Imagine walking through middle school hallways where students are on a design sprint to build arcade games. Instead of using high-tech gadgets, they have nothing but cardboard and other upcycled materials sprawled onto the floors of classrooms, the dining hall, and even the auditorium stage. This is the kind of design thinking that brought life to the Middle School’s inaugural STEM+ Week last month.

Working in small groups, students were tasked with creating interactive games using cardboard and various construction tools (tape, hot glue, pipe cleaners, etc.) to create the CougArcade. The idea was inspired by a 2012 documentary titled “Caine’s Arcade,” which followed a then-nine-year-old Caine Monroy’s cardboard arcade business built right out of his father’s east Los Angeles auto parts shop. The short film’s success led to the creation of similar arcades in schools worldwide, now including MKA. During the week, students spent their FLEX, CWP, and recess periods carefully constructing their games. At the end of the week, they presented their creations to fellow students, faculty, and staff, inviting everyone to join in the fun.

What Caine and MKA students have in common is their ability to utilize skills like engineering and design thinking to build a fun and tangible product that helps them connect the idea of building with their hands and constructing learning in their brains. MKA’s unique approach ignites students’ STEM+ mindset—encompassing the core fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while incorporating other disciplines and skills, like arts, humanities, and critical thinking, to promote problem-solving through a more holistic learning method.

STEM+ work aligns with the MKA learner and highlights the rich experiences of our program that develop reflective humans, skillful communicators and collaborators, ethical leaders and change agents, and lifelong learners. More than this, it places them at the competitive edge where they are building essential skills that will set them up to navigate a complex world where their creative minds will solve tomorrow’s toughest challenges.