Sarah Elizabeth Ippel was only 23 when she approached the Chicago Board of Education with her idea for the Academy for Global Citizenship, a public charter elementary school that would support critical thinking, international awareness, and environmental stewardship. The school is complete with a wind turbine, solar energy learning lab, zero waste cafeteria, and a commitment to serving locally grown, organic food.
AGC admitted its first round of students in 2008, but Ippel has not stopped re-imagining what public education could look like—this year AGC is working with
The Third Teacher + / Cannon Design to create the first net-positive energy
prototype campus in the state on an urban farm that will revolutionize elementary education.
In conjunction with the campus, Ippel is launching an institute that will utilize the Academy for Global Citizenship as a learning laboratory through identifying, evaluating, refining, extracting and scaling the best practices with a vision to impact 20 million students by 2020.
“In essence, we want to learn a lesson from the technological innovators of our time and open source what works in education—ranging from sustainable building technologies to innovative learning technologies,” Ippel says.
Ippel is now seeking audacious minds to join AGC’s mission—including scientists, educators, communicators, philanthropists, designers, technologists, entrepreneurs—to participate in a movement that's going to take the lab’s innovations and scale to create fundamental change in education across the globe.
Get this and more delivered to your home by subscribing to GOOD Magazine at subscribe.good.is. It's just $25 for an annual subscription (21% off the cover price.) \n
Share on Facebook
