This week we join our co-host Hiram Cuevas and his colleagues from St. Christopher's School as they delve into their unique "BUILD" program, designed to integrate innovation, learning, and design across all grade levels. Discover how this all-boys school cultivates curiosity, encourages hands-on projects, and fosters a safe environment for learning from failure.

• BUILD (Boys Using Innovation to Learn and Design) program, combining STEM/STEAM approaches with a broad, skills-based, project-centered focus
• Album of photos from St. Christopher’s BUILD program lab
• The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway, author, professor, and entrepreneur Scott Galloway brings business analysis and insights four times a week.
• St. Christopher's School
• International Boys' Schools Coalition (IBSC)
• Canva
• Glowforge
• Cricut
• FIRST LEGO League
• St. Catherine's School
• University School (Cleveland)
• Richard V. Reeves (Books)
• Photo of Bill with his melee weapon gift from Hiram

Ed, welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host, Kristina llewellen, hello

everyone,

and welcome back to talking technology with

Atlas. I'm Kristina llewellen, the president and CEO of the

Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey, and

I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Virginia.

Hello and Good Morning, guys. I have

missed you, and I always look forward to seeing you each week.

So how's everybody? How you doing? I'm doing

very well. That's good. It's smiley spring. It is

finally

getting there, and Bill. We're gonna

drop this pod in a while, so it'll be some time, but it was

your birthday. It was can you tell everyone what your darling

bromance gave you your BFF, Hiram? Oh, yes. What did Hiram

get you for your birthday?

Hiram sent me a melee weapon for the zombie

apocalypse. It's about as long as my forearm has got multiple

cutting surfaces as well as a nice sharp pointy end, because,

as they say in Game of Thrones, sticking with the pointy end, I

literally got this box. It looked like a small box of roses

one might send their loved one. That's what it looked like. And

it was sent from my loved one, and it was, in my mind, equal to

a bouquet of roses. It was my new melee weapon of choice. My

wife looked at it, and she's just simply said, Oh no, what

did Hiram do? And I pulled it out, and I showed it to her, and

she looked at me, and she said, What are you going to do with

that? I'm going to sharpen it up, run around and pretend I'm

in the zombie apocalypse in my backyard. I'm going to play like

a big kid, and then when Hiram comes, we'll just act stuff out

like we did when we were in the VR zombie at the last Atlas

conference. You can't

go wrong, Peter, producer, Peter, I think

you need to make a little note that if the guys are fighting

with weapons in the backyard, I think we're gonna need to record

that. I mean, oh my god, y'all well, and

we've got a picture, so I'm happy to share

pictures. I'm sure Hiram can provide purchasing advice for

those concerned about the zombie apocalypse and when it comes and

what you need to do. This will never need to be reloaded. This

will never need any type of spark to ignite anything. This

is the perfect weapon. And

as Nicole mentioned, World War Z is the

book to read 100%

is it a toy or is it a real weapon? Oh,

no, no. No, no. It's legitimately forged steel.

No. Chrissy, check your text messages because you've got a

picture of it in your phone. I thought it was

a toy. I mean, it's kind of colorful.

Jen, you sent a weapon in the mail to Bill. What is wrong with

you?

Oh, and it came in a zombie box. It was designed

for zombie aficionados.

This is out of control, it is, but you brought

it up. It's about as close as to Lobo as you could get. That's

what I was thinking.

For all of you curious listeners, we will

put a link in the show notes to the picture that was dropped in

our group chat a few days ago. I'm not sure how I feel about

mailing weapons to people, but Bill Happy Birthday anyway.

Thank you very much. I will tell you side note

for a wedding gift. I did get a potato cannon from one of my

groomsmen, so it's right in line with the type of gifts I get.

It's a perfect segue. It is, and that came from a friend called

Evil Paul. That's his name, and my wife loves him, as she does

with Hiram.

Okay, y'all bill is fired up today. I mean

potato cannons, and do not bring a potato cannon to the Atlas

conference. Okay, I don't have enough insurance for that. All

right, so here we are today, recording another fiery podcast,

and we're really excited because we've been wanting to do this

for a while. Some of you who have been listening to us for a

bit know that on occasion, Hiram will talk to us about his stem

and innovation program at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Virginia. He refers to it as the build program. And what I think

is really cool is that we've decided to actually talk about

that program. We've talked about some of MKA stuff with Bill and

his team before, so now we're going to spend some time on

Hiram school with some of Hiram colleagues. So Hiram, I'm going

to actually give you just a second. To to tell us a little

bit about what build stands for, and you've got a couple of

friends with you there in the office, so please introduce us

to your colleagues.

Thank you so much, Kristina, and we're very excited

to showcase the build program. I think it's fair to say, when the

acronym build was developed, we were trying to really brand STEM

or STEAM or stream, because it went through multiple

iterations, yeah, into something that was very, very meaningful

for our community. We are an all boys school, J, K to 12, and so

we came up with the concept of build, which stands for boys

using innovation to learn and design. And since we also belong

to the international Boys School coalition, it really resonated

very well with that community. And one of our very own Ty

Campbell at the Gilman school is also part of the ibsc. As a

result, we came up with the bill program for branding purposes.

Really focused a great deal on how to execute this concept

across the lower the middle and the upper schools. And as a

result, I've brought in with us my colleagues from each of the

divisions, and our upper school person is also the build

coordinator across all of the curricular strands, and we're

all here to showcase and share what we've encountered and

learned that's really cool. I'll start with our lower school. So

we have Gayle Warren in our lower school. Good

morning. I had the pleasure of working with JK

through fifth grade boys and teachers. We have a unique

approach to our build program in the Lower School. We have a

Learning Commons model. I can speak more to that a little bit

later, but it's definitely a wonderful program that we

collaborate with our librarians, and we have instructional techs

as well. Yeah.

David Shin, in the middle school, hi Kristina.

Hi Bill. Good morning. Nice to meet you. My

name is David Chen. I teach in the middle school. I'm a science

teacher here at St Christopher, nice

to meet you, too. Hi. Kristina bill, I am Jim Guyon. I

am the JK 12 build coordinator, Upper School teacher and

instructional technologist. I teach few classes in the Upper

School, and I work with teachers in the Upper School and across

all the divisions to help integrate our build program

across the curriculum.

Awesome and Christina, one of the

interesting things is, from a departmental perspective, it's

not in a computer department. It's actually incorporated in

the arts department as part of our overall JK through 12 model.

That's really

cool. So you guys are obviously stringing

this all the way through the life cycle of your students,

right? That you start at the Lower School, and you have a way

that this applies to them, and then to middle and then to high

school. Tell me the origin of build, what that kind of stands

for, and what has it come to mean? How long have you guys

been doing it? Build

actually stands for boys using innovation to learn

and design. And like everything we do here at St Christopher's,

our build program is informed by what we know about how boys

learn. And so it's really based on the idea that we are trying

to spark boys sense of curiosity and wonder. We know that boys

learn by doing, and so our project across the curriculum,

in all levels, is based on skills, space, Project centered.

It incorporates best practices for what we know about boys,

which is project based, learning, technology infused,

applications, competition and hands on experiences. And so

we're trying to bring that to our boys right across the

curriculum, by getting their hands dirty, by actually getting

them to build things and make things and think about how to

design things. There's a lot of iteration. There's a lot of just

actually doing things and being okay with failure. Having

this program across all levels had to be

pretty intentional, and I know we'll get into some of the

specifics on that. But was this something that you had all

buttoned up with a bow and said, Hey, here's our new build

program, and went out to your community and your teachers with

it all at once, or was it something that sort of grew over

time?

Well, we were always interested in developing

a STEM program and finding opportunities for our boys to

engage in design thinking. And the challenge that we had is we

kept seeing this particular niche go into several

iterations. You had steam, you had stream, you had stem, and at

one point, the head of our upper school said, Why don't they just

call it school? Because they were trying to incorporate so

many different things that we needed to really hone in on what

we wanted to do. Make sure it was mission driven. Make sure it

satisfied how boys learn best, and the genesis of build

occurred. So

now, can you guys talk to me a little bit

about how it. This plays out in each of those divisions, because

obviously you have the representation there. Let's

start with the Lower School, with Gayle. How do you guys fly

the build concept to your lower school? So I feel like

ours is a really organic approach to the build

program. We had the Learning Commons model, which essentially

is the librarians and the technology instructional

technologists in the Lower School, we meet with every grade

level once a month, and so we are hoping that we're not

teaching anything in isolation. We don't want it to be skill

driven in that aspect, we actually talk to them about what

their curricular needs are, and we build our build program from

that, for instance, in kindergarten, they are studying

communities and habitats, and they may be building igloos. And

fifth grade, they're learning about Ancient Greece. And so we

have the boys develop a breakout room, and we dress at our

costumes, and we build Aqua Dots and catapults competitions. So

we do all kinds of things with our teachers, and it's really

been an awesome thing. It's been at least a decade in the making

as far as the Learning Commons, and it has definitely grown.

It's more like I said begin with. It's more organic, and

every year, I feel like we add and morph and evolve, which has

been really a great process to be a part of, really fosters

curiosity with the boys. A lot of it's project based, which is

just incredible. Some of the things that the boys come up

with, and I think that really has helped. As far as our

curriculum overall, we're seeing such growth as far as the

application process with other subject areas we work with

everything from art to social studies and history and science

foreign world languages that we have. We just did a program last

night. It was our Saint celebrate the world. And there

were lots of components of build within that process where we

invite community members in parents and the boys get to

actually showcase them and their families what their heritage is.

And so it's an awesome process to see

Hi again. This is David. I'm really encouraged,

and I think Jim and Gayle and Hiram can agree to this, that

COVID Or no COVID, zoom or no zoom, the idea of curiosity and

wonder has not died. And I'm so optimistic that whether it's a

boy school or a girl school or CO ed school, like the idea that

we really have amazing kids who wonder and who are curious about

things is really cool. And I think schools should really

foster that and encourage that, and love that. In the middle

school, the idea of tackling a problem through a project, and I

guess you have to grade it, because there's a report card,

so there's part of that too. But in the science department, we

have really low tech stuff, like we drop a raw egg off of our

second floor balcony and the third floor balcony and, Oh man,

it's like, so low budget, and it's still so so much fun. And

we still calculate kinetic energy, potential, energy,

force, velocity, acceleration, really, really neat, like

science variables. And then we also use some high tech stuff,

like computer assisted design software through some a company

called white box, in the beginning of the year, we design

bridges, and you get first place if your bridge is the lightest

and carry the most weight. So we do a competition using those

bridges. So we go kind of from high tech to low tech, and the

theme of curiosity and competition and just the love of

like, I wonder, what happens if I rip this parachute in the

middle? You know, is it going to go faster straighter? What's the

physics behind this? So I love that part of our curriculum. My

least favorite part is like, I still have to grade them. But

beyond that, they're still really happy if their egg drops

without cracking. So I love that part. Hi. This

is Jim in

the Upper School. This is just my second year

here. So over the last two years, the build program in the

Upper School has incorporated largely Well, every ninth grader

goes through my classroom, they get essentially a quarter of

instruction in the build Lab, which is basically an

introduction to all of the tools that we have there, which is

everything from just basic build tools like screwdrivers and

hammers, and we also have 3d printers and laser cutters and a

lot of different tools, sewing machines. We have a kitchen, a

little bit everything, and I try to get the kids hands on every

tool over the course of their time with me. In addition to

that, we want to give them an introduction to sort of a

structured problem solving method that they can use just

across their lives. But in this classroom specifically, and for

us, that's the design thinking model. And so we try to

incorporate that. I try to teach them that through the projects

that we're doing, just get them through to go through a

structured process, to solve problems, working their way

through what is an iterative process, one that has failure

built into the model, because particularly our high school

kids don't have a lot of opportunities in their academic

life to fail being able to do something that the process is

the point. Yes, of course, we want there to be a thing at the

end, but how you get there is more important than necessarily

what's at the end. So that's a big part of what we do. And so I

do that in that ninth grade class. I get every single ninth

grade I also have an elective that's open to anyone, and then

a good part of my day is just being in that lab and being a

resource for students who have other projects in other areas

that involve making a poster or making a model or doing

something else, and being a resource in that room for that

opportunity. We're at the point now, though, where I'm finding I

have now students that have been through the program since Lower

School, and so some of those introductory skills are becoming

less and less important. And so what we're thinking about now

is, how does that program morph into something that's different?

How do we use our time better? How do we be a better resource

for the kids? Because I'm not having to teach, here's how you

use a 3d printer. I'm not having to teach, here's how you use a

CAD program. They've already seen that, and they've heard

some of these ideas of how design thinking works. And so

how do we build on what we've already done? And so that's

where we're at. Now,

Jim, I want to dig in on something because you

mentioned something earlier. You kind of just expanded on it

there, and it's something that I'm very intrigued by, and I've

tried to talk to as many people about what it means to them, and

that has to do with the idea of being okay or embracing failure

as something that you can learn from how do you have those

conversations with the students? How do you have those

conversations with the teaching faculty there, in terms of using

failure as a teaching tool, as a method for learning and growing.

From what do those conversations look like?

So with students, those conversations are very

often you seem like you're paralyzed here. What is your

concern? Why is it difficult to start? Why can we not get moving

forward? And a lot of times, if you can tease out where that's

coming from is it is a genuine fear of failure. The idea that

your first draft has to be a perfect draft is really powerful

with a lot of our kids, many of whom consider themselves to be

and by all accounts, are high performing students. And so

being able to just say, look, it is okay. It's a draft. It's

supposed to be a draft. In fact, if you did it right the first

time, what would you learn from it? You'd know only what you

know now. And so being able to sort of divorce that from what

is traditionally a writing assignment or a math assignment,

being able to divorce that and put it together with building a

bridge or designing the ultimate desk organizer, being able to

divorce that from what's a traditional sort of academic

goal, and then say, Look, do you know if this is going to work?

No, we'll try it. And then if it doesn't, then you know something

you didn't know before you know what doesn't work. There's a

great quote by I think it's Edison. I haven't failed. I've

learned 10,000 ways it doesn't work. I think that's just

fabulous, and I use it a lot. The only way to learn is to try

something, have it not work, and then figure out how it can and

so how I bring that to the teachers is the idea is, look,

in this project, how many drafts are you doing? Are they all

graded? How much feedback are they getting? And a lot of our

teachers are already doing that. But putting that in terms of

explicitly, in terms of a methodology for solving a

problem, put it in terms in a structured way to go about

getting to a goal with multiple iterations, I think it just

helps reframe a lot of what they're already doing. Really.

The

other question that I have for that is something for

all three of you. And Gayle, you kind of mentioned it with

regards to the Learning Commons, in terms of going in and working

with the classroom teachers. And Jim, you talked about it from

the science perspective. And the egg drop is actually something

we do, not at quite the technical level that I think you

might be doing, but we do that with our third graders in terms

of introducing those concepts. Jim, you said you have the kids

for a quarter in the ninth grade. What does this look like

in the context of, how does this get into the classroom, whether

it's at the lower the middle or the upper school, are they

pulled out classes? You've got them for a quarter to introduce

it. At the lower school, you know, what does that look like?

And at the middle school, what does that look like? Because in

a lot of these cases, we'll hear about schools that are putting

together like a maker space, or they've got stem but it's

generally done in isolation. It's pulled out. It's a set

class that really doesn't connect. What does that look

like across the different divisional levels?

Well, in the Lower School, it's not a pull out

program at all. Like I said, we meet with each grade level once

a month to talk about where they are in their curriculum, and we

actually push into the classroom. We are a partner

with. Teacher quite often. The first time we do it, it's really

us modeling it for the teacher as well as for the boys that

we're working with. But we are definitely in the classrooms at

first, some teachers are a little leery about it, but they

are quick to just love it and get right on board with us.

That's a question that I had for you is

about that rollout, that change management, tell me again, how

long you guys have been doing this in a really, like,

formalized way, and was the teacher piece of it harder in

the beginning, easier now, because it's a part of the

culture, like, how did you guys manage that?

So in many instances, it's similar to the

computer lab model that we experienced back in the day

where we would interface with the teacher, say, what exactly

are you trying to get done in the classroom? So we had a

little bit of that already in place with that model, and this

married along very easily to get to that next stage, because this

was ownership by the teacher. It wasn't driven by Bill, it wasn't

driven by the computer teacher or the computer lab. It was

driven by the curriculum and the needs of the individual

teachers. So there was already good buy in going into the

project, and we've been doing this now for just over 10 years.

Bill

kind of going back to the idea of failure. I coach

tennis here, and if you ask anyone at our school, who do you

think is like, the least athletic person on campus, I

would probably say, like, David shins up there, like, in the top

three, like, for sure. So, like, I'm probably, like, the last

person you would want on your team. So Hiram,

do not give him a weapon, please. Yeah.

No, you don't want me with a machete. What I

realized when I'm coaching tennis is that it's a really,

really perfect example of when you miss hit something, and you

lose a point, you feel that failure, but you know that the

next ball is coming, the next points come in. So I value this

idea of failure so much, so I think it goes along with

athletics, and the very little I understand about athletics that

I love so much, that you got the next ball, the next point, the

next serve to do, and you just keep rolling. And that I think

really works well with a program like build or like STEM or

STEAM, whatever you call it, in the classroom, because you're

not playing basketball inside the classroom, but you could

build a bridge in a science room and have that be very relevant.

And you can see that just because you broke part of your

bridge does not mean that you're a failure and that your parents

don't love you, you still can do what you can to either fix that

problem or just start over. And it's no big deal. It's just

sticks and glue. So it's really that idea of, I'm not scared to

fail. If I get an A minus versus an A, life will go on and we're

gonna be just fine. And I think build and stem or whatever you

call it, is just a perfect tool to get that very important

lesson in life that failure is good and good for growth and is

part of learning. So how do we get the teachers more involved

and more buying in? I think the idea of failure is such a big

part of education now that it's not something we have to win

people over, just like we know the importance of athletics is.

I mean, we don't have to convince people to play

basketball. People play basketball. It's a very popular

thing to do. I think people and teachers make that correlation

really well nowadays, that part of learning is failing, and that

building something or designing something's a great way to get

to that part of education.

If I could just ask one final high level

question on the failure topic, my co hosts know that I'm a big

fan of Scott Galloway, and he's a business professor and an

entrepreneur and a podcast host, Scott Galloway talks lately a

lot about young men in our country, and you obviously have

as an all boys school are raising and educating young men

as they head out into adulthood, and this topic of failure

specific to boys and young men, I'm Just curious if, in

particular, has your team ever had conversations about that?

Because obviously, failure is a part of innovation, regardless

of gender. But I think that just stopping down and recognizing

that the kind of tough guy image of young men, it's almost as if,

in some ways, we're breaking the mold of them perceiving that

they shouldn't fail, or that they're not allowed to fail,

like the whole you're not allowed to cry thing. I'm just

curious if you guys have had conversations about that,

because I would imagine that creating a safe culture of

failure, it's not just that you're creating a failure

culture. You're creating a safe space to fail. And I'm just

curious if you have any thoughts. Us about that specific

to boys and young men.

I've had those explicit conversations with boys

in my classroom because part of being okay with yourself failing

is understanding that you have to have empathy for other

people's failings as well. And so I've had those explicit

conversations where we're in a group, boys love to joke with

each other, and there is a line where that crosses from simply

joking into something else, and so that line in my classroom,

when we start to approach that line, those conversations happen

right away that yes, what he did didn't work. It may have turned

out funny, but if we're not all laughing together, then we're

doing it wrong, right? We are all going to come to a point

where we have hit something that we don't yet know how to do.

That's what we're trying to do. That's what we're getting. We

are stretching ourselves to a point where you're not going to

know how to do it right the first time, and if you're not,

you're not reaching far enough. And so those conversations

explicitly happen in my classroom, and I'm sure in

everyone else's

I can speak to the Lower School, we also have those

conversations. You know, our boys can be anywhere from four

to 11, and that's actually part of the process. When we talk

about a build project and we're working on something, we have

something called our core values in the Lower School, and we

adhere, as Jim mentioned, to like the kindness piece of it,

not just your failure, but your partner. It's a collaborative

model. We're really intentional about talking about that, that

the first time you try something, it's probably not

going to work, but that's what scientists do all the time. And

so we try, try again. It's worked very well. I feel like

we're so boy centered. I always say to my friends around town,

we do boys. Well, we know boys, and we try to make that a boy

centered environment, and it's safe to fail. It's good to take

a risk there.

So Kristina, we talk about masculinity a lot at our

school, obviously, because it's a boy school, and the guy that

came by to Richmond last week was Richard Reeves. I don't know

if you've ever read any of his books, but he talks a lot about

this kind of like masculinity and how boys are not doing well.

There's higher rates of suicide, higher rates of mental issues.

And I do a lot of research around international boy school

coalition. And just recently, we had a conversation with several

coaches around the world about how athletics programs or being

in a team environment and then not doing well or losing is just

the right place and time for coaches to intervene. So rather

than looking at the typical like boy spaces in the locker room

where you have terrible jokes or whatever, that really offend a

real positive part of athletics, or anytime you're in a team and

you fail, is that it puts you in a safe but vulnerable place. And

it is the place where you have those guards down and you can

talk to them like a human being and really have an effect on

really, the rest of your life, not just a little point that you

just missed. So I love having those moments with kids,

especially in the Middle School, where they are making decisions

about the rest of their lives, just about their character and

who they're going to be and who they want to be, and who they

believe that other people are seeing them as and using those

moments as times where we can really make changes in their

lives. Yeah,

that certainly stretches beyond your

traditional STEM program. So forgive me the question, but I'm

the only non educator on this call at the moment, and so I'm

curious, what is a Learning Commons is that well known?

Like, if I were a teacher, would I know what that is? I

feel like it's a relatively new when I say that

ours has been in place a little over a decade, and we were one

of the first pioneers of that, and it was the idea of not

teaching tech skills or media skills or research skills in

isolation. And so it was adopted by our lower school. At first,

our administration had to kind of say, we're going to go to

this model. And we do our librarians and the other

instructional technologist and I, we work together as partners.

We're always going into a classroom, and the librarian may

be more focused on the research part of it, and I may be helping

boys decide what tool is the best tool for their presentation

or their project, or their build project. And so I really love

the model before coming here, I haven't used it before, but I

really feel like it's a very strong model. It promotes

collaboration, not just amongst the boys, but the teachers as

well. They work collaboratively with us and with our grade

level. It's just amazing. And Kristina,

it shows also the importance of having your

librarians involved with the tech department. Yeah. Because

they have so many skills and so much knowledge about what is

needed also in the classroom, that it's a great marriage

between the instructional technologists and also the

librarians. Our librarians actually attend our tech

meetings, so that they are completely aware of what's going

on across the school. And all of a sudden we find that the cross

pollination has really enhanced our conversations, that we're

actually after the same things. So it has built a great deal of

trust and a great deal of respect between the two

departments. It's

a model that we've had here at MKA since we

launched our one to one program. It's one where, again,

understanding that connection between technology educational

technology in the library specifically for us, not

necessarily around this build example, but for us, it was

around our research cycle, and the way in which technology and

the adoption of technology in the classroom can be impacted by

that research cycle, because that's something that begins in

the early years and goes all the way through high school, to the

point where our director of Ed Tech in the various people that

we have in that role, our previous director of Ed Tech was

our head of libraries at our Upper School in research. So

it's a model that learning commons are. We refer to it as

our upper school, is our academic center, because, again,

you go in, the library is there, the tech office there, the ed

tech office is there. At the middle school, it's adjacent.

We're doing some renovation that'll bring the two of them

together. And at the primary school, it's in a similar model.

So it's a great way to infuse and inject technology best

practice in to the classroom in ways that, you know, Hiram

mentioned earlier, the computer lab model. Well, the computer

labs are gone. And if we don't have classes where people are

coming in, how are we working to get these skills brought into

the classroom? And it's either through the work that you can do

with the librarians, or, similar to what David was saying in

terms of the ways in which you go in in the different

curricular areas to work through those things, it's a great

marriage of the two areas. Yeah.

So if the fabric of your school, Hiram and

I guess this question for Jim too, if you guys are baking this

in to the experience as st Christopher's. So how in the

world do you allocate resources? Like, how do you decide what

technology and or resources to invest in when it's not like,

you're just trying to solve for x for, you know, a science

class, like, we're gonna drop an egg off a building. Go buy eggs

if you're trying to kind of bake this into everything that you

do. How the heck do you approach the acquisition of these types

of resources to support your build program? Well,

the way we have done it here, and much to the school

of credit, I think, is that build has its own budget, and so

all of these pieces that touch lots of different areas that

might get in a different kind of situation. Well, who's paying

for that as a technology, as a classroom, it just comes out of

my budget, and who uses it is not really all that important to

me. If it's being used for the purposes that we've decided,

where it ends up in the school is not that important to me,

because we want these things distributed across the school.

So for me, it's really easy. I just hand them a credit card,

and there it goes. For us, it works really well having someone

like me in this position, really. It makes me a

facilitator. It makes me the champion, and I am the one who

can say, Look, this is a thing that's great. I can give you the

five school entities that are gonna benefit from this, and so

let's just get it,

but you would have to know a little bit

about what the teachers are doing or what the program is

like, right? Because otherwise you would just have this endless

shopping spree. And that's not the case either,

absolutely, most of the projects either I'm involved

with in some way, or at least, sort of get passed to me. We

meet every week as a technology build, library department, that

group meets together every week, and I am out in the classroom as

much as I can. I'm maybe not in the Lower School as much as I

would like, since they're way across the street the other way,

but I am out and talking to teachers as much as I can.

Though I'm not a department chair, I attend a department

chair meeting, so I'm keeping in touch with what's going on in

the various Upper School departments.

And Kristina, one of the things that I think is

helpful is my former job was to be a middle school science

teacher, and when I first arrived here at St

Christopher's, our budget was just a few $100 and I burned

that up in buying safety equipment. So the school has had

the benefit of recognizing that science, art, athletics are

typically the three areas that are most costly, and Bill just

fits in all of those different areas. Now you add technology to

the mix, and it is definitely something that we needed to make

sure that each of the divisions weren't spending monies out of

other areas when we needed to really get a sense of. What was

the overall expenditure for the program? And I think consumables

are the things that really burn up a budget very, very quickly.

Okay, so you kind of have a sense of what you

guys are trying to get to. You have a vision of what your build

program is, and that certainly helps keep it all in a really

focused place, so that the probably the messaging is pretty

good in terms of working with your faculty and having and

having them understand what's available. So now, if I could

ask each of you to tell me a little bit about some examples,

we'll start with lower school and kind of work our way through

the whole experience, the whole pipeline of your students

experience. What does build look like? In terms of some examples?

If you could either give us a couple of projects that are kind

of like the things that the boys always look forward to each year

as they progress along their journey with you, or some cool

projects that you thought turned out better than you could have

expected. I'd love to hear how this actually plays out on the

day to day. The

first one that comes to mind is a relatively

newer project this year. So in world language in fifth grade,

the boys were studying Spanish, French and Latin, and they were

on their Spanish unit, and they were studying different cultural

components of Spanish language. And Gowdy came up, who's a

famous architect, and so I partnered with our Spanish

teacher, and we partnered with our art teacher and all of our

fifth grade teachers. And so the project started out small. We

had some research based knowledge of Gaudi and his

architecture in Spain, and then in art class, the boys were also

given some more information about Gowdy and some of the

artistic qualities of his work, the uniqueness of them. And the

boys in fifth grade used Canva to create a pet house based on

some of the characteristics of Gowdy, and that was printed out.

But they also created their own animal. And they created an

animal using Canva, but we export it as an SVG file. And

the boys made a glow forge 3d animal. And so they were able to

showcase learn their skills with the glow Forge. And so we had

this very collaborative project with basically art, library,

technology, fifth grade teachers and Spanish. It was the entire

curriculum that was one of my favorites, and the boys, it will

be in the hallway. They made a Gowdy village of their famous

pet houses and their pets. And they also use a print press,

which Jim and some of his Makerspace boys actually built

the printing presses for us, and we used that to make prints of

the animals to scatter throughout the hallways as well.

So that was just a big, huge collaborative project in the

Lower School. One

thing that Jim did I really appreciate last year was

that the Lower School had a Lion King play. And my son's in third

grade. He was in second grade last year, and so he was in that

play. And it was really cool to have upper school boys build

some costumes and, like, animal structures, and then lower

school kids were able to, like, put that on for the play. I

thought that was a really cool thing for the middle school. One

other project that I could think of is the car bill. So we learn

about gear ratios and electricity, and we put a car

together and learn about what if you had a small motor gear

connected to a big axle gear, a lot of techie stuff. And then we

race it across the basketball court to see who can make the

fastest car, who can make it accelerate the most. So that's a

lot of fun. Another project that comes to mind is we are involved

with the FIRST LEGO League every year in the fall. This year, our

theme was something about marine life, and so we had bunch of

little missions to do with our robot, and they design gears and

motors to accomplish like 15 to 20 different missions on a

little table. But with that, they have a little project

component where they have to solve a problem. And the kids

came up with this idea of a solar powered beach umbrella.

And I thought it was a really cool idea, because they always

run out of phone charge when they go to the beach. And so

they came up with this idea of putting on solar panels on their

beach umbrella and then having your phones charged, since

they're going to be playing outside all day. We used our

wood shop teacher to come up with a prototype for that. And

so we showed our judges. It was really cool, and they won a

little innovation award to boot for that. So I thought that was

really cool, and a great use of our build system in

the Upper School, we do a variety of projects, both

in the build class and then with other classes, but we've done

things like introduce them to the ideas of universal design,

just sort of incorporate. Operating the idea that they

have to think about the user and accommodate for a diverse

variety of different kinds of users. And we had them design

from scratch and build scale prototypes of an accessible

playground. We have sort of taught the ideas of computer

aided design and taught them additive manufacturing by

designing their own sort of personal improvement device. We

call it some small device that makes their life better in some

meaningful way, usually, because this is what our kids are

focused on. It takes the form of some sort of box or holder for

their phone. But sometimes you get some really innovative

designs from the kids. But it's really, again, all about the

process having them think about, what are the problems in my

life? What can I solve using something that I can make on my

own? As David mentioned, we, again, this year, produced some

costumes for the lower school play. It was Finding Nemo this

year, which was great. I have kids that are now building a

power tool drag racer for a competition at a Maker Faire,

which is going to be, if it doesn't kill anybody, it's going

to be awesome. And we just finished one of my favorite

projects, where we have a physics class that comes into

the lab. They have done some research already. In class about

optics. They come into class we talk about cameras and how

cameras work. They design and build their own pinhole cameras.

We take them over to St Catherine's, where we have a

dark room. They take pictures with their cameras that they've

developed. They develop those pictures, and then we just hung

them in our art space for an art show, and we just sort of

highlight the whole process. And so it sort of runs the gamut of

things that they're producing on a computer using devices and

things that they're making out of cardboard and aluminum foil.

The idea is that each of those projects allows them to think

about design, to think about the design process, and to go

through the whole process with failure in mind, and the idea

that we are going to iterate this and come up with something

at the end that hopefully works.

So Hiram,

I remember probably about five or six years ago, Ben

gurage and I came down when we were looking at our information

systems, but we were also looking at what these types of

programs looked like in schools. And I remember what it looked

like in the science area, where you had this set up there was

kind of like the robotic station amongst many taxidermied animals

in the space. And then there was like a little work room that you

had where it had some of the building type things, and that

was five years ago. If I was to come to campus today, what would

those spaces look like, where this is actually happening

across the different grade levels?

Yeah. So I think the key thing to always be

mindful of is that real estate is always at a premium at a

school, and they're always competing for space. Our build

program is no different. So that space that you saw there is

essentially been replaced by the we have a full fledged build lab

in the luck Leadership Center that Jim manages, and Gayle and

David could bring kids over there as well to work on various

projects, but we do have what I'll call ancillary, or small

auxiliary spaces in the other divisions as well. They are not

as fully functional as our massive build lab. And what

we'll do is we'll include photographs of our large space

for the show notes, so that you can see the tools that all of

our faculty and students have available to them in terms of

accessibility. Gayle, what would you say would be on your wish

list for the Lower School?

Oh, my wish list for the Lower School. I say it

all the time. I think they're tired of hearing me say this. I

would love a maker space like Jim has, and the upper school,

like we said, real estate's at a premium, and so sometimes I

coach the robotics team in the Lower School, and we're in a

particular room with our big table, and then our glow Forge

is in another space, and we have our Cricut and our 3d printer,

that type of thing. Yes, that would be my wish list. Would be

to have a full fledged maker space, to have everything in one

area where the boys could actually come and visit, same

with me right now. The middle school robotics team

kind of uses like a hallway slash outside of the classroom

space,

wherever you can get it done. Right? Some

of your more advanced stem steam programs are

also beside a wood shop. I think Jim, you've been having

conversations about what would an expansion look like for the

build program.

That's my wish list as a building where all of these

things happen together, where we can incorporate a separate lab

for the Lower School, separate lab for the middle school,

separate lab for the upper school, but then also take

advantage of the shared space, where we can put tools that none

of us are going to use all the time, but all of us would love

to have access to and then near that, or off of that, we'd have

a wood shop. We'd have our robotics programs, maybe some

science classrooms, maybe some build areas for our technical

theater and all of the people that we work with, which is a

lot, but to have it all in one place. Call it a build.

Building. Call it a. A industrial arts, call it

whatever. I think it'd be great if we were all in one central

place. Because every time we're together in a just in a room

like this, we find the ideas sort of bounce off of each

other. It'd be great cross curricularly and cross

divisionally, if we were closer to each other. Yeah, I feel

like when we're ever together, we do it's kind

of a spiral thing. We talk about, like the Lower School,

and how pertains to boys in the middle school and the upper

school. It's a really nice format for us to have an

opportunity to get together and talk about those projects. We

actually

had kids in our engineering class last year to

actually design a sort of build building and what that might

look like, which is a really interesting process for them to

go through, because it gave us a lot of insight about what is it

we actually would be looking for in a space like that. So that

was a really fun process. It's always in the back of my mind

when that comes up, I have

no doubt that you guys will move down

that path for sure as time unfolds, and we'll definitely

keep an eye on that, because we have Hiram here to give us

updates and reports as you go, before we start wrapping up and

letting you get on with your day. I do have a question to

kind of bring this home, and that is, if listeners are

inspired by this approach, that you guys have figured out how to

click into place at St Christopher's if they want to

walk this path, do you have any guidance or recommendations on

where they can start, or any potholes to avoid in their

journey. I

think you should definitely visit as many

campuses as possible that have premier facilities. My first

exposure to the joint, I'll call it build and workshop approach,

was at University School in Cleveland, and I came back was

like, You're not gonna believe what I just saw. It was amazing.

This is what our community does. We share, and we share often,

and there's no need to recreate this wheel. Go visit schools.

Bill has done it. I have done it. We've all done it. You go

and you visit schools and you talk to people. Use the listserv

to get hints about what are some of the premier schools that are

out there. We're also always welcome to and accepting of

visitors who want to take a look at our build program here. So

feel free to give us a call and we'll give you a tour. My

recommendation is cardboard and tape. I love

technology. I absolutely love

it. That's a great recommendation.

I absolutely love it. But save every Amazon box, cut

it up and buy some duct tape. And there is just no end to the

things that you can create and the projects that you can make.

I agree,

consumable. That's all we use. And glue sticks.

Yeah, we

just had a STEM Day here at our middle school, and

the amount of cardboard that was throughout the building was

unbelievable. It was everywhere. I'm assuming that the recyclers

knew something was going on once that project was done. I

think one thing that I would like to add is just go

ahead and reach out to community people around your school. All

they can say is, no if you want to reach out to your patent

lawyers and see what kind of things are going on. Maybe they

have ideas that you'd like to take on. If you want to reach

out to local businesses, what kind of problems do they have

and really try to make a connection, reaching out to

members around town, I think is a great way to start too. Yeah,

those community partners are a blessing.

This has been so useful for us. You guys,

thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your program,

you are more than welcome to come back and give us updates as

you go, and we're so grateful that you shared, because I think

sometimes there's a little bit of a tendency to throw some

spaghetti against the wall and see which of these types of

programs stick. But it sounds like st Christopher's has done a

really great job allocating both the energy and having a vision

and a budget to make this a really wrapped up little

program, and make it a real integral part of how you guys

deliver on your promise to your students and your family. So

it's been such a pleasure getting to know all of you and

This program, and I want to thank you for coming on the

podcast. It wasn't too bad, right?

Not at all great. It's fun, Hiram, took good care

of you.

Hiram, thank you so much for bringing your

team. We hear all this stuff from you on a fairly regular

basis, but how cool is it to have your colleagues sitting

there with you to share the same energy that you have. This has

been a real privilege for me and Bill to get to know you guys a

little better. You guys are the best. Thank you so much for

joining us, and good luck in your continued amazing work,

your superhero work you're doing. Thanks so

much. Thank you. Thank you.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

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