During five spring weeks in Boston’s North End, NuVuX’s Head of Product Design, Kate James, brought design studio methodology to the Eliot Innovation School’s kindergarten class. The goal, as always, was to help the Eliot School become more innovative through the development of projects—not by teaching directly, but by working alongside teachers to bolster their learning goals in a more hands-on way.
Kate’s relationship with Eliot is not a new one. As the school’s NuVuX point person for the past three years, Kate has built strong relationships with Eliot staff and students, offering her expertise in an agile way—from mentoring their first Lego robotics team and setting up laser cutters in their Makerspace to consulting with teachers on creating hands-on components for lesson plans that foster a deeper, project-based curriculum.
During this spring session, Kate created Kindergarten City for—you guessed it—Eliot’s kindergarten class. As Kate explains, one of NuVuX’s models involves meeting with teachers to discover what their current curriculum looks like, then designing a project-based component that complements those lessons.
“Since the kindergarteners were studying construction, cities, and the machines that build them, I decided to design a studio that encouraged them to think about urban design and recreation through the recognizable elements of the city they walk through every day.”
First came the prep work: reading books about city design, brainstorming, and discussing the city the students see every day. Then came the committees: transportation, housing, shopping, and community buildings. “So we broke them up and gave them categories to think about and now they've all designed the most hilarious, wonderful little thoughts about it.” From a striped time machine and dragon park to polka-dotted hospitals and even a lava pool, the students stretched their imaginations—all while thinking about where each building would fit within their neighborhoods, as well as questions of scale and usability.
For this age group, putting these fundamentals into practice becomes the true learning experience. “Ideas such as when do you use tape and when do you use glue when you're making something? How do you make something tall, stay on a platform in a stable way? You have to give it roots,” she explains. “Just teaching them these fundamental things has been a really big deal and then we try to push their ideas and way of thinking.”
“There have been several classes where the teacher has said to me ‘I can't believe how engaged the kids are!’ One time a teacher announced that if kids wanted to go to recess they had to stop now or keep working and miss recess, and every single child said, "Absolutely, we're staying!" So they're missing recess in order to finish their projects, to which there's no better testament.”
Eliot kindergarten teacher Caitlain Hutto says having the NuVuX perspective is a resource that expands her teaching in ways she never thought possible. “Kate gives me ideas about working with materials, access points for kids, and brings me out of my comfort zone. For instance —she introduced us to a child safe cardboard cutter and showed us how it doesn’t have to be a scary thing—I feel like I've learned so much from being taken out of my comfort zone.”
Caitlain has been teaching for the past two decades and has already “drunk the Kool-Aid” of project-based learning, but she says that with NuVuX’s help, she and other Eliot teachers have realized that kids need to make use of their hands at all grade levels. “I think NuVuX has helped me understand project based learning in a much deeper way,” she says. “I wouldn't have thought ‘oh we could do a hands-on project with this,’ but now it comes more naturally, and I think the kids learn so much more from it.”
“I can honestly say I think Kate and NuVuX have helped us bring our projects to life,” says Caitlain, “and that makes learning so much more fun!”
