The Innovators Institute at Park Tudor, a three-week summer program for students in grades 9–12, is just such a place. The program is spearheaded by Peter Kraft, the interim head of school at Park Tudor School (Indiana), and the curriculum and experiences were designed by innovative curricular leaders at the school and in the community: Jamey Everett, a technology integrator and innovation specialist at Park Tudor; Adrian Pumphrey, a Park Tudor middle school math teacher; Mike O’Bryan, a former CIA analyst and consultant who coaches basketball at the school; and Amy Fix, a local high school teacher who works on team-building and social entrepreneurship throughout the Indianapolis area.
Serving 25–40 students a year, the institute begins with a four-day “innovation boot camp,” where students undergo a rigorous intellectual experience modeled on some of the problem-solving strategies taught in the CIA. Led by O’Bryan, the four-day boot camp includes team-building activities focused on innovative mindsets: creativity, resilience, critical thinking, and communication.
From there, students then learn how to apply the design thinking, or “d.School” model from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford to tackle problems facing the local community or the challenges of starting a new business.
The Innovators Institute is also designed to make a difference in the broader Indianapolis community. To that end, this past summer the Innovators Institute partnered with Nextech’s Catapult program, which provides “tech career readiness and civic leadership opportunities for high school juniors and seniors” in traditionally underserved communities. During the innovation boot camp, Catapults and Innovators worked together to develop solutions to design problems, including recruiting strategies for the Catapult program; creating web-based applications to promote free-lunch programs in the Indianapolis Parks System; and creating peer-to-peer learning networks across Indianapolis schools.
The institute also connects Indianapolis business and nonprofit leaders with high school students at Park Tudor and throughout the city. Beginning this summer, each student will be matched with a local mentor to help develop and guide their innovations. Field trips to local start-ups, lectures from prominent Indianapolis leaders, a day at Indy’s Innovation Showcase, and the institute “business pitch day” will continue to connect students to their broader community.
Park Tudor’s Everett says that the institute is “for young people — and teachers — who have big ideas and the resiliency to make them happen.”
Innovators Institute 2017 runs from July 10–28.