Students who join Writing Fellows form a workshop group for one another, and each Fellow also serves the Upper School as a peer tutor in the Writing Center, a converted office space in Askew Hall.
Students grouped up to craft their own epic tales based on refugee stories they’d researched and used the Goizueta Innovation Lab’s tools and materials to create maps to illustrate their journeys. Students have to think critically about the trade-offs they make during these experiences. If the right image isn’t available under public domain, can someone create an effective illustration? If an interactive element breaks when people touch it, how else can people experience the piece? If the group disagrees about whether a story from the Middle East or from South America is more interesting, how does everyone come to an agreement? These trade-offs, approached with an inventor’s mindset, are lowstakes practice for the decisions our students will be making as they grow up. Students can experiment with making data-based decisions—and they can begin to
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learn the nuances at play when data fails. Teaching The Odyssey in a way that connects the book’s theme to current events, reaches across disciplines, and calls on students to bring their creative selves to class is only one example of the learning that happens every day at Westminster. Our classrooms are places where teachers create opportunities that spark curiosity and uncover creativity, empowering our students to increasingly work through difficult, complex problems like those our world will continue to face. This work is everywhere on our campus. As technology’s lightning-speed development continues, facts are simply not enough. Our students will thrive now, and in the future, when they embrace their human abilities to cultivate deep relationships, lead others around them, and think critically to design solutions to problems.
“Leadership of conscience” for the decades ahead lies in the ways our students will innovate with humanity in mind. It is creative minds making bold leaps for the betterment of all. To educate our students with any lesser optimism and belief in their potential is to shortchange not only them, but the future itself.
It’s impossible to walk around campus and not see students innovating. That’s especially true during each division’s Innovation Fair. No subject area goes uninvestigated during these events—students learn through activities like trying their hand at a giant Rube Goldberg machine, building 3D fractals together, and collaborative poetry writing.