Create Fresh and Exciting Solutions to Old Problems

Teacher Coach: Jessica Lura

By Elsa Fridman Randolph

Jessica is a Teacher Coach on The Teachers Guild, where she provides guidance and support to the community.

Teacher Designer: Jessica Lura

Jessica Lura is the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships at Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, California. Jessica, who has been an educator for the past seventeen years, was driven to the profession by her desire to remain a lifelong learner.

I was drawn to teaching because I love to learn. It’s the one profession where you can justify taking classes in anything from oceanography to Mindcraft to Soviet government and people don’t think you are crazy.

Q: What does it mean to be a teacher designer to you?

A: Participating in design challenges and learning more about design thinking has impacted how I solve problems. When faced with a problem at school, I immediately want to dissect it — what does the user really want? What actually is the problem? Often the original problem that is posed is not the actual issue and so I find myself asking teachers and parents probing questions to see if I can understand what they really need.

For example, we had some parents worried that there were too many students on the playground at recess, but when we started asking the parents and students questions about recess, we realized that the real heart of the issue was that quiet students wanted a location to read and hangout that was calm and soothing. Because of this, our solutions weren’t about playground supervision but instead focused on providing alternate activities and spaces for students.

I am an action-oriented person. I think that this is why design thinking appeals to me. It is a human-centered problem-solving process with a bias toward action.

I am an action-oriented person. I think that this is why design thinking appeals to me. It is a human-centered problem-solving process with a bias toward action. Human-centered means that the process is user-focused and that the point of view of the user is acknowledged and the starting point. A bias toward action pushes you to prototype, test, and iterate early and often in the process. As an educator at a school that embraces design thinking, when we’re faced with a problem (such as parents telling us that some students don’t like recess), we generate a lot of ideas based on talking to students and researching ideas and similar situations and then test them. It’s not a six-month process before ideas are implemented — the possible solutions are tested within the next couple of days with feedback collected and changes made within six days. Focusing on the user and trying to figure out what the real problem is allows my colleagues and I to solve the actual problem, rather than symptoms of the problem.

Focusing on the user and trying to figure out what the real problem is allows my colleagues and I to solve the actual problem, rather than symptoms of the problem.

Q: What is a solution you’ve created using design thinking?

A: One problem we identified was attracting teachers who embody our school’s mission. We’re a mission-driven school but our hiring practices did not intentionally focus on certain types of teachers other than their effectiveness as a teacher. Obviously, we want effective teachers, but each school is different and we want teachers who fit into our culture. So we decided to use the design thinking process to help improve our hiring process. We chose this: “how might we attract teachers who embody the Bullis Charter School mission?” as our design frame. There were two parts to this question — attracting people and figuring out what we meant by “embody the Bullis mission.”

We started by looking at analogous companies and situations for inspiration and information. How do other organizations successfully find and hire the right people? We researched, getting insight and learning from others both inside and outside education. We learned from Google about how they recruit the top talent and how they check for cultural fit. Next, we interviewed the varsity rowing coach for Stanford to learn how she recruits world-class athletes.

Using everything we had learned, we generated new ideas using inspiration from campaigns that are successful in attracting people such as the Army, American Idol, and a new tech start-up. We then selected several of our ideas to prototype and test, including personal invite videos, a match.com-type website, and a hack-a-thon design challenge. For each idea, we quickly designed a prototype and presented it to a group of teachers and teacher candidates. As they gave us feedback, we modified our ideas based on their responses. The prototypes we were testing were very basic, created within 30 minutes, which meant that it wasn’t a big deal to modify them or abandon the idea. This can be the most valuable part of the design process — designing an idea, having the “user” (in this case, prospective teachers) test the idea, and modifying the idea.

Too often, people sit in a room discussing (guessing) whether or not a solution will work — go and find out if it works.

One thing I have learned from using design thinking is to involve the person you are designing for early and often. Too often, people sit in a room discussing (guessing) whether or not a solution will work — go and find out if it works. Getting immediate feedback about our ideas was invaluable.

From this initial cycle of ideate and evolve, we picked several ideas to spend more time on. We are still working on this challenge — identifying what traits we feel embody our school’s mission statement and designing ways to connect with teachers who have those traits. Our redesign includes:

• updating our website and job site with videos of teachers who exemplify our school (an extension of our match.com idea)
• changing our interview questions (inspired by our learnings from Google)
• and providing opportunities for prospective teachers to get involved in our school in a get-to-know us way (inspired by the Stanford varsity rowing coach).

We continue to collect feedback from teachers who chose to work at our school as well as those who didn’t.

When I first started using design thinking, my focus was on the process and making sure that my team and I followed the process. As I have grown as a designer, I understand better that, though the process is useful, the design thinking mindsets are more important. Understanding the point of view of the person I am designing for (whether it’s students, fellow teachers, or parents) can be as important as solving the problem.

Seeing constraints as opportunities for innovation pushes me to think outside the box and has provided new and exciting solutions to tired, old problems.

Connect with Jessica on The Teachers Guild