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[title]When we think of the term “maker space”—a place where communities can learn, create and invent together in a variety of mediums—our first thought (strangely enough) isn’t a school classroom. Why not? Right in our backyard, one dynamic New York City institution is reshaping the rules of traditional teaching at every learning level, starting at age two right up through middle school—and it’s doing it in a way that helps kids learn important life skills (without losing the benefits of traditional class structure).
Enter Blue School—a progressive school located in Lower Manhattan that offers necessary classroom pillars like math, studio arts, drama, S.T.E.A.M., language and physical education, but also promotes learning through a very special yearlong project that helps kids learn to conceptualize, create, collaborate and design. For K–5, this unique project isn't merely an add-on—it's actually integrated into the curriculum and builds on existing grade benchmarks in topics like science, social studies and literacy. Let’s dive in!
"At Blue School, our first graders took on a neighborhood study project, which is typical for that year,” shared Dawn Williams, Director of Admissions. “To help the children understand their surroundings, their teachers gave them research journals to note things that were interesting to them in our neighborhood—and with us being in South Street Seaport, the children were very interested in construction and noticed many buildings going up. So they explored, went back to the classroom and talked about building—how animals build, what different building materials look like—and worked with their studio arts teacher. Then they visited the Center for Architecture to learn how people build. After, they came back to the classroom and started meeting with architects from our brand new middle school building (right next door to our current building at 233 Water Street), learned to read blueprints and even did hard hat tours of that space. At that point, the classroom decided they wanted to become a construction company! Their teachers collaborated to help them make their own business cards and hang posters around the school looking for real construction projects that other classrooms might need help with.”
“After a while, the three year old class called, requesting that the first graders might build them a fun play structure for their terrace. So the first graders went to the three-year-old’s classroom and observed the three-year-olds at play, making bar graphs that recorded how many times the three-year-olds tried activities like jumping, running or climbing. When the first graders realized how much the three-year-olds loved to climb, they went to work with their S.T.E.A.M. instructor on designing and building a climbing structure. They did a lot of planning to reflect on the project before building, and each child in the first grade class created their very own design and presented it. The S.T.E.A.M. instructor combined the best elements of everyone’s designs into a single structure, then the class built it together and presented it to the three-year-olds. The children got to build, reflect, learn about math and design, study behavior—even the very real concept of having worked hard on their own individual plan and not getting to use pieces of it—thanks to a collaboration between all of their teachers."
Encouraging this “maker" environment (created through deep projects like these) as part of youth curriculum has more than a few amazing benefits. Kids gain a sense of community and a curiosity that they bring home to the dinner table and to the outside world (and later the professional world), plus they have the opportunity to learn skills like planning, collaborating, designing and creating.
With regularly scheduled traditional classes (math, science, languages) throughout the week that incorporate a “maker” project, parents gain the best of both worlds for their kids—there's no pressure to pick between a curriculum that’s based on strict class structure or a curriculum that’s based on imaginative project-based work. Instead, there's a happy medium of getting a well-rounded education and taking things one step further to build emotional intelligence and encourage critical thinking skills across the board—it's a win-win. Why not dare to reimagine the way our schools work?
Blue School is located at 241 Water Street (212-228-6341 ext. 100, blueschool.org).