#ihaveanidea is born!

#ihaveanidea was born out of the friendship, camaraderie, and vision of two ambitious, free-thinking, optimistic educators. It’s become a morning ritual to start the day by opening our adjoining door and nine times out of ten, our first words to each other would be, ”Oh my gosh- I have an idea.”…or “okay, so I had this idea…” and thus, the creating began.

We have been together for barely two years, yet the similarities in our teaching styles are hard to miss. The first thing we noticed about each other was that we both lean toward hands-on, project-based learning. We both hold firm to the opinion that when it comes to developmental appropriateness for first graders, creative projects that tie the curriculum together and spark curiosity, fun and engagement, trump worksheets every time. With that in mind, we decided that this year we were determined to start a STEAM center in our classroom that would be used often, in an orderly and organized fashion, that challenged kids to think, plan,create, write, reflect and persist time and time again. We knew we wanted our students to follow the design process so that they would have an organized method for creating. We knew that in this way, the learning would hold value. We were not sure what this would look like, but we were determined. We began with the end in mind (thank you Stephen Covey) and looked at the heart of the learning we were trying to expose our students to.

Here is one list that outlines the benefits of using Design Thinking in the classroom. This was written by a man named John Spencer and found on George Couros’ Twitter page(@gcouros). George is our new hero! 🙂

John Spencer (@spencerideas) says:

---

We hope you enjoyed our first blog post as much as we enjoyed writing it! Please come back soon. We are so excited to share our teaching experiences with you!

Jess & Laura