The people behind Common Grounds High School — the graduate students who designed the school and the overbearing mom who built the website nobody asked her to build.
Common Grounds High School was designed by seven graduate students as part of their coursework. Every decision about the school — its name, philosophy, curriculum, accessibility approach, and identity — belongs to them. They are brilliant, passionate, and slightly terrifying in how good they are at this. Meet them below.
The heart and soul of Common Grounds' school culture. Annie designed the restorative practices framework, PBIS integration, and relationship-centered approach to discipline. She believes that if a school isn't adapting to its students, it's doing it wrong. Has been known to cite academic research at the dinner table — unprompted. Rumor has it she has never lost an argument about pedagogy. We have no way to verify this because no one has survived long enough to report back.
School Culture & Restorative Practices — her deep-dive on building a school where every student belongs.
The event architect. Gaby designed six school traditions that would make most professional event planners weep with envy. Worlds of Learning Days, Student-Run Farmers Markets, One School One Story, the Capybara Conference, Pep Rally, and Voice & Vision Assemblies — all hers. She believes that school events aren't extras tacked onto a calendar; they're how you build identity. If Common Grounds ever needs a party planned, a market launched, or a conference organized, Gaby probably already has a spreadsheet for it.
School Events & Traditions — six events that turn a building into a community.
Part curriculum designer, part architect — Vicki is the team's double threat. She co-authored the curriculum and inclusion framework with Sayo, tackling everything from de-tracking to IEP writing to making sure no student falls through the cracks. Then she turned around and co-designed the actual physical campus with JoJo, because apparently redesigning education wasn't enough — she needed to redesign the building too. Probably color-codes her notes. Definitely color-codes her notes.
Curriculum & Inclusion and Our Campus — Vicki's pages.
The only team member who shows up on two different deep-dive pages — because being brilliant in one area of education wasn't enough. Sayo co-authored the curriculum and inclusion framework with Vicki and then teamed up with Annie and Emma on the social justice and access section. Her work spans equitable rigor, co-teaching models, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Basically, if there's a hard question about how to make education genuinely fair, Sayo has already written three paragraphs about it.
Curriculum & Inclusion and Social Justice & Access — Sayo's deep-dive pages.
Emma co-authored the social justice and access section with Annie and Sayo, diving deep into linguistic justice, equitable rigor, and graduation pathways. Her work ensures that Common Grounds doesn't just talk about access — it builds it into the DNA of every policy and pathway. Has strong opinions about graduation requirements, and frankly, after reading her section, you will too.
Social Justice & Access — Emma's deep-dive page.
JoJo is the team's community builder — and literal builder. She authored the parent and community involvement framework, envisioning Common Grounds as a true neighborhood hub, not just a school. Then she teamed up with Vicki to design the actual physical campus. JoJo believes a school building should serve its community long after the last bell rings, and she designed one that does. Also co-designed an extracurricular program that would make most colleges jealous.
Community Involvement and Our Campus — JoJo's pages.
Alijah co-authored the thick description of a model Common Grounds classroom with Gaby — a detailed, day-by-day walkthrough of what a week in a history class actually looks like. Monday through Friday, period by period, down to the classroom layout. It's so vivid and specific that reading it feels like being a fly on the wall. If you've ever wondered what Common Grounds looks like in action, Alijah wrote the answer.
The Common Grounds Classroom — Alijah's deep-dive page on what a week of real learning looks like.
Let's get this out of the way: nobody asked me to build this website.
My name is Gwen Lippitt. I'm Annie Walkup's mom. I am not a developer. I work at a small software company called Violet Data, where I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by brilliant coders who point me in the right direction and then watch in a combination of amusement and horror as I run off and do things with that information.
I also have ADHD. If you know, you know. If you don't: imagine your brain is a browser with 200 tabs open, and every few weeks one of those tabs catches fire and becomes the only thing you can think about. That's how projects happen for me.
How This Started (The Commando Backstory)
A while back, I got it in my head that I was going to control GitHub with my voice. The project was called Commando. It started small — I was turning meeting transcript action items from Gemini into GitHub issues. Then I decided it would be more interesting to create GitHub issues on the fly by just talking, and I figured out how to make that happen using OpenAI's Realtime API. It was an absurdly ambitious project for someone who had no idea what she was doing, but I made it work.
Then I made all my friends and family look at it. They patted me on the head and said: cool story, bro.
So I shelved Commando and started writing a novel. Because, you know — hyperfocus is hard to aim.
How This Website Happened
Recently, Annie mentioned that her grad school group was designing a high school as a class project and asked how hard it would be to build a website with voice control, like the thing I'd made for Commando. Within an hour, I was burning through my Claude usage building this site. She didn't ask me to. But once I get a project in my sights, I can't stop. So the poor kid and her classmates have had this entire website forced upon them.
I'm sorry. (I'm not sorry.)
What Is Vibe Coding?
Everything on this site was built through vibe coding — which means I describe what I want to an AI (in this case, Claude by Anthropic) and it writes the code. I have a good bird's-eye view of how software works, a decent knack for architecture, and zero ability to write a single line of code myself. I won't pretend otherwise. Vibe coding is genuinely an interesting way to learn — you develop strong instincts for how systems fit together even if you couldn't hand-write a for loop to save your life.
The AI Stack
This site is built and maintained using Claude Code by Anthropic (that's the AI coding tool). The voice assistant, Capybara, runs on OpenAI's Realtime API — recycled from the Commando project. Some of the images on the site were generated with ChatGPT. The original Commando prototype also used Google's Gemini for transcript processing. So if you're counting, that's three different AI companies contributing to a grad school homework assignment. Proportional? No. Fun? Absolutely.
On Annie
Annie is going to be the best teacher the world has ever seen, and I am incredibly proud of her. I am also incredibly grateful that she puts up with me when I go into intolerable project mode. This whole site exists because she's the kind of person who inspires you to go way too far on her behalf.
You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-lippitt-0261a61b0/