Lighthouse Community Charter School

The Lighthouse Community Charter School Creativity Lab’s vision is to give people from all walks of life the opportunity to participate in designing and making. We are building a K-12 program on site both to serve our own students, but also to help others see how design-make can be integrated into an entire school program. We believe that all students are designers and makers and we want to give our students the choice to pursue their own passion by providing them with the opportunity to make at all ages. We are integrating design thinking from Kindergarten (friends designing and making plush toys for each other) to middle school (students participating in the design of our Creativity Lab space) to high school. In true maker fashion, we are currently working under an open model of curriculum and project design. The program supports teachers at Lighthouse and our partner school Life Academy with projects that they would like to take on. Creativity Lab staff are able to support other educators (at Lighthouse and partner institutions) by extending their reach so that they can integrate sewing, 3d modeling, building, engineering, design, knitting, programming, etc. into their own classes and programs. Staff will also be documenting projects as they are developed so that interested educators can start programs of their own, no matter where they are. The design-make program at Lighthouse started in December of 2010, when we began to integrate making into a high school robotics elective that was being offered. After three years of bringing student imagined, designed, made projects to the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Lighthouse expanded it’s program to include all students (K-12) on campus as well as families and staff. Lighthouse Community Charter School is a K-12 free public school in Oakland, CA serving low-income youth. The mission of Lighthouse is to prepare a diverse, K-12th grade student population for college and the career of their choice by equipping each child and youth with the skills, knowledge, and tools to become a self-motivated, competent, lifelong learner.