DA Newsroom

“There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.”

This past summer, my family and I, as part of an initiative of the Parekh Family Foundation, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya. My parents provided free medical care, performed free surgeries, and taught rehabilitation techniques to the local people.

When Middle School teachers reconvened last August, there was no time to exchange summer stories. We immediately jumped into a workshop focused on incorporating design-thinking and service-learning projects into our curricula.

Do you remember being asked any meaningful questions while you were in school? As a math teacher, I ask a lot of questions every day, but not many of them will be memorable or meaningful decades later. They’re important to learning algebra, but not necessarily to living a purposeful life.

Since starting his eighth-grade elective course, STEAM by Design, in 2017, Karl Schaefer has presented his students with opportunities to explore cutting-edge technology in innovative ways. More importantly, though, he’s taught important life lessons.

Salad on the floor, beef stew on bus seats, grease-stained shirts, torn paper flower decorations — these were some of the messes made by the seventh-grade class as they planned, shopped for, cooked and served a meal for 250 people in the community café at Urban Ministries of Durham.