We are about to embark on a new adventure at St George's School!  Based on the success of our Discovery and Connect programs, where 20 grade 10 boys each year have an opportunity to delve deeply into a particular area of interest, we are launching Fusion, a STEM cohort.

This year, 21 of our boys will be given the opportunity to follow their passion (or maybe discover a passion) for things Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  The end goal is that these boys will have the knowledge and tools to not only create solutions to complex problems, but also to discover problems worth solving.  Their Math, Science and Fusion (Fusion is a course that focuses on design thinking skills) class occur back to back, every second day of their school schedule and will be planned together in order that the connections between the subjects are leveraged in a natural way.  The hope is that stand alone lectures in any one of these courses will be rare as design problems involve essential aspects of the Science and Math curricula.  Science and Math are used to solve and test Engineering problems that the students are working.

Initially, these design problems will come from the Math and Science curricula.  This will give us a chance to make sure that all areas of the courses are addressed and that specific design and problem solving skills are learned.  As time goes on, and students knowledge and skills develop, the program will become more student-centred.  Students will identify problems worth solving and problems that they have an interest in exploring.

Students will connect with the world outside of the school as much as possible through physical visits to local universities and engineering firms.  They will also connect virtually through blogs like this one.  The hope is that the conversations that the boys have with experts in engineering and design fields will deepen their understanding and interest for the work that they are doing.  This site will connect you to the students' work and offer a teacher's perspective on what we are doing.

Please bookmark this blog or follow us via RSS.  Join the conversation through commenting.  It is going to be an exciting adventure.  Who knows exactly where we will end up end, but we will all learn a lot from the journey!