How Can Schools Use Design and Futures Thinking in this Unique Moment? Part 3
Letter Three— This is the third letter in a series between two educators, Ariel Raz a designer at the Stanford d.school, and Richard Boerner, Superintendent of Graded — The American School of São Paulo. Read Letter 1 and Letter 2.
Hello Again Rich,
In my nine years as an educator, I can only recall one other instance where the American education system felt like it was under an existential crisis similar to today. It was 2012, and we were approaching the holiday break down in Louisiana, where I worked for a rural school district. As I tightened my tie and gathered my belongings for the 20 minute drive to school, I checked my work email. I clicked on a message for my principal, notifying me of a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Struggling to process the emotional weight of the news, I read the next few lines. Here were direct instructions that we may not, under any circumstances, discuss the news with our students, and that counselors were available to support as required.
I went through the motions as well as I could that day, doing my best to maximize the instructional days while numb from shock. My sixth graders were likely studying fractions (it feels like all we ever studied in sixth grade) and I noticed one of my pupils had his head face down on his desk. He lifted his head 10 degrees and in the sleepy, pained breath of a middle schooler asked, “Mr. Raz, did you hear about those kids that got shot?”
Suddenly I realized what should have been obvious: On this day, we needed to stop the clock and move away from content. Students throughout the entire United States were experiencing a moment of trauma, a moment that had to be spoken to, understood and processed, a moment that demanded a response. And me not being one to rankle my superiors, I was frozen: do I buck the system, or do I answer my students?
Today I feel that you and I find ourselves as actors in a system that’s in a similar moment of crisis. Not only are students feeling the shock of school closures, but agony at the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. Much like school shootings, racism is an endemic threat to equality and justice in American society. And the presence of both have a profound impact on students’ ability to feel safe in schools.
These profound historical moments have enveloped the collective consciousness American society, and we can be certain that our students, be they entering pre-K or matriculating into college, are managing a complex emotional universe. Like us, they seek to understand what’s happening and find their own place within this moment.
This school year, we should offer ourselves the freedom to examine and understand the outside world with our students.
In the 2018–2019 school year, my colleagues at the d.school explore how we make sense of navigating ambiguity. As part of that series, our executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg recorded a short interview where she references a piece by marine biologist Aaron Hirsh. He writes “[e]very pedagogical situation can be thought of as a kind of triangle among three parties: the student, the teacher, and the world that student and teacher investigate together.” This school year, we should offer ourselves the freedom to examine and understand the outside world with our students.
Part of this project requires us to look inward. I’ve found it helpful to develop a practice of self-awareness, and interrogate how my identity shapes my understanding of the historical events that unfold around me : How am I positioned with respect to power? How does that influence my relationship to my students? How does my own identity affect how people treat me and how I perceive the world?
And part of this work is outward and organizational. The near-term future of education is one where we should expect conditions to change, schools to shift and educators to pivot. Amid this change, a consistent process can help offer guidance and consistency as educators work to advance towards equity. Here are a set of powerful actions you can repeat as part of a design process:
| Ask yourself whose voice is missing from the choices your organization is making. Identify vulnerable populations in your community and design with them. Reach out to the school community members who aren’t captured by learning experience, and redesign the learning experience to include them.
| Experience student life as students experience it. While you may be unable to physically shadow a student when school opens in the fall, you can experience their remote school day. Talk to an adult in their life to get a sense of their home schedule. Contact their teachers to understand their academic schedule, and ask to access the online platforms they use. If the student is unable to log in, request permission to speak with them by phone so you can understand what their school day is like at home. Use that experience to craft human-centered insights to guide improving the learning experience, be it hybrid, remote or in-person.
|The Liberatory Design resources shared by my colleagues from the d.school K12 Lab and the National Equity Project offer scores of suggestions for engaging in equitable design work.
When I first came into the classroom, I was guided by a tendency to control all that I could. I was most comfortable when the learning experience traveled across a straight line: information was passed from myself to my students. I would receive a signal back, and my task was to correct or accept that information and move on. Over time I became aware how we were poorly-served by district-mandated pedagogical model, and we began to explore my diverse, experiential learning.
I look at the morning when my sleepy, middle-school student asked me about the school shooting at Newtown with a mix of shame and sadness. I must admit that I did not have the courage to rise to the moment. Partly I felt it wasn’t my place, that I didn’t have the training, and perhaps I feared reprisal from a local teaching administration where I felt I was an outsider. I realize now that I was designed not to rankle my superiors, and of course it’s easier to travel the path they carved for me, the path of less resistance.
You and I are both in a unique, privileged position: We’ve been designed by schools, succeeded in schools, and now have the opportunity to redesign schools. How do you think of your role as superintendent during a time when we may need to stop the clock on content and assessment? What might a courageous educator look like to you? And how might you lead your educators to address old inequities as you manage the new crisis caused by the pandemic?
