Starting To Take Shape

Starting to provide a structure and vision for our design school.  Thanks to @ahab6633 and @mylatinteacher for their assistance.

MHS Design School

MHS intends to open a design school for the 2014-2015 school year.  The MHS Design School will exists as a school within a school and serve as a hub for innovators at MHS and the larger community.  At its core, the design school will focus on building student capacity to develop a process for producing creative solutions to any challenge.  The Design School will also be rooted in the premise that students learn best by doing.  Students will engage in self-directed inquiry and problem solving under the mentorship of faculty, staff, and community members.  

The curriculum will employ an interdisciplinary approach to learning that blurs the lines between subject areas to engage learners in the inherent nuances and complexity of real-life issues.  Our goal is to develop learners who refuse to narrowly define themselves according to a single subject area.  Reversing the traditional sequence of industrial model learning, which is dependent upon building students’ knowledge up to considering a problem, Design School students will begin with their curiosity and define their lines of inquiry through observation and experimentation, backing into those needed components and required skills to address the problem.  We will build relevance and meaning in learning from necessity.  Students need opportunities to try on different hats to see what fits.  

Consider an engineer, who needs to proficiency in Math and Science, but who also needs to be able to speak and write persuasively for their audience.  

Much of traditional school is concerned with the past, teaching individual subject matters with a sense of history that may or may not have anything to do with the students and their lives.  The MHS Design School is a school where the present and future are prized and celebrated.  

Students will employ cutting-edge technology and leverage the power of living in a connected world to uncover real human needs, to inform their exploration and to fashion the world around them.  Throughout the Design School experience, students will be free to experiment with their curiosity and imagination, ultimately, connecting their skills, gifts and passions to attend to something greater than themselves.