Franklin Students Make Impacts Locally and Globally

Franklin School has facilitated a range of trips for our students in our first two years designed to both engage with the local community and the wider world. With innovation and entrepreneurship as important foundations of our school, trips are designed to inspire and encourage students to think critically and creatively about becoming global citizens.

The school offers unique micro-courses and electives led by industry experts, and it was through our Sustainable Fashion micro-course that students visited Porch Finds —a local sustainably sourced, vintage store — and met with founder Sage Schwer. Inspired by Sage’s story and passionate for fighting against fast fashion, Franklin student Sydney Lambert ’27 decided to focus on sustainable fashion as her Start with Service project to design and produce a line of denim clothing and accessories made from pre-loved materials.

Start with Service is a collaboration between our Capstone, Academic Care and Co-curricular programs and epitomizes our commitment to community engagement, problem-solving, and holistic development. Students identified an issue in the community, approached local organizations to offer their service, and developed a project management plan to pitch to our very own Tiger Tank panel. Sydney’s sustainable fashion project was one of the nine selected to run during the week. Sydney says, “Once we visited on the trip, Sage and I made concrete plans to sell the clothing designed during our project through a pop-up at her store.” Proceeds from Sydney’s service project will be donated to Fashion Revolution, a fashion activism movement.

This past summer Max Korhammer ’25 joined Dwight School students on a Dwight Destinations trip exploring the rich culture and history of Eastern Europe — including sites related to WWII, the Cold War, and the legacy of communism complementing the AP history curriculum. Max explains how this solidified key pieces of the curriculum for him, including in English this trimester: “We had just read a memoir by a Holocaust Survivor and I discovered I was able to connect with the text more closely because of the places I had visited on this trip.”

Students on these trips are making other connections to our global community. Max says “I was very nervous when I joined this trip as I knew nobody, but all the Dwight students were really friendly and easy to make connections with. I definitely recommend the international experiences offered through the global network.”

GOOGLERS FOR A DAY

Recently a group of grade 10 students were selected to be “Googlers for a Day,” spending time with members of the Google team at their Manhattan HQ, to learn about topics ranging from digital art and UX to research and computer engineering. The students returned to Franklin keen to put into practice the skills they saw the Google team embody — empathy, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.