reading. We are continually looking for ways to instill empathy in students. In addition, we think a lot about the importance of failure. How can we teach kids to be resilient? In the Innovations 10 course, Tom Flood, along with the school counselors, guides students through “resilience training,” where they talk about how they learn from failure and use it to improve. All 10th grade students, regardless of background, learn to use the tools in the shop in order to build a model of a tiny home. This is out of the comfort zone of most students, but it both encourages them to push themselves and lowers the barrier to entry for hands-on skills that some would never approach on their own. Another pivotal example of teaching resilience comes from the Entrepreneurial Leadership course this year. Teachers Mariah Gentry ‘09 and Giselle Furlonge gave students a $2 Challenge. The task seemed simple: create as much value as you can with just $2 in a two-week period. Students struggled to grapple with the open-endedness of the assignment, trying to find the “right answer.” There were tears at a few points in the process. But as the students started to discover that there was no right answer, the project quickly evolved into a personal journey. Each student determined the best answer given their unique values and circumstances. After several check-ins, many students began to notice that the greatest value was when they intentionally did something for someone else. The students traded their dollars or transformed them into artwork, bought items and sold them to siblings, traded services such as cleaning or cooking for a few dollars, created matching programs, invested in microloans for people around the world, and offered to help others. After two weeks, along with numerous treasures such as a pair of skis, vinyl records, origami creatures, and red pens, the class counted $671 from just $26 dollars. Most of that
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BEST OF SAAS
VOL. 19 | 2020
