Failing Small to Succeed Large:
How a State Level Leader Took a Design Thinking Approach to Plan a Statewide UDL Rollout
Instead of pushing a sweeping plan on teachers across the state and possibly “failing large,” Margaret Ellmer started by empathizing with teachers to develop a prototype that she hopes to test with real educators. She will be able to get immediate feedback which will allow her to “fail small.”
Doing anything at a statewide level can feel like a “wicked problem.”
Margaret is responsible for developing and implementing a plan of action to support teachers improve reading levels in five Mississippi elementary schools through the Universal Design for Learning framework.
With such a sweeping goal, where is the most feasible and impactful place to start? How can educators see UDL as a critical framework to support their instructional practice and not “just another thing” the state is requiring of them?
The best starting point emerges from empathizing with teachers.
Rather than immediately planning a broad statewide rollout of UDL, Margaret engaged in the first step of design thinking: empathy. She focused on an individual teacher and the challenges they face in reaching students who struggle with reading.
Seeing the challenge from a teacher’s point of view revealed the first barrier many teachers face — engaging and motivating students who struggle to read. No surprise that this is also the first principle of UDL. Research points to engagement as an essential element of supporting struggling readers.
A prototype lets the big idea “fail small.”
Margaret rapidly prototyped a student survey, “The Voice,” that could be used by teachers to collect and understand key research-based indicators of reading engagement and attitudes toward reading from their students.
If the survey is successful with the initial group of real teachers in Mississippi, Margaret’s future work has the potential to pair survey outcomes with research-based UDL strategies to address reading engagement for a broader group of teachers.
Leadership Design Institute is an immersive design thinking workshop where district leadership teams apply the design process to the instructional initiatives they are leading in their organization.
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