With the prospect of a fully certified Passive House school building now only months away, no one is owning our school building project more than our students themselves. This week in All-School Meeting, several members of the FIRST LEGO Robotics Team, led by Francis Schaeffer and Sarah Carlson-Lier, presented a first run of their upcoming FLL competition material. As part of their stellar work, the team told us about a programming creation of theirs: an “SCC” or “School Carbon Calculator,” a digital module that will allow Waring (and other schools and institutions) to track the energy performance of their buildings. The FLL team has worked closely with Tim Lock, Opal’s principal architect on our passive house project, who is sharing with the team some of the firm’s carefully researched “secret sauce” formulas for energy calculations. This student-driven project is a great example of the new building already becoming a part of who we are and who we aspire to be.

On December 9, 2017, Waring’s First Lego League Team, the Brick Wolves, headed off to Revere High School for a day of competition. Fourteen nervous students, two teachers (Erin Thomassen and me), along with several parents, and lots of Lego, traveled south from Waring on a cold, snowy, Saturday.

Making and doing has been an integral part of Waring’s approach from the early days of the school when a student’s day might include taking care of the goats, woodworking, baking or typesetting, as well as academic work. The opening of the Waring Industrial Park (WIP) this fall is a natural extension of this original vision of experiential, creative learning and gives students space and tools to work on their own projects, as well as the opportunity to participate in new initiatives such as FIRST LEGO League.