Week 5
Primary and secondary research and review
This week we worked to synthesize our interview findings. This quote from the retired principal we interviewed was really striking.
“When it comes to teaching, respect is paramount, don’t judge students on a daily basis, but on the long-term. You take little steps, use different ways to say things, show mutual respect for who they are and what they have been through.”
We also worked with Team X to formalize our joint interview with students in Santa Clara. Both teams came together to collaborate on questions we had for Dr. Laurie Stapleton and her students at New Valley High School.
New Valley High School’s vision statement is “To re-engage youth for success in high school, and prepare youth for success beyond high school in college, a CTE pathway, social & civic participation, and a healthy & happy life.”
We wanted to learn more about the students we are going to talk to, so we created an anonymous survey for students to fill out prior to the interview.
Some questions included:
One word to describe the community in Santa Clara:___________
What is the primary language spoken at home?
We talked about ways in which we could make the interviews more engaging and interactive. We discussed using online polling, Miro, or Mural to create a virtual whiteboard to share ideas.
Stef suggested that we might want to look into the workshop activity called “The Polak Game” or “Where do you Stand?”
Stuart Candy, associate professor at CMU’s School of Design, says “the game represents an effective and accessible approach to introducing ‘images of the future’ as a basic property of both cultures and individuals, and so to pave the way for more advanced tools and frameworks.”
We created a virtual version of The Polak Game using Google Jamboard. At the beginning of the interview, we will be using this tool to conduct 10-minute icebreaker activities with all students in the same room. Then we will move to breakout rooms to have conversations in smaller student groups.
We quickly realized that the color of the dots was distracting and it was hard to identify the journey of the dot. We also wanted to make sure we protected the anonymity of the user, so we decided on replacing the dots with various animal emojis. This would not only provide us a fun way to assign a temporary identity to each participant but also allow us to track their true feelings over time.
This week we presented our exploratory research in our stage 2 presentation. Our secondary research consisted of gathering online resources, literature, and case studies into a shared Google worksheet. We diverged to explore different resources and ideas on our own. We then converged to share what we learned and talk about common themes.
Our primary research consisted of surveys and interviews with teachers, principals, students, and parents. Pertaining to the Santa Clara area, our team worked with Team X for a joint interview with the students and principal of New Valley Continuation High School (NVCHS). NVCHS is a continuation school outside of the Santa Clara Unified School District. This diverse school has many challenges, including high amounts of youth trauma and poverty.
