Innovation Through Collaboration

By Meg Stowe, Director of Innovation and Susan Fonseca Lanham, Permanent Innovator-In-Residence

“You can’t be what you can’t see.” These words spoken by the founder and president of the Women’s Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, became the anthem of the documentary film, Miss Representation. At RHS, we are living these powerful words by showing students what innovation looks like through the many social entrepreneurs we bring to our classrooms and community. For Lower School students, it’s just another day working with our Entrepreneur-InResidence and Co-founder of Sproutel, Hannah Chung. Sproutel received national recognition for Jerry the Bear, a companion product that helps children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Their latest creation, My Special Aflac Duck™, was voted one of TIME magazine’s 50 Best Inventions of 2018. Hannah and her colleague Nick Mead are developing their next companion robotic product to help children who experience stress or anxiety.

They are working directly with our students to design, prototype, and conduct user testing, and are holding feedback sessions with parents and educators to create a product that will assist kids all over the world. The magic for our students is that they are practicing the processes and mindsets of innovation and entrepreneurship in a real-world scenario.

My Special Aflac Duck™, a companion product that supports children diagnosed with pediatric cancer, was a 2018 Tech for a Better World winner at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Ms. Chung and her team at Sproutel are engaging students in all divisions, sharing the design process, and supporting students in their own prototype design sprint. Working with classroom teachers, we are developing experiences that support teacher goals for the students, using experts who are working to solve some of the greatest global challenges.

To develop innovative students, it is important to generate experiences that not only allow them to explore and grapple with divergent perspectives, ideas, and contexts from around the world, but also to design ways for students to collaborate with people who are working to impact global issues. This modeling and collaboration will position students to take this kind of initiative as they enter high school, college, and the real world.

Our signature innovation program helps embed highly vetted social entrepreneurs within our campus and brings founders from all over the world to work in classes and across all content areas. In November, Rocky Hill School kicked off this year’s program with founders from the new 2018 LearnLaunch accelerator cohort.

Collaboration with innovators from across the globe will continue to be a priority in the Rocky Hill experience. Developing these capabilities requires real-world context and first-hand experience in order to hone the cultural competence, communication skills, and empathy required to thrive in a global economy and workplace. Working with our partners provides our students early experiences to explore cultural literacy, tackle global grand challenges, and gain access to those working on cutting-edge, high-impact solutions to real-world problems. This approach is not only fun and engaging, but generates deeper, enduring learning.

3D design tool that teaches young students coding and math skills that can be 3D printed!