Why providing an area to showcase student work is a good idea. This piece was written collaboratively by the Innovation in Chemistry and Engineering students at Marymount School of New York. For the past 3 weeks, I’ve merged my Innovation in Chemistry class with Zach Swarth’s Engineering class here at…

How might we get students inspired by chemistry so that they want to study it and pursue a career in it? Earlier in my career history, I was an industrial chemist. (I joke about being an ex-chemist frequently since I no longer practice it!) At University College Cork, I studied…

Overheard via Cathy Davidson at NAIS 2013. This was her closing keynote, and even though it's close to 10 years old, it's still spot on for today! If we can be replaced by a computer screen, we should be Make sure what you value is what you count Go back…

‘designing a solution to minimize the forces that act against making changes’ — I subscribe to a daily McKinsey newsletter highlighting their featured insights, leading me to their author interviews; the insights and interviews come from their research division. …

Taking our students on voyages is a big part of the learning experience we design for our students in our Teachers College, Columbia class that I teach with Reshan Richards. With voyages, we are taking our students out of their normal learning environment and moving them into another zone. When…

The Importance of Leaving School with Skills and Competencies for the 21st Century — I’ve been teaching an entrepreneurship elective for the past 5 years at Marymount School of New York. My interest in entrepreneurship grew out of my passion for the design thinking process. And, of course, design thinking is a big part of entrepreneurship. My first attempt at designing an Entrepreneurship elective…

How Do They All Jive Together? — When using design to solve problems you need to use a combination of design methods, design mindsets, and design abilities. All of these play into the design thinking hexagon cycle via IDEO and Stanford’s dSchool. Examples of design methods are procedures/tools for designing e.g. affinity mapping, defining problems, How might We questions, etc. A design mindset is solution-focused and action-oriented, examples would be empathy, optimism, iterate, etc.

Cue-Crave-Response-Reward — I recently took a workshop at the dSchool on Designing a Habit (around IDEAFLOW). It’s part of the Masters of Creativity Series run by Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley. The activity piece was facilitated by Kathryn Segovia, and taken from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits (Chapter 3). The process of…

Taking my Teachers College Columbia graduate students off campus for a new type of learning experience — On Monday, March 1, my Teachers College Columbia class took place at the Dwight School’s Spark Lab on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Lesa Wang, Head of Design and Global Spark Programs Director, opened her doors for us with Matthew Moran ( Director of Technology at the DWIGHT school)…