Dawson’s Innovative Programming:

Serving Our Students and Making a Difference

By Rich Lehrer, Director of Academic

Innovation

& Design

John Dewey, the father of modern progressive education, famously stated, “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” Reflection is a critical 21st-century skill that Dawson students, from our youngest to oldest, are taught to make sense of what they are learning and to improve the quality of their work and understanding. But reflection is not just for our students; it is equally as important for us, as professionals, to carve out the necessary time to think back on what we have accomplished and how we can use it to inform what lies ahead. In this spirit, I want to share some of my reflections on the progress of two of our innovative educational initiatives. Our productive struggles and accomplishments offer a glimpse into interesting developments we’ve ideated on and implemented this year so we can fully actualize our goals next year.

In July of 2021, Dawson collaborated with PBL Works (PBLworks.org), an organization whose mission is to help build the capacity of teachers to design and facilitate quality ProjectBased Learning with all students. PBL Works partnered with our teachers in the use of Gold Standard Project-Based Learning, a pedagogy that seeks to provide students with meaningful, engaging, and real-world contexts in which to learn course content and skills. Our initiative continued in July of 2022 with the training of our second cohort of teachers, and I am proud to share that our final cohort of teachers was trained during Dawson Teacher Academy in February of 2023. The benefits of all teaching faculty having a common understanding of PBL cannot be overestimated, and we are excited about the potential for the deep learning that lies ahead for all of our students. Additionally, February Teacher Academy saw a small group of teachers leading a “PBL Level Up” session with select faculty, a workshop that resulted in the creation of a Dawson-specific PBL Handbook. This resource will allow faculty to deepen their universal understanding of the pedagogy, help train future Dawson teachers, and share exemplary projects that are created and implemented by our teachers with their colleagues.

One important thing to note about our PBL initiative is the extent to which the tenets of Project-Based Learning are embedded in our newly revised Core Values of Belonging, Engagement, Advocacy, and Resilience. PBL recognizes the importance of student reflection, including opportunities to revise and improve their work, have voice and choice in their learning, discover solutions to problems, and use their learning to create impact, engage in sustained inquiry, and see the real-life applications of their projects. These elements resonate throughout our Core Values, contribute to deeper learning on the part of our students, and point to areas of focus and growth for our faculty. For more information about our reimagined Core Values, please read Head of School Roxanne Stansbury’s article in this magazine.

Dawson’s Design Technology Program

My Fall/Winter 2022-23 Petroglyph article about Dawson’s Design Process outlined the ways in which we Leveled Up our design technology programming through developments that include increased Design Lab time for our K-4 students and the creation of our own Dawson Design Process. The second half of the year saw some notable developments in our Middle School design programming; in addition to design technology courses that carried over from the previous school year, we implemented Dawson Design Lab electives in the fifth and sixth grades, allowing students to build on the skills being taught in Lower School. Additionally, our seventh and eighthgrade Tech for Good elective introduced some innovative approaches toward teaching design tech skills. One of these was the piloting of a design and entrepreneurship project called the Dawson Design Company in which students created and digitally fabricated high-quality pieces that were then sold in the community. Funds raised from sales supported the Tyler Robinson Foundation (trf.org), an organization that supports the families of individuals with pediatric cancer.

A second Tech for Good initiative that also broke interesting ground was our “Design-ata-Distance” project in which our Las Vegas Middle Schoolers collaborated with students from our sister school in Boulder, Colorado, to create a co-designed and digitally fabricated marble run for the LEGO wall in our K-4 Design Lab.

Dawson‘s authentic design and changemakers initiatives continue to make waves, not just here in our community but on the national stage as well. I had the great honor of delivering two presentations about our work at national conferences: “Innovative Programming, People and Places” at the Online Education Strategies for Independent Schools (OESIS) Conference hosted on Dawson’s campus in February, and a co-presentation entitled “Creating

Changemakers: Teaching Students to Make a Difference”, delivered at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Annual Conference in Las Vegas this past February.

The 2023-2024 school year promises to be even more exciting once construction wraps up on our new Middle School Design Lab in August. This innovative new space promises to be a game-changer for Dawson’s design technology program. In conjunction, we are thrilled to launch two new Middle School design tech courses, the seventh and eighth-grade Dawson Design Company elective that promises to build on proof of concept achieved this semester, and Dawson‘s first coding and robotics class, Creating With Code. These are exciting times for Dawson’s design technology initiatives, and we look forward to the exciting future directions and developments in our programming and places.