Altitude Inc.’s Evan Gant and Alex Tee Introduce Boston Public School Middle Schoolers the Art of Classroom

- Students Win Innovation Award for their Class Room Redesign

Eleven Boston Public Middle School students recently won the “Innovation” award for their redesign of their middle school classroom. Citizen Schools, is an non-profit organization that creates after-school programs to help enhance the education of young adults by engaging them in hands-on learning projects. Volunteers Evan Gant, Industrial Designer, and Alex Tee, Mechanical Engineer of Altitude, Inc., introduced the Citizen Schools students to the design process and tasked them with redesigning their own classroom. Traditional classrooms present an ideal forum for design improvement because the students are truly experts in the spaces they use daily.
Encouraging them to adapt their “blue sky” ideas to the realities and constraints of the school was an excellent learning adventure. They were quickly able to identify that the solution not only needed to suit their needs, but all of the other stakeholders such as the teachers, janitors and other classmates. The students then had six weeks to turn their chosen design direction into life size models, with the added challenge of using recycled cardboard to construct them.
The culmination of their efforts was realized on December 15th at the Design & Development WOW! -- a showcase in which participating students from within the Citizen School program could present their ideas to their peers, teachers, families and a panel of judges. Alex and Evan’s students won the ‘Innovation Award’ for their outstanding efforts.