NAIS | 7
ally delivering energy back to the grid. Yet,
global sustainability is also a critical area of
focus, and Bassett refers to private schools
participating in an NAIS initiative known as
Challenge 20/20. An online-program that
allows for virtual exchange between K-12
students from schools in the U.S. with their
counterparts in schools of other countries;
Challenge 20/20 connects teams of students
seeking solutions to one of 20 seemingly
insolvable global problems. In one case, a
composite of students from the Montessori
School of Denver partnered with a school in
Tanzania to identify solutions for reducing
the outbreak of malaria. While the resolv-
ing of that issue remains critical to nations
throughout Africa and other areas, the ex-
change between students and the process of
identifying potential strategies is a critical
teaching tool for all involved.
Bassett says one of the current educa-
tional trends involves recognition of creativ-
ity as an important skill. He says, unfortu-
nately, schools are too often where creativity
goes to die through a process he describes as
“drill and kill.” Bassett says high-stakes test-
ing and reliance on worksheets as opposed
to hands-on training models has resulted in
increasing student disengagement, but pri-
vate schools, in equipping students with 21st
Century skills, have increasingly become
incubators for creativity and entrepreneur-
ship. Bassett references schools such as As-
pen Academy (CO) which not only teaches
traditional subjects, but constructs a curric-
ulum with entrepreneurship as the primary
theme. Students are provided with mentors
and are actually tasked to create a business.
In this case, outcomes involving creativity
are tracked, measured and scored in con-
junction with typical academic metrics.
At Cushing Academy in Massachu-
setts, Bassett says the school has deployed an
iPad application into seminar table-tops (an
iTable) which imparts cross collaboration
with Internet-based research functionalities.
Meanwhile, at Falmouth Academy, another
Massachusetts-based private school, cre-
ativity and collaboration has prompted ad-
vancements in robotics. Students here were
recently tasked with creating a submersible
robot which could find an object at the bot-
tom of a dark pond, secure a rope around
it and deliver the object to the surface. The
team leader of that initiative went on to se-
cure a scholarship to MIT.
