commons is that well known?

Christina Lewellen 00:28:42
Like, if I were a teacher, would I know what that is? I

Gail Warren 00:28:46
feel like it's a relatively new when I say that

Gail Warren 00:28:49
ours has been in place a little over a decade, and we were one

Gail Warren 00:28:52
of the first pioneers of that, and it was the idea of not

Gail Warren 00:28:56
teaching tech skills or media skills or research skills in

Gail Warren 00:29:01
isolation. And so it was adopted by our lower school. At first,

Gail Warren 00:29:08
our administration had to kind of say, we're going to go to

Gail Warren 00:29:10
this model. And we do our librarians and the other

Gail Warren 00:29:15
instructional technologist and I, we work together as partners.

Gail Warren 00:29:19
We're always going into a classroom, and the librarian may

Gail Warren 00:29:23
be more focused on the research part of it, and I may be helping

Gail Warren 00:29:27
boys decide what tool is the best tool for their presentation

Gail Warren 00:29:31
or their project, or their build project. And so I really love

Gail Warren 00:29:35
the model before coming here, I haven't used it before, but I

Gail Warren 00:29:39
really feel like it's a very strong model. It promotes

Gail Warren 00:29:43
collaboration, not just amongst the boys, but the teachers as

Gail Warren 00:29:47
well. They work collaboratively with us and with our grade

Gail Warren 00:29:50
level. It's just amazing. And Kristina,

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:53
it shows also the importance of having your

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:56
librarians involved with the tech department. Yeah. Because

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:00
they have so many skills and so much knowledge about what is

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:04
needed also in the classroom, that it's a great marriage

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:08
between the instructional technologists and also the

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:10
librarians. Our librarians actually attend our tech

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:14
meetings, so that they are completely aware of what's going

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:17
on across the school. And all of a sudden we find that the cross

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:21
pollination has really enhanced our conversations, that we're

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:24
actually after the same things. So it has built a great deal of

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:29
trust and a great deal of respect between the two

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:31
departments. It's

Bill Stites 00:30:33
a model that we've had here at MKA since we

Bill Stites 00:30:36
launched our one to one program. It's one where, again,

Bill Stites 00:30:39
understanding that connection between technology educational

Bill Stites 00:30:42
technology in the library specifically for us, not

Bill Stites 00:30:45
necessarily around this build example, but for us, it was

Bill Stites 00:30:49
around our research cycle, and the way in which technology and

Bill Stites 00:30:54
the adoption of technology in the classroom can be impacted by

Bill Stites 00:30:58
that research cycle, because that's something that begins in

Bill Stites 00:31:01
the early years and goes all the way through high school, to the

Bill Stites 00:31:04
point where our director of Ed Tech in the various people that

Bill Stites 00:31:09
we have in that role, our previous director of Ed Tech was

Bill Stites 00:31:13
our head of libraries at our Upper School in research. So

Bill Stites 00:31:16
it's a model that learning commons are. We refer to it as

Bill Stites 00:31:19
our upper school, is our academic center, because, again,

Bill Stites 00:31:22
you go in, the library is there, the tech office there, the ed

Bill Stites 00:31:25
tech office is there. At the middle school, it's adjacent.

Bill Stites 00:31:28
We're doing some renovation that'll bring the two of them

Bill Stites 00:31:31
together. And at the primary school, it's in a similar model.

Bill Stites 00:31:34
So it's a great way to infuse and inject technology best

Bill Stites 00:31:39
practice in to the classroom in ways that, you know, Hiram

Bill Stites 00:31:43
mentioned earlier, the computer lab model. Well, the computer

Bill Stites 00:31:46
labs are gone. And if we don't have classes where people are

Bill Stites 00:31:49
coming in, how are we working to get these skills brought into

Bill Stites 00:31:55
the classroom? And it's either through the work that you can do

Bill Stites 00:31:58
with the librarians, or, similar to what David was saying in

Bill Stites 00:32:02
terms of the ways in which you go in in the different

Bill Stites 00:32:06
curricular areas to work through those things, it's a great

Bill Stites 00:32:08
marriage of the two areas. Yeah.

Christina Lewellen 00:32:11
So if the fabric of your school, Hiram and

Christina Lewellen 00:32:16
I guess this question for Jim too, if you guys are baking this

Christina Lewellen 00:32:21
in to the experience as st Christopher's. So how in the

Christina Lewellen 00:32:24
world do you allocate resources? Like, how do you decide what

Christina Lewellen 00:32:29
technology and or resources to invest in when it's not like,

Christina Lewellen 00:32:34
you're just trying to solve for x for, you know, a science

Christina Lewellen 00:32:37
class, like, we're gonna drop an egg off a building. Go buy eggs

Christina Lewellen 00:32:41
if you're trying to kind of bake this into everything that you

Christina Lewellen 00:32:44
do. How the heck do you approach the acquisition of these types

Christina Lewellen 00:32:50
of resources to support your build program? Well,

Jim Guion 00:32:55
the way we have done it here, and much to the school

Jim Guion 00:32:56
of credit, I think, is that build has its own budget, and so

Jim Guion 00:33:00
all of these pieces that touch lots of different areas that

Jim Guion 00:33:03
might get in a different kind of situation. Well, who's paying

Jim Guion 00:33:05
for that as a technology, as a classroom, it just comes out of

Jim Guion 00:33:08
my budget, and who uses it is not really all that important to

Jim Guion 00:33:12
me. If it's being used for the purposes that we've decided,

Jim Guion 00:33:14
where it ends up in the school is not that important to me,

Jim Guion 00:33:17
because we want these things distributed across the school.

Jim Guion 00:33:20
So for me, it's really easy. I just hand them a credit card,

Jim Guion 00:33:23
and there it goes. For us, it works really well having someone

Jim Guion 00:33:27
like me in this position, really. It makes me a

Jim Guion 00:33:29
facilitator. It makes me the champion, and I am the one who

Jim Guion 00:33:32
can say, Look, this is a thing that's great. I can give you the

Jim Guion 00:33:35
five school entities that are gonna benefit from this, and so

Jim Guion 00:33:38
let's just get it,

Christina Lewellen 00:33:39
but you would have to know a little bit

Christina Lewellen 00:33:41
about what the teachers are doing or what the program is

Christina Lewellen 00:33:43
like, right? Because otherwise you would just have this endless

Christina Lewellen 00:33:46
shopping spree. And that's not the case either,

Jim Guion 00:33:48
absolutely, most of the projects either I'm involved

Jim Guion 00:33:52
with in some way, or at least, sort of get passed to me. We

Jim Guion 00:33:55
meet every week as a technology build, library department, that

Jim Guion 00:33:59
group meets together every week, and I am out in the classroom as

Jim Guion 00:34:03
much as I can. I'm maybe not in the Lower School as much as I

Jim Guion 00:34:06
would like, since they're way across the street the other way,

Jim Guion 00:34:09
but I am out and talking to teachers as much as I can.

Jim Guion 00:34:12
Though I'm not a department chair, I attend a department

Jim Guion 00:34:14
chair meeting, so I'm keeping in touch with what's going on in

Jim Guion 00:34:16
the various Upper School departments.

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:19
And Kristina, one of the things that I think is

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:21
helpful is my former job was to be a middle school science

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:25
teacher, and when I first arrived here at St

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:27
Christopher's, our budget was just a few $100 and I burned

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:30
that up in buying safety equipment. So the school has had

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:34
the benefit of recognizing that science, art, athletics are

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:39
typically the three areas that are most costly, and Bill just

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:44
fits in all of those different areas. Now you add technology to

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:47
the mix, and it is definitely something that we needed to make

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:52
sure that each of the divisions weren't spending monies out of

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:56
other areas when we needed to really get a sense of. What was

Hiram Cuevas 00:35:00
the overall expenditure for the program? And I think consumables

Hiram Cuevas 00:35:04
are the things that really burn up a budget very, very quickly.

Christina Lewellen 00:35:08
Okay, so you kind of have a sense of what you

Christina Lewellen 00:35:10
guys are trying to get to. You have a vision of what your build

Christina Lewellen 00:35:14
program is, and that certainly helps keep it all in a really

Christina Lewellen 00:35:17
focused place, so that the probably the messaging is pretty

Christina Lewellen 00:35:20
good in terms of working with your faculty and having and

Christina Lewellen 00:35:23
having them understand what's available. So now, if I could

Christina Lewellen 00:35:26
ask each of you to tell me a little bit about some examples,

Christina Lewellen 00:35:30
we'll start with lower school and kind of work our way through

Christina Lewellen 00:35:33
the whole experience, the whole pipeline of your students

Christina Lewellen 00:35:36
experience. What does build look like? In terms of some examples?

Christina Lewellen 00:35:39
If you could either give us a couple of projects that are kind

Christina Lewellen 00:35:43
of like the things that the boys always look forward to each year

Christina Lewellen 00:35:46
as they progress along their journey with you, or some cool

Christina Lewellen 00:35:49
projects that you thought turned out better than you could have

Christina Lewellen 00:35:52
expected. I'd love to hear how this actually plays out on the

Christina Lewellen 00:35:55
day to day. The

Gail Warren 00:35:56
first one that comes to mind is a relatively

Gail Warren 00:35:59
newer project this year. So in world language in fifth grade,

Gail Warren 00:36:03
the boys were studying Spanish, French and Latin, and they were

Gail Warren 00:36:08
on their Spanish unit, and they were studying different cultural

Gail Warren 00:36:12
components of Spanish language. And Gowdy came up, who's a

Gail Warren 00:36:16
famous architect, and so I partnered with our Spanish

Gail Warren 00:36:21
teacher, and we partnered with our art teacher and all of our

Gail Warren 00:36:25
fifth grade teachers. And so the project started out small. We

Gail Warren 00:36:30
had some research based knowledge of Gaudi and his

Gail Warren 00:36:33
architecture in Spain, and then in art class, the boys were also

Gail Warren 00:36:40
given some more information about Gowdy and some of the

Gail Warren 00:36:42
artistic qualities of his work, the uniqueness of them. And the

Gail Warren 00:36:46
boys in fifth grade used Canva to create a pet house based on

Gail Warren 00:36:54
some of the characteristics of Gowdy, and that was printed out.

Gail Warren 00:36:58
But they also created their own animal. And they created an

Gail Warren 00:37:02
animal using Canva, but we export it as an SVG file. And

Gail Warren 00:37:07
the boys made a glow forge 3d animal. And so they were able to

Gail Warren 00:37:12
showcase learn their skills with the glow Forge. And so we had

Gail Warren 00:37:17
this very collaborative project with basically art, library,

Gail Warren 00:37:23
technology, fifth grade teachers and Spanish. It was the entire

Gail Warren 00:37:26
curriculum that was one of my favorites, and the boys, it will

Gail Warren 00:37:29
be in the hallway. They made a Gowdy village of their famous

Gail Warren 00:37:33
pet houses and their pets. And they also use a print press,

Gail Warren 00:37:37
which Jim and some of his Makerspace boys actually built

Gail Warren 00:37:42
the printing presses for us, and we used that to make prints of

Gail Warren 00:37:47
the animals to scatter throughout the hallways as well.

Gail Warren 00:37:50
So that was just a big, huge collaborative project in the

Gail Warren 00:37:53
Lower School. One

David Shin 00:37:55
thing that Jim did I really appreciate last year was

David Shin 00:37:58
that the Lower School had a Lion King play. And my son's in third

David Shin 00:38:02
grade. He was in second grade last year, and so he was in that

David Shin 00:38:05
play. And it was really cool to have upper school boys build

David Shin 00:38:08
some costumes and, like, animal structures, and then lower

David Shin 00:38:13
school kids were able to, like, put that on for the play. I

David Shin 00:38:17
thought that was a really cool thing for the middle school. One

David Shin 00:38:20
other project that I could think of is the car bill. So we learn

David Shin 00:38:26
about gear ratios and electricity, and we put a car

David Shin 00:38:31
together and learn about what if you had a small motor gear

David Shin 00:38:34
connected to a big axle gear, a lot of techie stuff. And then we

David Shin 00:38:38
race it across the basketball court to see who can make the

David Shin 00:38:41
fastest car, who can make it accelerate the most. So that's a

David Shin 00:38:44
lot of fun. Another project that comes to mind is we are involved

David Shin 00:38:49
with the FIRST LEGO League every year in the fall. This year, our

David Shin 00:38:53
theme was something about marine life, and so we had bunch of

David Shin 00:38:59
little missions to do with our robot, and they design gears and

David Shin 00:39:04
motors to accomplish like 15 to 20 different missions on a

David Shin 00:39:08
little table. But with that, they have a little project

David Shin 00:39:11
component where they have to solve a problem. And the kids

David Shin 00:39:15
came up with this idea of a solar powered beach umbrella.

David Shin 00:39:18
And I thought it was a really cool idea, because they always

David Shin 00:39:21
run out of phone charge when they go to the beach. And so

David Shin 00:39:24
they came up with this idea of putting on solar panels on their

David Shin 00:39:27
beach umbrella and then having your phones charged, since

David Shin 00:39:31
they're going to be playing outside all day. We used our

David Shin 00:39:34
wood shop teacher to come up with a prototype for that. And

David Shin 00:39:36
so we showed our judges. It was really cool, and they won a

David Shin 00:39:41
little innovation award to boot for that. So I thought that was

David Shin 00:39:44
really cool, and a great use of our build system in

Jim Guion 00:39:49
the Upper School, we do a variety of projects, both

Jim Guion 00:39:52
in the build class and then with other classes, but we've done

Jim Guion 00:39:55
things like introduce them to the ideas of universal design,

Jim Guion 00:39:58
just sort of incorporate. Operating the idea that they

Jim Guion 00:40:01
have to think about the user and accommodate for a diverse

Jim Guion 00:40:05
variety of different kinds of users. And we had them design

Jim Guion 00:40:08
from scratch and build scale prototypes of an accessible

Jim Guion 00:40:11
playground. We have sort of taught the ideas of computer

Jim Guion 00:40:15
aided design and taught them additive manufacturing by

Jim Guion 00:40:19
designing their own sort of personal improvement device. We

Jim Guion 00:40:22
call it some small device that makes their life better in some

Jim Guion 00:40:25
meaningful way, usually, because this is what our kids are

Jim Guion 00:40:28
focused on. It takes the form of some sort of box or holder for

Jim Guion 00:40:31
their phone. But sometimes you get some really innovative

Jim Guion 00:40:34
designs from the kids. But it's really, again, all about the

Jim Guion 00:40:37
process having them think about, what are the problems in my

Jim Guion 00:40:39
life? What can I solve using something that I can make on my

Jim Guion 00:40:43
own? As David mentioned, we, again, this year, produced some

Jim Guion 00:40:47
costumes for the lower school play. It was Finding Nemo this

Jim Guion 00:40:50
year, which was great. I have kids that are now building a

Jim Guion 00:40:53
power tool drag racer for a competition at a Maker Faire,

Jim Guion 00:40:56
which is going to be, if it doesn't kill anybody, it's going

Jim Guion 00:40:59
to be awesome. And we just finished one of my favorite

Jim Guion 00:41:03
projects, where we have a physics class that comes into

Jim Guion 00:41:07
the lab. They have done some research already. In class about

Jim Guion 00:41:10
optics. They come into class we talk about cameras and how

Jim Guion 00:41:13
cameras work. They design and build their own pinhole cameras.

Jim Guion 00:41:17
We take them over to St Catherine's, where we have a

Jim Guion 00:41:19
dark room. They take pictures with their cameras that they've

Jim Guion 00:41:22
developed. They develop those pictures, and then we just hung

Jim Guion 00:41:25
them in our art space for an art show, and we just sort of

Jim Guion 00:41:27
highlight the whole process. And so it sort of runs the gamut of

Jim Guion 00:41:31
things that they're producing on a computer using devices and

Jim Guion 00:41:34
things that they're making out of cardboard and aluminum foil.

Jim Guion 00:41:37
The idea is that each of those projects allows them to think

Jim Guion 00:41:41
about design, to think about the design process, and to go

Jim Guion 00:41:44
through the whole process with failure in mind, and the idea

Jim Guion 00:41:48
that we are going to iterate this and come up with something

Jim Guion 00:41:51
at the end that hopefully works.

Unknown 00:41:53
So Hiram,

Bill Stites 00:41:54
I remember probably about five or six years ago, Ben

Bill Stites 00:41:57
gurage and I came down when we were looking at our information

Bill Stites 00:42:01
systems, but we were also looking at what these types of

Bill Stites 00:42:04
programs looked like in schools. And I remember what it looked

Bill Stites 00:42:07
like in the science area, where you had this set up there was

Bill Stites 00:42:11
kind of like the robotic station amongst many taxidermied animals

Bill Stites 00:42:16
in the space. And then there was like a little work room that you

Bill Stites 00:42:20
had where it had some of the building type things, and that

Bill Stites 00:42:23
was five years ago. If I was to come to campus today, what would

Bill Stites 00:42:28
those spaces look like, where this is actually happening

Bill Stites 00:42:31
across the different grade levels?

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:34
Yeah. So I think the key thing to always be

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:36
mindful of is that real estate is always at a premium at a

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:39
school, and they're always competing for space. Our build

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:44
program is no different. So that space that you saw there is

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:48
essentially been replaced by the we have a full fledged build lab

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:52
in the luck Leadership Center that Jim manages, and Gayle and

Hiram Cuevas 00:42:57
David could bring kids over there as well to work on various

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:01
projects, but we do have what I'll call ancillary, or small

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:05
auxiliary spaces in the other divisions as well. They are not

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:10
as fully functional as our massive build lab. And what

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:13
we'll do is we'll include photographs of our large space

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:16
for the show notes, so that you can see the tools that all of

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:20
our faculty and students have available to them in terms of

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:23
accessibility. Gayle, what would you say would be on your wish

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:27
list for the Lower School?

Gail Warren 00:43:28
Oh, my wish list for the Lower School. I say it

Gail Warren 00:43:31
all the time. I think they're tired of hearing me say this. I

Gail Warren 00:43:34
would love a maker space like Jim has, and the upper school,

Gail Warren 00:43:38
like we said, real estate's at a premium, and so sometimes I

Gail Warren 00:43:41
coach the robotics team in the Lower School, and we're in a

Gail Warren 00:43:44
particular room with our big table, and then our glow Forge

Gail Warren 00:43:47
is in another space, and we have our Cricut and our 3d printer,

Gail Warren 00:43:51
that type of thing. Yes, that would be my wish list. Would be

Gail Warren 00:43:54
to have a full fledged maker space, to have everything in one

Gail Warren 00:43:57
area where the boys could actually come and visit, same

David Shin 00:44:01
with me right now. The middle school robotics team

David Shin 00:44:04
kind of uses like a hallway slash outside of the classroom

David Shin 00:44:09
space,

Christina Lewellen 00:44:10
wherever you can get it done. Right? Some

Hiram Cuevas 00:44:12
of your more advanced stem steam programs are

Hiram Cuevas 00:44:16
also beside a wood shop. I think Jim, you've been having

Hiram Cuevas 00:44:21
conversations about what would an expansion look like for the

Hiram Cuevas 00:44:24
build program.

Jim Guion 00:44:25
That's my wish list as a building where all of these

Jim Guion 00:44:28
things happen together, where we can incorporate a separate lab

Jim Guion 00:44:31
for the Lower School, separate lab for the middle school,

Jim Guion 00:44:33
separate lab for the upper school, but then also take

Jim Guion 00:44:36
advantage of the shared space, where we can put tools that none

Jim Guion 00:44:39
of us are going to use all the time, but all of us would love

Jim Guion 00:44:41
to have access to and then near that, or off of that, we'd have

Jim Guion 00:44:45
a wood shop. We'd have our robotics programs, maybe some

Jim Guion 00:44:48
science classrooms, maybe some build areas for our technical

Jim Guion 00:44:52
theater and all of the people that we work with, which is a

Jim Guion 00:44:56
lot, but to have it all in one place. Call it a build.

Jim Guion 00:44:58
Building. Call it a. A industrial arts, call it

Jim Guion 00:45:01
whatever. I think it'd be great if we were all in one central

Jim Guion 00:45:04
place. Because every time we're together in a just in a room

Jim Guion 00:45:07
like this, we find the ideas sort of bounce off of each

Jim Guion 00:45:10
other. It'd be great cross curricularly and cross

Jim Guion 00:45:13
divisionally, if we were closer to each other. Yeah, I feel

Gail Warren 00:45:16
like when we're ever together, we do it's kind

Gail Warren 00:45:18
of a spiral thing. We talk about, like the Lower School,

Gail Warren 00:45:21
and how pertains to boys in the middle school and the upper

Gail Warren 00:45:23
school. It's a really nice format for us to have an

Gail Warren 00:45:26
opportunity to get together and talk about those projects. We

Gail Warren 00:45:29
actually

Jim Guion 00:45:29
had kids in our engineering class last year to

Jim Guion 00:45:32
actually design a sort of build building and what that might

Jim Guion 00:45:35
look like, which is a really interesting process for them to

Jim Guion 00:45:38
go through, because it gave us a lot of insight about what is it

Jim Guion 00:45:41
we actually would be looking for in a space like that. So that

Jim Guion 00:45:43
was a really fun process. It's always in the back of my mind

Jim Guion 00:45:46
when that comes up, I have

Christina Lewellen 00:45:48
no doubt that you guys will move down

Christina Lewellen 00:45:50
that path for sure as time unfolds, and we'll definitely

Christina Lewellen 00:45:54
keep an eye on that, because we have Hiram here to give us

Christina Lewellen 00:45:56
updates and reports as you go, before we start wrapping up and

Christina Lewellen 00:46:01
letting you get on with your day. I do have a question to

Christina Lewellen 00:46:04
kind of bring this home, and that is, if listeners are

Christina Lewellen 00:46:08
inspired by this approach, that you guys have figured out how to

Christina Lewellen 00:46:12
click into place at St Christopher's if they want to

Christina Lewellen 00:46:15
walk this path, do you have any guidance or recommendations on

Christina Lewellen 00:46:18
where they can start, or any potholes to avoid in their

Christina Lewellen 00:46:22
journey. I

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:23
think you should definitely visit as many

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:25
campuses as possible that have premier facilities. My first

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:30
exposure to the joint, I'll call it build and workshop approach,

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:35
was at University School in Cleveland, and I came back was

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:37
like, You're not gonna believe what I just saw. It was amazing.

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:41
This is what our community does. We share, and we share often,

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:45
and there's no need to recreate this wheel. Go visit schools.

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:50
Bill has done it. I have done it. We've all done it. You go

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:52
and you visit schools and you talk to people. Use the listserv

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:56
to get hints about what are some of the premier schools that are

Hiram Cuevas 00:46:59
out there. We're also always welcome to and accepting of

Hiram Cuevas 00:47:02
visitors who want to take a look at our build program here. So

Hiram Cuevas 00:47:05
feel free to give us a call and we'll give you a tour. My

Jim Guion 00:47:09
recommendation is cardboard and tape. I love

Jim Guion 00:47:13
technology. I absolutely love

Unknown 00:47:15
it. That's a great recommendation.

Jim Guion 00:47:19
I absolutely love it. But save every Amazon box, cut

Jim Guion 00:47:22
it up and buy some duct tape. And there is just no end to the

Jim Guion 00:47:25
things that you can create and the projects that you can make.

Jim Guion 00:47:28
I agree,

Gail Warren 00:47:28
consumable. That's all we use. And glue sticks.

Gail Warren 00:47:31
Yeah, we

Bill Stites 00:47:32
just had a STEM Day here at our middle school, and

Bill Stites 00:47:35
the amount of cardboard that was throughout the building was

Bill Stites 00:47:39
unbelievable. It was everywhere. I'm assuming that the recyclers

Bill Stites 00:47:43
knew something was going on once that project was done. I

David Shin 00:47:47
think one thing that I would like to add is just go

David Shin 00:47:50
ahead and reach out to community people around your school. All

David Shin 00:47:54
they can say is, no if you want to reach out to your patent

David Shin 00:47:58
lawyers and see what kind of things are going on. Maybe they

David Shin 00:48:01
have ideas that you'd like to take on. If you want to reach

David Shin 00:48:04
out to local businesses, what kind of problems do they have

David Shin 00:48:07
and really try to make a connection, reaching out to

David Shin 00:48:10
members around town, I think is a great way to start too. Yeah,

David Shin 00:48:14
those community partners are a blessing.

Christina Lewellen 00:48:17
This has been so useful for us. You guys,

Christina Lewellen 00:48:19
thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your program,

Christina Lewellen 00:48:21
you are more than welcome to come back and give us updates as

Christina Lewellen 00:48:24
you go, and we're so grateful that you shared, because I think

Christina Lewellen 00:48:27
sometimes there's a little bit of a tendency to throw some

Christina Lewellen 00:48:31
spaghetti against the wall and see which of these types of

Christina Lewellen 00:48:33
programs stick. But it sounds like st Christopher's has done a

Christina Lewellen 00:48:36
really great job allocating both the energy and having a vision

Christina Lewellen 00:48:41
and a budget to make this a really wrapped up little

Christina Lewellen 00:48:45
program, and make it a real integral part of how you guys

Christina Lewellen 00:48:48
deliver on your promise to your students and your family. So

Christina Lewellen 00:48:52
it's been such a pleasure getting to know all of you and

Christina Lewellen 00:48:54
This program, and I want to thank you for coming on the

Christina Lewellen 00:48:56
podcast. It wasn't too bad, right?

Hiram Cuevas 00:48:58
Not at all great. It's fun, Hiram, took good care

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:01
of you.

Christina Lewellen 00:49:03
Hiram, thank you so much for bringing your

Christina Lewellen 00:49:04
team. We hear all this stuff from you on a fairly regular

Christina Lewellen 00:49:08
basis, but how cool is it to have your colleagues sitting

Christina Lewellen 00:49:11
there with you to share the same energy that you have. This has

Christina Lewellen 00:49:15
been a real privilege for me and Bill to get to know you guys a

Christina Lewellen 00:49:17
little better. You guys are the best. Thank you so much for

Christina Lewellen 00:49:20
joining us, and good luck in your continued amazing work,

Christina Lewellen 00:49:23
your superhero work you're doing. Thanks so

Unknown 00:49:26
much. Thank you. Thank you.

Peter Frank 00:49:29
This has been talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:49:32
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Peter Frank 00:49:34
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Peter Frank 00:49:38
Atlas membership, please visit theatlas.org if you enjoyed this

Peter Frank 00:49:42
discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and share this

Peter Frank 00:49:46
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Peter Frank 00:49:48
community. Thank you for listening. You.