Over the last several years, Seven Hills has made a major push into “design thinking.”  Our goal has been to give our students in all four divisions opportunities to hone their creative problem-solving skills 

Lotspeich’s Project Math curriculum, Doherty’s Creation Studio, the Middle School’s Innovation Lab, and a host of engineering and computer science courses in the Upper  School give our students extensive experience with the design thinking process developed at Stanford University. This process involves several steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, assess. So, in our design thinking units or courses, students are engaged in understanding the needs of other people, defining a challenge in their lives, ideating potential solutions, developing a prototype to address it, testing its effectiveness, and then redesigning it to maximize its utility.

Just this past week, I witnessed two powerful examples of the design thinking process. During their annual Bridges Unit, the Lotspeich second grade students researched the designs of various bridges from all over the world. They then prepared scale models and triptychs to demonstrate what they had learned. Then, over this past weekend, a group of fourth and fifth grade students, trained by Laura OGrady, participated in the First Lego League Robotics Competition hosted, for the first time ever, here at Seven Hills.

These — and a host of other similar design projects — help hone students’ design and engineering skills but, even more impressively, the emphasis is on a creative process that is rooted in compassion and empathy. It is most gratifying to see our students rising, with such obvious energy and enthusiasm, to these real-life challenges.

I hope you all enjoy a restful holiday season. Many thanks for all you have done to support Seven Hills in the past year, and all the best in the year ahead.