St. Martin's Episcopal School

St. Martin's Episcopal School

The school is focused on achieving academic rigour by emphasizing student-centered, project-based learning and design thinking as an approach to problem solving.

State: Louisiana Number of Students: 488
School Type: Parochial School Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A
Grade Level: PK-12 English Language Learners: N/A

School Context

Design Thinking & PBL: St. Martin’s is focused on achieving academic rigour by emphasizing student-centered, project-based learning and design thinking as an approach to problem solving.

Christian Faith: St. Martin’s provides religious instruction to students in the Episcopal faith. Students in every grade levelattend chapel services weekly.

The Whole Child: St. Martin’s is focused on personal development, not just academic development. The school offers avariety of programs including art, music and athletics to prepare students for meaningful, productive lives.

Service Learning: St. Martin’s is focused on building leadership in students through service-learning opportunities. Thesecommunity outreach programs which are often student-led are required for graduation.

Building Relationships: St. Martin’s is focused on creating collaborative relationships both within and outside of the schoolin order to build a larger sense of community. Team-building, trust and personal relationships are emphasized.


State of Technology

BYOD Plus: A variety of devices can be found at anytime across St. Martin’scampus, due to the school’s BYOD (bring your own device) policy at thehigh school. Students are encouraged to bring their personal laptops toschool every day. Also, in 2014 St. Martin’s decided to remove the school’scell phone ban. Today, K-12 students, with permission from a teacher, canuse their personal cell phones for academic purposes throughout the day.In addition to personal devices, the school provides elementary and middleschool classrooms with computers and iPads.

Innovation + Design Program: Inspired by the principles of design thinkingfrom Stanford’s Design School, St. Martin’s developed their own innovation and design program in 2013. The Innovation + Design Program is a school-wide initiative that promotes the use of design thinking with integrated, project-based learning. Students at all levels work on projects that areintegrated with core curriculum in the classroom. The program encouragesstudents to learn about real-world issues such as local citizenship andglobal poverty and share their findings with an authentic audience.

Idea Lab: The hub of the Innovation + Design Program is called the IdeaLab which is located in the middle and upper school’s library. Inspiredby MIT’s Fab Lab, this space was created in 2013 to provide students theopportunity to learn by doing. The Idea Lab is part studio, part classroomand part community workspace. There are two full-time staff members whowork closely with teachers and students on projects. The space features 3-Dprinters, modeling software, green screens and audio and video equipmentthat make the prototyping step possible. In fall 2016, a new $1.1 million,5,000 square foot, stand alone design lab will be completed. When thishappens, the Idea Lab will become a collaboration center for classes.

STeaM Lab: The STeaM Lab launched in August 2014 to support theInnovation + Design program for students in PreK through fifth grade.This lab functions like a makerspace for projects in science, technology,engineering, arts and math (STeaM). It is located in the lower school andhas one full-time staff member working with teachers and students onprojects that happen both in the lab and in the classroom. The STeaM Labfeatures a 3-D scanner, 3-D printers and LEGO robotics equipment.

Instagram & More: Teachers at St. Martin’s integrate technology intoinstruction as much as possible. For example, in Spanish class, elementarystudents use cell phone camera’s to take photos of everyday objects andthen label them with the correct Spanish words. In art class, students takephotos of their work and upload them to an Instagram account so that theycan observe their progress throughout the year. Many teachers also postscreenshots of the notes they took on their digital whiteboards during thedaily lesson to classroom websites so that students have access to them.


Tech Needs & Requirements

St. Martin’s will be looking for new audio and video equipment for the new production studio that will be built as a part ofThe Gibbs Family Center for Innovation and Design in 2016. St. Martin’s is also looking to update their network infrastructure and introduce cloud storage and collaboration tools.


Initiatives

New Design Lab: Following the launch of the Innovation + Design Program in 2013, St. Martin’s has announced theconstruction of a new facility, The Gibbs Family Center for Innovation and Design. The stand-alone building, slated to openin fall 2016, will be the first in the region devoted to the design thinking curriculum. The center will be located in the middleof campus and will include a woodworking shop and a full production studio, complete with audio, video and lightingequipment as well as a full suite of post-production editing software.

Email Migration: St. Martin’s is in the process of migrating from their current email client, Microsoft Exchange, to Gmail.

*Content From 2015

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