Makerspaces

Context

Makerspace is a daily class taken by each student at Locust Grove. The class was created in conjunction with house projects to help make learning more relevant for students and help them better understand the possible future career pathways in high school and beyond. Previously, Locust Grove provided classes focused on areas of professional interest related to career pathways, such as engineering, coding, design, and culinary arts. These popular classes were structured as electives, but often would fill up and many students were not able to select their top choice. In hopes of improving student choice and agency, Locust Grove decided to flip this approach by allowing all students to pursue their top choice and designing the makerspace class to support these choices.

Students meet in their makerspace class for approximately 45 minutes a day to work on their house projects. Makerspace teachers design driving questions for projects, which are intentionally broad so students can select from a wide array of projects to answer the driving questions (or create their own).

The broad driving question within each house is as follows:

• Community and Commerce: How can we, as the Community and Commerce House, positively articulate and demonstrate how conflict can lead to change?
• Center Stage: How can I use my strengths to impact the world in a positive way through a storytelling experience?
• Cultivating Wellness: How can we improve the quality of life for people living in our community and around the world?
• House of Design: How can we, as designers, develop a product to improve our community?

The project work is student-driven, and the teacher’s role is to monitor progress and provide support as needed. The classroom is a large, open space created by cutting a hole between two classes. It contains a multitude of unique learning resources (3D printer, grow lights, etc.) that students can use to fulfill their project requirements.