October 2, 2014
Last Friday, designers from the 3M Design Team spent the day with Lower School students in the MPA Innovation Lab. Together, they brainstormed and prototyped solutions in preparation for the upcoming Cardboard Challenge, but more than this, young students worked with professional mentors who reinforced the importance of MPA’s everyday focus on innovation, creativity, and problem solving.
In a recent blog entry, Dr. Yong Zhao from the University of Oregon was critical of mainstream American education for its misplaced focus on college readiness or even career readiness. Zhao believes this emphasis prepares students for an economy and world that no longer exists, and rather tongue-in-cheek, suggested that the aim of education should be “out-of-basement readiness.” For Zhao, students deserve an education that prepares them for success in today’s globalized society rather than one that relegates them to living in their parent’s basements because they cannot find jobs after college.
I am fortunate to be reminded daily that what happens in this building moves students toward college readiness, career readiness, and out-of-basement readiness. Design thinking and the MPA Innovation Lab are important components of the MPA curriculum as we strive to meet the needs of 21st century learners. But these are just two pieces that fit into a bigger whole: creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking are essential skills that are taught and nurtured across divisions and disciplines. So last week, not only did amazing things happen in the i-Lab with the 3M Design Team, amazing things were happening everywhere. Students created movements to match scripts, protection devices for a 10-foot egg drop, and solutions to some of the world’s biggest humanitarian issues. Passions were tapped to synthesize new ideas based on insight and inquiry, and for our lower schoolers, that just might have involved some prototyping for the upcoming Cardboard Challenge.
I hope you’ll join us, Oct. 11, from 9 AM-1 PMfor our third annual Cardboard Challenge and see how creativity and joy of learning thrive at MPA.
