Diving Deeper Into the Educational Ecosystem of South Fayette School District
Kicking Off
At the end of sprint one, we held our kickoff meeting with our clients which opened up many pathways for us to reframe the goal of implementing a Lion Learner Profile. We started off the meeting with a “human web” ice breaker which illustrated an important reality about the world of education.
Students, educators and policy makers all form an interwoven web that needs to be in harmony for education to open up doors to creativity and innovation for students.
Our goal for the meeting was to present our findings from research in the domain of education so far , and lead our clients through a rose bud thorn activity of how they related the findings with their real life experience. This activity opened up their mind and they were able to voice a lot of issues that are left unsaid in the day to day routine of the school’s operation.
Giving our client’s the space to deeply discuss current issues and challenge the complacency due to a feel of pride in how things have always been lead to some helpful insights.
- Students’ motivation to learn is low due to a lack of application of learning material to real life
- Like students, teachers vary too. Teaching also need to be personalized. Teachers should also be learners.
- Parents need exposure to correct, timely information. Parents are learners.
- School’s rigid administration system is hindering teachers’ innovation.
- The school system naturally cares more about the product (grades) rather than process (learning experience)
Understanding the Current State of the Problem
These insights helped us reframe the problem to address what fuels a student to be active learners and how the ecosystem supports or dissuades them for reaching that seemingly idealistic path.
Our synthesis lead us to sketch a model of “what is” which seemed to reveal that students are the receiving end of parent’s expectations and teacher’s knowledge- left with almost no autonomy to make choices on their own. As a team, we tried to find the gaps between the current and preferred state of the system to draft a model of “what could be”. All the various perspectives we had just within the team inspired us to set up a co-design workshop with our key stakeholders- students and educators. This would give us a perspective on their hopes and aspirations for the future state.
Continued Research Efforts
As we progress research, we attended a webinar about the Portrait of a Graduate system that is being implemented in many school districts all across the nation. We learned that the greatest challenge to implementing a portrait is buy-in from teachers and/or administrators. Students don’t feel prepared for careers and to build a future-proof life, and employers give feedback that people aren’t having enough critical thinking skills etc., and parents and students mirror this sentiment in wanting more real-world skills. This is where the portrait steps in to help give structure to encouraging innovation driven skill building.
As part of our primary research, we held our first round of stakeholder interviews with our clients who are in leadership roles, spearheading efforts in fostering innovation and out of class club initiatives at South Fayette. They emphasized the fear of “disrupting the system” that teachers and administrators face in changing the status quo and introducing a new program like the Lion Learner profile. Earlier attempts at such initiatives fizzled out fairly quickly and did not gain the engagement that it thought it would. We hope to dig deeper into what led to the downfall of these earlier attempts.
However, they also brought up the strong sense of community and togetherness at South Fayette. The school’s leadership has a vision, specially in the case of students from historically marginalized groups and lower socio-economic backgrounds, that initiatives of leadership innovation can bring revolutionizing impact to their own lives and the larger community.
Next Steps
Moving forward, we plan to continue speaking to educators across the community and visit the South Fayette High School campus to host co-design activities and immerse ourselves in the environment that our most important stakeholders, the students, experience on a day-to-day basis.
