How Design Thinking Can Transform Education
May 17, 2018
It’s no secret that education in America is struggling. Every week, it seems the news tells another story about teachers facing resource cuts, overcrowded classrooms or poor student engagement. And almost as frequently, we hear of efforts to overcome those challenges, most visibly in strikes and demonstrations taking place in West Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, and recently here in Colorado.
But there’s another, more ground-level side to the story, about educators using the tools of design thinking to bring empathy and bottom-up innovation to schools directly. In 2018, Colorado Public Radio (CPR) ran a series of stories highlighting efforts around the state to bring more empathy and innovation into its schools; one of them — a network of educators called SpaceLab — tells a more hopeful story than we’re used to hearing about education in America.
Part of the nonprofit Colorado Education Initiative, SpaceLab is a response to feedback from educators that they need space and time to tackle challenges creatively. It seeks to carve out a space where educators, business leaders, and community partners can collaborate and test new ideas. So far, its programs have included networking sessions, “seeing is believing” expeditions, and a six-week-long design thinking program, designed and facilitated by some of us here at GRID Impact.
The program consisted of two parts. First, we gathered together a cohort of 30 educators, students, parents, and other community partners from around the state, and presented them with a custom-built Discovery Toolkit. The toolkit, introduced as part of a collaborative multi-day workshop, prepared them to return to their districts to conduct empathy-based research, and start exploring educational challenges and opportunities for innovative solutions. Six weeks later, we reconvened to share the results of those explorations, and start synthesizing everyone’s observations, and designing potential solutions that could be tested in the real world.
“This is a group that brings amazing insight, energy, compassion, and support to everyone that is involved. I can honestly say that every time I leave a gathering, my practice and my personal outlook are changed for the better.” — Peder Hansen, STEM Coordinator/ Media Specialist, Frisco Elementary School & SpaceLab Design Network Participant
One of the participants, superintendent Bruce Hankins of Dolores County Schools, decided at one point to shadow a student named Faith, who attended school in his district. More than just a chance to see a school day through a student’s eyes, the exercise prompted Bruce to start exploring ways of bringing student voices into the district’s adults-only decision-making process. As Bruce told CPR, he’s planning to tap students to speak at teacher training events, and has already invited several to act as advisors to the Board of Education. He’s also recommended that every teacher and administrator in his district try shadowing a student themselves, as a much-needed empathy-building exercise.
Ann Yenne, a fifth-grade teacher at Trailblazer Elementary in Colorado Springs, now uses methods introduced in SpaceLab to help build great trust with her students, allowing her to test out new ways of getting them to take ownership of their own learning — even among the most distracted and disinterested. She now creates activities that give students a venue for providing feedback and sharing needs, then works with them to co-create lesson plans. As Jesse Westberg, one of Yenne’s students, explained to CPR, “a lot of teachers say ‘this is my room, my classroom.’ She says this is our classroom, not my classroom. I like that.”
GRID Impact’s collaboration with SpaceLab gave us a unique opportunity to introduce design thinking to a group of education leaders, and contribute to our local community. It’s also incredibly energizing for us, to see the innovative solutions these educators are able to generate, and to watch their ideas impact the education system statewide, for good.
Related Links:
SpaceLab Official Blog
School Hasn’t Changed in a Generation. These Colorado Educators Want to Upend That. (CPR)
Here’s an Innovative Idea: Give Students a Say in Teaching (CPR)
Ms. Yenne’s Experiment Aims to Reach Every Distracted or Diligent Student in Class (CPR)
This piece was written for GRID Impact by Adam Little, Creative Director.
