Rich Lehrer
Rich Lehrer believes deeply in the potential of authentic making experiences to help students become empowered agents for good in their lives, communities, and the world. He is the Innovation Coordinator for Brookwood School (Manchester, MA), the Education Coordinator for the Enable Community Foundation, a National Faculty member for the Buck Institute for Education, and a Facilitator for the Principals' Training Center. 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 transformative experiences associate with this and other 3D printed prosthetics projects confirmed for Rich the power of middle school students to create effective solutions to real life problems and for the past two years he and his Brookwood colleagues have been breaking innovative ground in the use of Project Based Learning and 3D printing to teach empathy, purposeful design, and community problem solving.