Let's Design For Joy
Friends of Stone,
Around Stone, we often say that there is a unique power located in the act of making something that wasn’t there before: a new line of code, a pop-up restaurant, a creative application for inference testing, a chicken coop, a meaningful relationship, a policy brief on immigration, a 20 foot tall trebuchet.
There is richness in a life spent making things that matter -- there’s a deep joyfulness, too.
Even before we pivoted to “Learning-From-Home” on March 13th, we asked ourselves: how do we stay “very Stone” if we have to spread apart? How do we remain nimble, how do we remain rigorous, how do we make sure that “online” Stone is a place that still incentivizes real learning, real curiosity, and real excitement?
How do we make sure we aren’t just designing an ecosystem of frustrating Zoom meetings?
How do we design ways for our students to laugh, to spend time together, to be kids?
Over the last twelve weeks we have redesigned school from the ground up. In our Learning-from-Home model, Stone students have argued about Othello; and built furniture by hand; and released digital music on Spotify; and tried their hand at vermicomposting; and learned CAD; and conferenced with biogeochemists; and even constructed home-made astrophotography rigs to explore the link between light pollution and climate change. STEM Instructor Jay Lance set up a “3d Printer Farm” in his garage so that our Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing students can print to it remotely; our Middle School students just pitched small-business ideas to a Shark Tank; a cohort of Stone students are collaborating on a project to 3D print parts for 853 PPE’s; our “Siege Machine Team” just finished a plan to build yet another Watermelon-Tossin’-Siege-Machine (this time, a ballista).
And over the last twelve weeks, our students have laughed a lot, too.
Every week, our students hold online “game nights'' (Jeopardy was a particularly big hit), they throw bi-weekly Netflix parties, they started a “snail mail” campaign to send each other memories from this past school year, they obsess over step-count competitions, they hold Minecraft meet-ups, they push each other to “go analog” whenever possible. Last week the Lee House prefects surprised every student in their House with a yard sign; a few weeks ago a convoy of 11th grade students drove more than 100 miles to honk their horns and wave a Stone Flag in front of the homes of their peers and their teachers; next Saturday, we’re going to drive to each of our Seniors’ houses because our seniors can’t come to us for the graduation they so richly deserve.
We’re already designing for the Fall, and despite the fact that none of us really know what the Fall will look like, here at Stone we do have one mandatory design principle for the 2020-2021 school year: students need to experience joy.
They need the opportunity to do important work.
And they need to laugh a lot too.
I’d be so grateful for the opportunity to tell you about everything we’ve done to pivot to Learning-From-Home, everything we’re thinking about for the Fall. If you’re interested in learning more about what’s next at Stone, please email me here or call/text 717-468-0019.
With so much thanks,
Mike Simpson, Head of School