DESIGN-BUILD METHOD ENTERS THE SCHOOL

The Studio supports students and teachers in activating the design-build process to enhance learning. Educational content begins in the classroom but can be applied and extended through this process. Designing and building ideas, solutions, and inventions related to academic subjects opens up opportunities to apply subject matter in meaningful and transformative ways. Imagine applying math and language arts by creating a new signage system for the school, or science and art by creating a school garden that is one part agriculture and one part sculpture. The final step in the design-build process is transformation. Transformation means implementing your design and assessing its success; it means asking, "What impact has my design made on people and how could it be improved?" Transformation also means presenting your idea to the world so that others can benefit from it; it means promoting, celebrating, and spreading your creativity. All of these dispositions—ingenuity, perseverance, and entrepreneurship—are prized in school and beyond.

LEARNING TO DESIGN

By training students to design, and training teachers to incorporate design into their curriculum, Saint Joseph Parish School and RGI are advancing a future generation of inventors and innovators. Design as a way of learning offers myriad benefits.

Design Exercises And Connects Many Skills At Once

Design is a rigorous discipline. It requires the synthesis of information, evidence, and ideas in order to create something new, communicate, or solve a practical problem. Design requires the abilities to research and explore a variety of topics; to identify novel problems; to observe, listen, and respond to user input; to invent and engineer solutions; to prototype and test concepts; to edit and optimize ideas with discipline; and ultimately, to implement solutions that propel people into the future. Most of these skills are transferrable to other practices and disciplines, and they enhance a person’s competitiveness in higher education and the workplace.

Design Is A Platform For Multidisciplinary Study
Design combines language arts, math, science, social studies, and art. It also provides opportunities to explore physics, engineering, computer science, psychology, anthropology, history, marketing, and other specialized subjects, simultaneously.

Design Bridges Diverse Learning Styles
Design engages multiple intelligences at once, creating unique opportunities for students to find common ground with peers whose abilities complement their own.

Design Is Enticing
We live in a design-saturated world, and today’s young people will be more design-literate than any previous generation—but design is also elusive, cool, and aspirational. Training students in design differentiates them with discipline and experience to back literacy; it equips them with a cutting-edge skill for improving lives.

LEARNING TO BUILD

Though we live our lives increasingly online, we will always inhabit physical space and require skilled makers of all kinds. By training students to build their ideas, and by helping teachers incorporate building into their curricula, Saint Joseph Parish School and RGI are advancing a future generation of engineers, carpenters, and makers. Build as a way of learning offers myriad benefits.

Build Engages Students In Engineering

The act of building engages students in the application of mathematics and physical sciences. Building helps students master abstract concepts like gravity, mass, force, and pressure, and helps them hone their spatial awareness.

Build Promotes Communication

Building can be done individually or collaboratively. In both cases, the built object must clearly communicate its purpose and functionality to users. Building collaboratively enables effective communication within the team.

Build Teaches Students Safety

Building with tools requires students to master fundamental principles of safety, instilling safety awareness, self-discipline, and responsibility.

Build Is A Multi-Sensory Experience

Building engages the visual, tactile, aural, and even olfactory senses—think of cutting into fresh pine. In our world of screens and simulated reality, building provides students with a fresh sensory landscape to explore and a new way to connect with the physical world. For students who crave sensory input and kinetic outlet, building can be a very fulfilling activity and an important opportunity for achievement.

Build Fosters Grit

Building is the final act of innovation. Without building an idea, an idea is just an idea—building makes it real, bringing it to actualization and achievement. The process of building requires prototyping, revision, precision, and perfection. By building things, students experience the satisfaction of realizing an idea from concept to completion, and they develop the motivation to persevere through challenges.