What is our why?


Hello! 
Welcome to our little slice of the internet we are calling Impact from the Middle. Hoping to document our progress (and hiccups), this blog aims to serve as an inspiration to ourselves and others to make an impact on our world.

Who are we and what are we doing?
We are three middle school educators rising to the (design) challenge of creating and facilitating a course called Impact Design Lab at The Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, Georgia. The course, offered to every 8th grade student, meets every other day for the entire academic year. 

What is our why?
Simply put, we hope to expose our "student-designers" to many laps of the design thinking process at gradually increasing scale, beginning with a partner in class and increasing to a partner in the community. The hope is that the student-designers will be empowered by the invaluable mindsets inherent within the design thinking process and that those mindsets will be transferrable to all facets of the student-designers' lives--ultimately to design a better world. 

How do we plan to accomplish this goal?
Here at The Mount Vernon School, we are guided by our mission statement:
We are a school of INQUIRY, INNOVATION, and IMPACT.
Grounded in Christian values, we prepare all students to be college ready, globally competitive, and engaged citizen leaders.

We operate with a set of five cultural behaviors which are woven through our learning, our
relationships, and our work. Our first norm is:  
Start with questions.


Here are some of our essential questions that guide our thinking as we design this course for our student-designers.

How might we (HMW) make school more reflective of real life? 

HMW empower all learners to be seekers and explorers?

HMW inspire one another - and the larger world - through the work we undertake together? 
Follow along as we seek to address these questions. We will fail up along the way, and we will share the well when we succeed. We will assume the best, and, perhaps most importantly, we will have fun.




We are a work in progress! 

Follow along on Twitter @TheMVDesignLab #impactfromthemiddle
Kevin Day @knowKMD
Todd Wass @toddw42
Ryan Welch @welch79

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