Rethinking
EDucation
An Interdisciplinary Project Based Learning Program
The Innovation Institute
The Shanghai American School’s Innovation Institute is a Project Based Learning interdisciplinary curriculum that asks students to grapple with some of the world’s most pressing issues. With a focus on engaging global issues, the ninth-grade Creativity and Design and tenth-grade Innovation and Design classes not only help students develop their foundational art skills but also help them develop key understandings about 21st-century media. Over two years, they investigate digital design, photography, video, and 3D design and in our maker space begin to understand the uses of coding and circuitry for interactive design. My wife, Kim Sajan, and I are two of the founding members of the Institute were the teachers of the embedded art curriculum.
STEAM in the Maker Space
Constructionist Pedagogy with Art at the Core
One thing that makes the SAS Maker Space different is that it was developed from the very beginning to exist at the intersection of art and technology. The program was developed mainly in collaboration between myself, an art teacher, and Larry Ehnert, a Science Teacher and engineer. The first class we developed was a STEAM class, and the art department remains the heaviest users of the space. In this way, our maker space embodies the STEM to STEAM movement; the understanding that the future of STEM education requires the creative thinking and design process that the arts provide.
A Project Based Learning Curriculum
Changemakers
The Nido Grade 10 Changemakers course aims to support students in understanding how our actions have an impact on the communities around us. Students are often eager to take action to make a difference but often rush into projects without taking the necessary time to connect with and understand the communities they wish to help. Engaging in community change is a complicated and messy process that doesn’t neatly align with our educational system of assessment, bell schedules, or semester breaks. This course challenges students to learn and research with empathy, act and communicate with intention, and make meaningful changes.
Sample Projects
Set Design for A Raisin in the Sun
This project exemplifies how students use STEAM learning to approach their Innovation work. In this project, our Innovation Students designed a set for Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun. Students selected a scene in the play and examined how they could express aspects of the themes through the set design. To fully explore these themes, they researched Black artists who dealt with similar themes in their work and imagined what sets designed by these artists might have looked like. Students used maker space tools to fabricate the sets and include movement and lighting as part of their design. Finally, they reflected on their research and process in video podcasts, such as this one. More of their responses can be found here.
Abstracted Meiosis
Inspiration comes from everywhere. Students in the Innovation institute created animations based on their understanding of Meiosis from their Biology class and an investigation into abstraction in my Innovation + Design class. What made this particular project different is that it was conceptualized as an Adobe Animate assignment, but one of the students had expertise in the 3D modeling program, Blender. When he asked if he could use that program instead, I asked him if he could co-teach the animation lesson with me so that other students might have the opportunity to learn this software as well. This animation is one result of our co-teaching.