"What else can high school look like?" Mikala Streeter wondered about that question as her career expanded from the computer science industry into teaching young people and nurturing their passions. Mikala is Principal and Lead Teacher at the LIFE School, an independent high school that she founded in Atlanta, Georgia. She talks about the philosophy of The LIFE School, which focuses on curiosity, real-world work, and breaking barriers among disciplines. As an MIT grad, she also highlights how her students integrate design thinking into their interdisciplinary self-directed projects. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

● The Life School: http://www.thelifeschool.co/ 

● Google Ventures “Design Sprint” process: http://www.gv.com/sprint/ 

● The book Freakonomics: https://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338 

● Contact Mikala Streeter: http://www.thelifeschool.co/contact.html Remember that the podcast will be at the SXSW Conference and Festival in March, 2017! Pius and Rachel from the podcast will be running workshops for educators and professional engineers: https://www.sxsw.com/ 

Our opening music comes from "School Zone (radio edit)" by The Honorable Sleaze, who’s also on Soundcloud. Our closing music is from "Late for School" by Bleeptor. Both are used under Creative Commons Attribution Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Subscribe and find more podcast information at: http://www.k12engineering.net. The K12 Engineering Education Podcast is a production of Pios Labs: http://www.pioslabs.com