During the first Unit of the Urban Planning course, Juniors investigated the elements necessary to build a strong bridge. The engineers studied examples of bridges in order to understand the concepts of weight and force, tension and compression, and trusses. Equipped with their newfound knowledge, lots of glue, and 60 popsicle sticks, they set out to build a strong, functioning bridge. After days of hard work, the bridges were put to the test with a set of weights. We were blown away by the results.
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We wrapped up Elective term with a trip to Las Vegas! Well, actually, Vegas came to us. The members of the GCE Student Council planned a Vegas-themed community day complete with their version of the Little White Wedding Chapel, an Elvis impersonator, casino games, and tons of ways to spend and lose “money”. It was an afternoon full of love, laughter, and good, old-fashioned competition.

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Students in the Mixed Media art class are exploring 3-dimensional art forms. For this project, the students are working with clay and focusing on intuitive experimentation to bring their sculptures to life. As inspiration, students studied the works of sculptors, William J. O’Brien and Alwyn O’Brien. Throughout the process, our sculptors experimented with negative space, movement, and texture to add interest to their 3-dimensional forms. A block of self-hardening clay and a ton of imagination go a long way.Read More

We reimagined Final Presentations this past Winter Term. Traditionally, Final Presentations were developed around courses but this Winter, we decided to develop Final Presentations around students. Students were given full ownership of their presentations to reflect deeply and genuinely on their learning from the term. Each student was given 10 minutes with an audience to either run a workshop, play a game, analyze original pieces of artwork, or run through a slideshow presentation. In this format, students were given the opportunity to think holistically about their learning and guided an audience through their journey as a student.

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Students in the Light, Sound, and Time class investigated the guiding question, why does light = energy? In pursuit of an answer, students collected different types of light bulbs and attempted to melt a piece of chocolate using those light bulbs. The students created a hypothesis and documented the procedure and conclusions in order to show the relationship between light and energy.

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We’re back from Winter Break and we’re not wasting any time. We welcomed the students back with a day of learning and playing. Students dove into their courses in the morning. The hum of discussion and experimentation filled the school. The afternoon was spent building community through karaoke, dodgeball, knockout, and a couple brutal rounds of Mafia. There was great energy all around. We can already tell that it’s going to be a transformative term at GCE.Read More

After an intensive five weeks of deep-diving into one course during the Elective term, students in all four courses demonstrated their learning in an intimate Final Presentations opened only to GCE staff and students. The game designers in Game Changers demonstrated their original board games. The musicians in Radio-rithmetic brought music to life through sound waves and vibrations. The freedom fighters in Global Peace explained Gandhi’s four principles of nonviolence and presented their own examples of nonviolent protest. Least and certainly not least, the movie critics in Ollywood debated passionately over elements of pre-production, production, and post-production of a short animated film.

After a morning of playing, learning, and discussing, all of the hard work was rewarded with a plentiful Holiday Potluck. Friends and families joined us for lunch and this afternoon was a prime example of the love and warmth that are within our tight-knit community. We were joyed to have opened the potluck to friends and families as the students’ hard work was certainly worth celebrating with everyone in our community.

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We embraced the spirit of the holidays and spent the afternoon giving back as a community. We packed toiletry kits and made trail mix to donate to The Night Ministry, a Chicago-based organization that works to offer housing, health care and human connection to members of the Chicago community struggling with poverty or homelessness. We wrote and decorated postcards for kids through Send the Kids the World, a website dedicated to connecting kids with life threatening illnesses with people from around the world. Finally, we baked cookies and shared them togther as a way to show appreciation for each other. This afternoon of giving back gave us a chance to connect as a community and brought out the true spirit of the holidays.

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Students took on the role of teachers during this Fall Term Final Presentation as they walked guests through the lessons they learned. Our students practice and hone their teaching skills every day in and out of the classroom, so we were proud to see our learners own their knowledge and teach with confidence. Students taught our guests about the scarcity of water, asked them to deliver a sentencing in court, challenged them to calculate the value of risk-taking, and immersed them in a visceral simulation of a CTA ride. Our students truly demonstrated the effectiveness of immersive and project-based learning.

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The Juniors in the Design & Engineering class continued to explore empathy through design. In the second unit of this STEAM course,  students pursued the guiding question, how do wheels make the world spin?. For their final Action Project, students were assigned a client with specific needs for whom they must design a bike. Equipped with knowledge about simple machines and experience in prototyping, students set out to create scaled bicycle models for their client.

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