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Grade 8 students Lauren Anderson (left) and Taylor Machado (right) work on a socially conscious project, recycling milk bags to weave bedding
for the homeless in Haiti.
an inspiring talk on her role at Google
as Head of Industry: Food & Beverages.
Green spoke about the focus at Google on
sharing any and all ideas through weekly
company-wide meetings and pretotyping,
where engineers are encouraged to fail
quickly and fail often in a way that allows
for more time and resources to be dedicated
to iterating improved concepts over time,
rather than getting it right the first time. At
the end of her talk, someone asked Green
what advice she would have for herself
as a Middle School student. To this, she
stressed that at their stage of life, it often
seems like you are on a linear path from A
to B to C, where to achieve a specific career
goal you must complete clear prerequisites.
However, she notes that it’s more often that
working diligently on areas in which you are
passionate leads to unexpected outcomes
and uncovering success that might not have
been clear from the beginning.
Self-directed learning requires students to
think about school in a new way. A.J. Juliani,
in his book
Inquiry and Innovation in the
Classroom
, says to teachers and parents:
“Even when [a] student spends their time
doing nothing, you’ve already succeeded in
giving them choice. The next time they’re
given choice, maybe they’ll handle it
differently.” Form teacher Heather Barr (7D)
echoed this in her thoughts on the Form
Challenge: “The type of energetic, messy,
hands-on, often-chaotic experimenting
and learning I witnessed was exponential.
Some girls became chemists: trying out new
recipes for bath products until the perfect
consistency was reached. Others researched
non-toxic ingredients for nail polish. They
all became proficient in creating a pitch for
their idea or product. The volume level was
high, working cooperatively was a necessity
and every second of Form Challenge time
was used as the girls were highly motivated
by their own choice of inquiry topic. The
result? A teacher’s dream classroom!”
As Havergal continues to embrace the 2020
vision for a Minds Set Free in Grades 5 to 8,
the Form Challenge is yet another example
of how we encourage and provide time and
space for students to work through their
creative ideas.
SPRING 2017 •
TORCH
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