Introducing a Shift in School Culture with a Focus on Design Thinking
A Memo to the Faculty and Staff of Saint James Academy July 5, 2016 Dear Saint James Academy Faculty & Staff, I want to thank you for another wonderful school year. I am continuously impressed with the amount of time, dedication and passion that each of you puts into your teaching each year. I feel lucky to work with a group of teachers and leaders who constantly seek to improve their teaching practice in order to better meet the needs of their students. With this growth mindset in mind, I would like to introduce to you a new concept that we will begin to adopt at Saint James Academy this next school year. Currently, SJA is doing a phenomenal job at preparing our students for high school. The entrance exam scores and acceptance rates are off the charts. Our alumni continue on to excellent universities and beyond. You should all be very proud for playing a part in that. The ability to prepare our students for their next stage in education has always been a part of our reputation at SJA. Now, I would like to challenge you all to take it a step further. It is clear that our students embody the study skills to achieve a good GPA and do well on examinations… but we must now ask ourselves the urgent question: are we preparing our students for life after school? Are we providing them with the skills that they need to be successful adults in our increasingly competitive job market? Educational leader, Tony Wagner, outlines Seven Survival Skills as defined by business leaders to prepare our students for 21st century careers and citizenship. Among them are the skills outlined in the P21 Framework for 21st century learning. We will become very familiar with these two resources as we adopt a new culture of learning for the 2016-2017 school year. You may be wondering why I feel that making this change in the way we educate our students is so important. Why fix what’s not broken, right? It is important for us to understand the generation of students coming into our school system. We are educating a generation of learners who will work in jobs that do not even exist yet. Research by educational technology experts and authors, Lynne Schrum & Barbara Levin, tells us “We know life will be very different for our students in the next ten, twenty, and thirty years, given the pace of change in a technologically driven world. However, we fear that our current educational system is not adequately preparing all students for the kinds of jobs we cannot yet imagine and the situations or environments they are likely to encounter in their lifetime.” (Schrum & Levin, 2015 p.12) It is our job as educators to adapt to this new and changing world of education to prepare our students for the future. They need to learn the skills that will make them successful in their careers and as citizens of society. These skills include (but are not limited to): critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. Tony Wagner explains that we need to graduate all students “innovation ready” to participate in our innovation economy. In the article How to Get a Job at Google, Senior Vice President, Lazlo Block, explains that GPA and test scores are not what a hiring team is looking at when hiring potential employees. Among the qualities that they are looking for are: learning ability, leadership, humility, and ownership. They want to hire team members that have the ability to fail, to relearn, to relinquish power and work well with others. Expertise in a specific area, is not high on their list. (Friedman, 2014) Coincidently enough, that is exactly how Monument Mountain Regional High School counselor, Mike Powell, describes young minds. “Young minds are resilient, creative and fearless... They’ll try anything!” Which is exactly why their innovative self directed learning program works. (Tsai, 2013) This is the reason why we need to take a good look at how we are delivering instruction at our school site. We need to tap into this creativity,fearlessness and resilience. We need to alter the way that content and skills are being delivered and learned. Connecting to this idea, educators need to understand that the way that our students learn has changed drastically. Learning does not end when students leave school, because they are constantly plugged in. They are continually in communication with one another and regularly accessing information. Many of our students are already practicing these important skills outside of school when they engage with one another through their various technological outlets, platforms and devices. (Schrum & Levin, 2015) Because they are so technologically connected, this generation has different expectations for how they receive information. According the Schrum & Levin, these “Generation Zers” are bored when they come to school and have to sit down and listen all day. They don’t want to read outdated textbooks; instead, they want to read articles online; they want to access various sources of information. They are wired for fast delivery of content and are driven by graphics. “Gen Zs are constant multi-taskers. They like to have random access to information, love to explore using their own routes, need graphics, want it fun, and want instant feedback. Their digital world can be customized. They want their education customized, too.” (Schrum & Levin, 2015 p.40) In order to meet the needs of our students, engage them in their learning and make their education personal and meaningful to them, we must shift our approach in how we teach them. Fortunately, the way to meeting these goals go together quite nicely. Preparing our students with the skills they need to be successful adults and empowering them through their learning can be achieved through teaching with a “design thinking” approach. This is the initiative that I hope you all will be on board with adopting next year. Design Thinking is a process used for solving problems and developing meaningful solutions. The process requires the participants to go through a series of phases before developing a final solution. The process is designed to promote questioning, open mindedness, empathy, and divergent thinking. It requires the participants to employ communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking skills on a deep level. Often times, design thinking projects are centered around real world/community problems. Many schools have already experienced success with implementing a design thinking program into their curriculum. Emily Pilloton, a design thinking educator and leader, describes in her TedTalk Teaching Design for Change, how she and her partner transformed a shop class in a poor, small town school in Bertie County, North Carolina, into a design class that developed projects that made a positive impact on their community. Through the process the students were required to conduct interviews, work with a budget, create prototypes, make revisions and put their design into action. This was such an empowering experience for their students to utilize the 4Cs in solving a real world problem and making an impact on their community. (Pilloton, 2010) Other schools are having similar success stories. At Monument Mountain Regional High School, design thinking has been adopted through a self directed learning approach. Students participate in semester long projects that they have chosen and feel passionately about. They spend countless hours both in and outside of school implementing the 4Cs and design thinking into their learning. School principal Marianne Young explains the rationale behind the initiative by saying: “We have to stop trying to move every human through the same gate….I think the more options that we have in our schools, the more students we will help develop into the types of citizens that we need… And that it’s okay for students to need a little bit of a different approach.”(Tsai, 2013) Tony Wagner highlights the incredible design thinking work being done at a local school, High Tech High, in San Diego. I was so happy and impressed to know that a local San Diego school was doing something so innovative. It would be worthwhile for our staff to attend their exhibition next year! The learning going on at schools such as these is invaluable. I know that with our incredible staff and the abundant resources and parent support that we have at SJA, we could have a great deal of success with this initiative. At our school site, I see this being a program that gives students both choice and a voice in their learning. Our School Wide Learning Expectations as highlighted in our mission statement, are to develop students that are: lifelong learners, effective communicators, globally aware citizens, responsibly individuals and faithful Catholics. (Parent/Student Handbook, 2015) By going through the steps of the design thinking process, the students will be required to meet all of these expectations in addition to the pillars of the P21 framework and Seven Survival Skills. While at the same time, students will have the opportunity to take charge of their own learning. It is my hope that the students will engage in learning that they are passionate about, and that connects to what they’re learning in school in addition to the outside world around them. I understand that with any new program initiative, change can be difficult. I want you to know that although this is going to be a big shift in our school culture, I feel very passionately about it and I will be learning and growing right alongside you. “...leading in a culture of change means creating a culture (not just a structure) of change. It does not mean adopting innovations, one after another; it does mean producing capacity to seek, critically assess, and selectively incorporate new ideas and practices --- all the time, inside the organization as well as outside it.” (Schrum & Levin, 2015 p.6) In order to have success with this new program, as a staff, we must have a shared vision and clear and constant communication. “For starters, leading 21st century schools requires that planned change be driven by a shared vision and specified goals that everyone knows.” (Schrum & Levin, 2015 p.8) We will take time to study the design thinking process and begin to plan our implementation together. Professional development will be a huge priority. It will not be a one time occasion, but will be embedded into the culture of our school. Research shows that PD is more effective when it is made meaningful and accessible to teachers on an individual basis, so that it can best meet the needs of each of you. (Schrum & Levin, 2015) That is exactly what I plan to do. We will start slow, and we’ll work together. I could not be more proud to be a part of this staff and a part of this beautiful community. I hope that each of you will be willing to open up your hearts and minds to a new and exciting way of educating our youth. I hope that you embrace this initiative with the same passion and enthusiasm as you share with your students every single day. I hope that you see the value and importance in this shift in learning and teaching. I have no doubts that bringing a design thinking approach to Saint James Academy is the right move for our school and that you all will do a beautiful job of implementing it. I look forward to discussing this further with each of you as we get ready to start school again in the fall. Until then, have a wonderful summer full of rest and relaxation with your loved ones. Sincerely, Lexie Nielsen I’m including a few resources in case you are curious and would like to read further about the design thinking approach. Additional Resources http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework Seven Survival Skills - Tony Wagner Teaching Design for Change Video Reinventing Education for the 21st Century - Tony Wagner References Brown, T. (2008, November 10). Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/RjwUn-aA0VY Framework for 21st Century Learning - P21. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework Friedman, T. L. (2014, February 22). How to Get a Job at Google. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html Parent/Student Handbook. (2015). Solana Beach, CA: Saint James Academy. Pilloton, E. (2010, November 10). Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/aiIxdFBA0Sw Schrum, L., & Levin, B. B. (2015). Leading 21st-century schools: Harnessing technology for engagement and achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Tsai, C. (2013, February 13). If students designed their own schools... Retrieved from https://youtu.be/RElUmGI5gLc Wagner, T. (2008, October). Rigor Redefined. Retrieved from http://www.tonywagner.com/244 Wagner, T. (2014, January 17). Reinventing Education for the 21st Century : Tony Wagner at (co)lab summit 2013. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/54gzmxlPbsA Our group received feedback from our cohort, individual school site peers, and teacher friends about our DT project. This feedback was crucial to the evolution of our project and allowed us to answer questions, address concerns and make adjustments to the prototype so that it could better meet the needs of our end user: teachers. Some of these questions/suggestions involved PD, assessments and program rollout. As a response to this feedback, our group created a recommended timeline for the rollout of the program and PD planning. We also addressed how one might assess within this program so we gave further explanation/clarity and explained how it aligned to the CCSS and that rubrics would also need to be generated as part of the initial on-site planning process. The first looked at the feedback individually and then met as a group to go over it. From there we made adjustments to the prototype and determined our steps for making changes. I think a lot of the feedback that we received was very positive, so one of our main challenges was determining how we could make adjustments based on some of the questions and concerns raised. Personally, my addition was editing the PowToon to add more clarity and explanation. I feel that we were able to achieve our design goals, but as I mentioned in our shared document ... I feel that with a program like ours, it will always continue to develop, evolve and improve to meet the needs of the teachers and school site.
Reflection Part 1
This has probably been my favorite phase so far, because being a problem solver, I’m happy to see all of our hard work, questioning, brainstorming and planning come to fruition. I have been happy with our design thinking question from the beginning because I feel that it is very relevant to most teachers right now. We brainstormed so many ideas for tackling this problem, and I feel that out of all of them, we chose a very realistic and attainable solution; one that I would be proud to share with my faculty and staff. Just like each week prior, the four of us have met via google hangouts multiple times to discuss, delegate and share. We were so happy to have our professor, Sandra Leu, join part of our meeting this week! During this hangout session we decided to use google slides to create a storyboard for the prototype in addition to the on-going google doc that we’ve been working on. I did the majority of the storyboard and my peers went through and helped with revisions, rewording, adding specific details, etc. I then took the storyboard and turned it into a PowToon to share with a school site (or district). Our plan is to use a blended space to organize our different presentation pieces. Our end goal is to set the stage with the iMovie that we created - which clearly shares the need for our program. We then plan to use the PowToon to present the idea, and then bring it home with screencasts going over the details of the framework and possible project examples. We do not want to limit teachers, by any means, but I know that teachers do like to see real world examples of how they can incorporate a program into their classroom. We plan to end with a survey which allows the audience (and potential user) to offer feedback.
I think a challenge that we face is that each week, one group member has to step up and do a large portion of the work. Last week that was Andrea, with the iMovie, and this week I feel like it was me. I think with such a large project, it all works out in the end - but it can feel overwhelming for group members who want to be helpful but are unable to with certain tasks. I think there are many valuable experiences within this project that I would like to bring to the classroom. Designing and collaborating within a group is always challenging and rewarding - sharing ideas, building on ideas, getting closer and closer to something awesome. I also feel that peer revision and feedback is such an important tool for students to learn at an early age. This doesn’t have to just apply to writing - it can be for any type of project. The problem is, teachers have to make time for students to go back and make improvements to their project. I feel that often times this is the step that is let go of, for time sake. I think ensuring that collaboration is taking place is another challenge for teachers. The goal of collaboration is to work together, share ideas and grow from each other’s thoughts. Often times with group works, instead what happens is that the work gets divided up and students are working individually to put together one final project. I think one way to ensure collaboration is to ask students to note exactly what they collaborated on as part of their assignment. I think also assigning a project that requires an idea to evolve and change (kind of like our design thinking project) demands a more collaborative approach. Another approach that teachers could take is just informing students on the power and benefits of collaborating with their peers. If students understand that collaboration will actually help them in the end, they may be more inclined to do it. Reflection Part 2: Collaborative Discussion with Amanda WallaceThis week the Designing Divas spent a lot of time together and apart going through the ideation phase. We all agreed to go through the readings and videos before our first group meeting so that we could get right to work. We met after class on Wednesday and began going through the checklist for the ideation phase, starting with goals. We then brainstorming using Padlet. We were really trying to come up with 100 ideas - per the challenge- ranging from realistic to wild, specific to more visionary. We did not reach our goal of 100 but we had a lot of great ideas to work with. Once we did our original brainstorm we went through and looked from ideas that we could combine or link together. We talked about which of the ideas were student centered and which were teacher centered and sorted them initially with those categories in mind. One of the challenges that we faced was when using Padlet, you could only move your own sticky note- unless you were the “owner” of the document. So that was a little bit limiting/tricky because we had so many sticky notes to work with. This was a very long process - almost two hours so at this point we gave it a rest and planned to meet the following evening.
In the meantime, everyone was supposed to look through our ideas and come up with what they thought would be “promising ideas”. We decided to use a color key to differentiate our written opinions and ideas and made the goal of answering the questions and reviewing each other's thoughts before coming together to discuss on Thursday night. On Thursday we had a rich discussion/questioning session to work through some sort of solutions for our question. We all felt very excited and passionate about some of the ideas that we came up with. By questioning one another and piggybacking off of each other's’ thoughts, we were able to agree on two possible promising ideas. Then as a group we went through the discussion topics and recorded our thoughts on the shared google doc. I would say that we all contributed equally this week to sharing our ideas, recording our discussion topics in the shared document and taking on leadership in the conversation. I look forward to seeing where this project will go! I really enjoyed Tim Brown’s Ted Talk on creativity. He used an analogy that really resonated with me as an elementary school teacher. He explained how young children need to feel secure and in a trusted environment to feel most free to play. He compared this to a design team that also needs to feel like they are in a safe and trusted place before they can “play” …. Playing being the time where they are working to come up with creative ideas. He outlined his talk around three types of “play” that help to promote creative ideas: exploration, building and role playing. Each of these types of creative “play” provide different opportunities for ideas to be discovered and developed. I connected his talk to Design Thinking and specifically ideation, because as adults, sometimes we feel that our ideas have to look or be a certain way. Unless we feel we are in a safe environment (and will not be judged), a person’s willingness to fail, or ability to come up with a wild idea may be stunted. During the ideation phase we worked hard to defer judgement, come up with wild ideas, build on each other’s ideas, and we tried to come up with as many as possible (our goal was 100). I imagine that if we had the ability to explore through role playing, exploring, and building we may have reached that goal! BYOD programs have received both praise and disapproval over the years. I think there can be a lot of benefits to to BYOD type programs, but there can also be a lot of difficulties. For me, the bottom line is that students should have access to technology in and out of the classroom, and if bringing in devices from home is the only option to make that happen - than that scenario is better than the alternative. I’ve been lucky enough to be in 1:1 iPad program for the past 4 years and I see so many benefits to each student having a device to work with in the classroom. Since so many programs have moved to “web based” it makes it so much easier for students to access content from any device available to them. I think having devices available increases the students’ ability to connect with other students from around the world. It also opens up the doors to sharing their learning in new and exciting ways through different creation applications. One example that the article gave was that by utilizing BYOD program devices, students could “advance their content knowledge” by being able to create artifacts and share them on social networks. This allows students to not only share but also access other student work, furthering their learning on the topic. It allows students create projects and then easily communicate and collaborate about the projects with peers from around the world. The Shrum and Levin text also claims that students often take better care of their devices and take more ownership over their learning when they personally own the device. One concern I have about BYOD programs is that socio economic inequities become very apparent to students by the quality of devices that students have access to. As a teacher I could see some of my students feeling insecure or inadequate if they did not own a device that was deemed “cool” or “expensive”. I think good classroom management and classroom culture can counteract this issue, but it is still something to think about. References Schrum, Lynne, and Barbara B. Levin. Leading 21st Century Schools: Harnessing Technology for Engagement and Achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009. Print. Song, Yanjie. "“Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)” for Seamless Science Inquiry in a Primary School." Computers & Education 74 (2014): 50-60. Web. The Designing Divas accomplished a lot this week! We each participated in some sort of interview, observation or conversation with experts in the field of twenty first century teaching. I had the opportunity to interview the junior high lead science teacher at my school site. She has worked to educate herself on the Next Generation Science Standards through purchasing and reading books on the topic, growing her PLN with online resources like twitter, and seeking out PD for herself for the past several years. She has also worked to align all of her curriculum to the NGSS. It was great having a chance to talk with her because she has been teaching for almost 20 years so she has had the opportunity to see how science education has evolved and has grown in her teaching practices throughout her years teaching science. After conducting the interview I organized my notes using the online tool Bubbl. I was able to take my notes from this Bubbl and compare them to my group’s notes from their interviews. We all met via Google Hangouts to study the data, search for recurring themes, and synthesize our notes. We’ve since then met again to work on our inspirational story iMovie. I helped to storyboard the movie, write the script, and find images to portray our message. I think one challenge that we faced was that all 4 of our experiences were relatively different, and although we asked the same questions and had the same guiding question in mind, our experiences all turned out to be quite different. This can be a challenge and an advantage because we were able to discuss these differences and work through why our experiences seemed to be different. It also gave us perspectives of experts from all over the spectrum of teaching 21st century skills to students. I wondered if the same person did all 4 interviews/observations if there would be more of a theme among the responses and notes. As hard as we try to make surveys unbiased (and we worked hard to word our questions so that they were not leading), qualitative data (with open ended questions) is always going to be more on the subjective side.
I feel like my group has done a really good job of using our online meeting sessions to develop systematic plans. So far we’ve been able to establish plans, go out and work independently, and then come back and share our findings and have rich discussions. I feel like this process would be very beneficial for students. It would require them to work on the skill of planning with a collaborative group. It also promotes communication, rich discussion, and conversations around data analysis. Sometimes working in groups can be frustrating because we all have our own timeline or way of doing things - so this required group work is so beneficial to practicing being open minded, flexible, and cooperative. These are all skills that students should be practicing regularly. I loved the video on Emily Pilloton’s project in Bertie County. I was so inspired by not only her open mindedness, but her ability to envision such a powerful project for this small rural town. She looked a problem and through a design thinking lens, and she helped the students to create beautiful solutions. She gave her students the tools the go out into the community, identify needs, and apply their learning to the world around them. I love how she and her partner discussed how it is important to look at the bigger picture and think on a global level, but that doing things locally can sometimes make the biggest impact. It made me realize that small acts can have large impacts. I was inspired by her process and hope to model her open mindedness and forward thinking in my own classroom. A Message From The Principal Dear Saint James Academy Families, It is with great joy that we begin a new school year! I am very pleased to announce that our school has done of lot of work over the summer to prepare for our new 1:1 iPad program that will begin this fall. By providing our students with access to technology, we believe that we will be able to better support our students in their learning of 21st century skills. Our students are growing up in a time when technology is all around them. Many of the jobs that the students will have in the future do not even exist yet. It is our job to prepare them to become smart and safe digital citizens. We will also work to give our students the tools to be able to think critically, communicate with one another on a local and global level, collaborate with their current and future peers, and share their ideas in innovative and creative ways. In addition to our 1:1 pilot program, we have renovated our science lab so that it is equipped with the most up-to-date science tools and facilities. Additionally, we have designated a new room in the school to be used as a “makerspace” where students will have the opportunity to design, create, build and share their learning. Needless to say, we are very excited and optimistic about the new learning opportunities that will be provided to the students of Saint James Academy this year. With any new privileges, comes new responsibilities. Students at SJA will be expected to follow the guidelines put into place by the school administration, board and technology team. The technology and digital citizenship guidelines are as follows:
http://www.netsmartz.org/Parents https://kids.usa.gov/parents/online-safety/index.shtml http://www.internetsafety.com/internet-safety-tips-for-parents.php Saint James Academy is looking forward to a wonderful school year ahead! Thank you, Lexie Nielsen Part 1
This week my group, the “Design Divas”, met three times via Google Hangouts to brainstorm and discuss ideas for our design thinking project. At the same time, we collaboratively worked on a shared google doc to outline our discussion, highlight important questions, and organize our thinking. Our group had a very rich discussion when trying to determine our design thinking question. We discussed several pertinent topics that affect educators today and as the discussion evolved and we continued to ask questions, we kept coming back to the same question “What is the right way to teach students, where do we find the balance between integrating 21st century skills and teaching the traditional content, and how do we do it?” We are a group of innovative educators who have embedded technology and 21st century skills into our classrooms. But we still constantly ask ourselves, “is what we’re doing what is best for the students? and if so, how can we get other teachers on board?” This ultimately led us to our question of “How can we move educators toward teaching 21st century skills while still meeting all grade level requirements mandated by the district?” I think one of the biggest challenges we faced as a group was determining how to word our question and also how to eventually come up with a solution for our question that isn’t as simple as professional development. I look forward to working with my group to move forward with this pertinent design thinking project question. I felt that the process, while time consuming and frustrating at times, was thought provoking and rewarding. I’m lucky to be in a group with forward thinking passionate teachers; I enjoyed every minute of our discussions together. I think using this collaborative model with students would not only promote the use of technology and collaboration, but also allows them to think critically and have social interaction connected with their learning. I use shared documents and collaborative conversations in class frequently and am always impressed at the level my students are able to work together on their projects. Part 2 Vision for SJA
Action steps
Part 3 What does your learning space say about the learning you want for your students? My learning space is open,comfortable and colorful, with lots of different options of places for students to work. The desks are situated in “pods” that help facilitate collaboration and group work. We move around a lot so students are often out of their seats, sitting on the front rug and using the couch and bean bags. The smartboard is situated at the “front” of the room but class is typically taught with me navigating around the room and working with small groups. We also utilize the courtyard that is connected to my classroom on a weekly basis for science labs, art, or just getting outside to read or do group work. There is evidence of student learning on the walls in addition to daily objectives and weekly goals written on the board. Anchor charts in math and reading rotate each week to support student learning. Positive messages are trickled around the room as a reminder to students that they are loved, supported, safe and that their ideas matter. _Reflection 1 |