Rich Lehrer believes deeply in the potential of authentic making, designing, and STEM experiences to help students become empowered agents for good in their lives, communities, and the world. Formerly the Director of Innovation at Brookwood School, Manchester, MA, Rich is currently the High School Design and Technology Teacher at The International School Nido de Aguilas in Santiago, Chile., a National Faculty member for PBLWorks (formerly The Buck Institute for Education), a Facilitator for the Principals' Training Center, a facilitator for i2 Learning, and he served as the Education Coordinator for the Enable Community Foundation from 2015-2016.
Over the course of his career, Rich has been an educator in the Canadian public schools system, in international schools in Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, and in the U.S. independent school system. Throughout his 30 years in education, Rich has been committed to the search for "what works" in education. His quest to use Project Based Learning in the development and implementation of meaningful, engaging, and authentic student learning experiences for students crystallized during a 2011 teaching fellowship in Rwanda put together by the SEVEN Fund organization, during which, in a meeting with President Paul Kagame, he committed during a traditional Rwandan umuhigo or "verbal contract" to teach North American students and educators about the role that STEM education was playing in Rwanda's post genocide rebirth.
In preparing for his trip to Rwanda, Rich connected with MIT's DLab and has since been working with them to scale their "humanitarian engineering" philosophy and practice to a Middle School audience. A multi-nation Global Efficient Cookstove Project that Rich developed with DLab's Youth Outreach wing in 2012 helped Rich redefine what was possible in terms of global student collaborations around STEM experiences, and laid the groundwork for subsequent authentic educational projects.
In 2013, Rich led a transformative project that resulted in a group of 8th grade Brookwood School students becoming one of the first school groups in the world to build a functional 3D printed mechanical prosthetic for a child: in this case, Rich’s son, Max.
The experiences associated with this and other 3D printed prosthetics projects confirmed for Rich the power of young people to create effective solutions to real life problems and for the past six years he and his students and colleagues have been breaking innovative ground in the use of authentic making and 3D printing PBL projects to teach empathy, purposeful design, and community problem solving.
Of note, the "Problem Bank" concept that Rich developed in 2014 seeks to transform schools and their communities into "repositories" of authentic design and problem solving opportunities and Rich has helped numerous educators set up Problem Banks of their own. Additionally, Rich has recently been expanding the idea of community design beyond the school walls, and the inter-generational design projects that he piloted at Brookwood School have inspired other educators to explore these authentic design opportunities with their students as well. Rich's Problem Bank initiative was selected as one of the winners of the 2017 Infosys InfyMaker Awards.
Rich is overjoyed to have now moved with his family to Las Vegas, NV. Rich is an increasingly sought-after teacher trainer and public speaker in the fields of Project Based Learning, Authentic Design and Making Projects, and Community 3D Designing and Printing. If you would like to know more, please contact him at [email protected]
Over the course of his career, Rich has been an educator in the Canadian public schools system, in international schools in Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, and in the U.S. independent school system. Throughout his 30 years in education, Rich has been committed to the search for "what works" in education. His quest to use Project Based Learning in the development and implementation of meaningful, engaging, and authentic student learning experiences for students crystallized during a 2011 teaching fellowship in Rwanda put together by the SEVEN Fund organization, during which, in a meeting with President Paul Kagame, he committed during a traditional Rwandan umuhigo or "verbal contract" to teach North American students and educators about the role that STEM education was playing in Rwanda's post genocide rebirth.
In preparing for his trip to Rwanda, Rich connected with MIT's DLab and has since been working with them to scale their "humanitarian engineering" philosophy and practice to a Middle School audience. A multi-nation Global Efficient Cookstove Project that Rich developed with DLab's Youth Outreach wing in 2012 helped Rich redefine what was possible in terms of global student collaborations around STEM experiences, and laid the groundwork for subsequent authentic educational projects.
In 2013, Rich led a transformative project that resulted in a group of 8th grade Brookwood School students becoming one of the first school groups in the world to build a functional 3D printed mechanical prosthetic for a child: in this case, Rich’s son, Max.
The experiences associated with this and other 3D printed prosthetics projects confirmed for Rich the power of young people to create effective solutions to real life problems and for the past six years he and his students and colleagues have been breaking innovative ground in the use of authentic making and 3D printing PBL projects to teach empathy, purposeful design, and community problem solving.
Of note, the "Problem Bank" concept that Rich developed in 2014 seeks to transform schools and their communities into "repositories" of authentic design and problem solving opportunities and Rich has helped numerous educators set up Problem Banks of their own. Additionally, Rich has recently been expanding the idea of community design beyond the school walls, and the inter-generational design projects that he piloted at Brookwood School have inspired other educators to explore these authentic design opportunities with their students as well. Rich's Problem Bank initiative was selected as one of the winners of the 2017 Infosys InfyMaker Awards.
Rich is overjoyed to have now moved with his family to Las Vegas, NV. Rich is an increasingly sought-after teacher trainer and public speaker in the fields of Project Based Learning, Authentic Design and Making Projects, and Community 3D Designing and Printing. If you would like to know more, please contact him at [email protected]