ALEX ALLAUX

ROLE: Curriculum Director & Educator

“Adventure to Mars” was a program designed for Portfolio School, a K-5 project-based learning school in NYC. For their 2018 Academic Year, we created and taught various filmmaking techniques for visual storytelling. Using methods developed at Stanford`s Design School, we followed an individualized approach which allows students to progress at their own pace and pursue their own interests.

This program was designed to help students craft their own character, story, and mission for traveling through the cosmos. The students built portfolios of project-based work that were assessed based on peer, educator, and community feedback. Allowing the children to learn through competency-based projects that ignore the traditional restrictions of one-hour schedule blocks, age cohorts, and seat time created a unique environment of resource sharing, individuality, and dynamic play. The idea of “testing” was replaced with public exhibitions and personal expression.