Some type of time range - how do we apply a research source in a timely manner?
<aside> 🚨 I can't publicly share photos of the classroom / with any students - if we make this Notion page private to just the studio members, I can add some visuals!
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In November 2018, I met Nanami Sunaga — a sixth-grade Science and STEAM elective teacher at Daniel Webster Middle School in Mid-city Los Angeles. Given we met at a design shabbat and were interested in the intersection of human-centered design and middle school education, the partnership was not hard to form. It’s relatively easy to do experimental curricula in elective classes, so we proposed to design-think a design-thinking curriculum over one semester in her STEAM classes.
From January-May 2019, I went into the classroom for minimum of six hours a week to teach a STEAM class. STEAM happened twice a day — once at the beginning of the day and once right before lunch. During the in-between periods, I’d do homework in teachers lounges or observe the special needs classroom (which deserves an entire page on its own).
Plot Twisters relates to the one thing I didn’t do nearly enough this time around— reflection, both on a weekly basis and overall evaluation at the end of the semester. ****It’s difficult to measure the success of the curriculum quantitatively. And, there was a strict policy against filming students or sharing photos outside of private, approved spaces, so it was hard to document students over time. So these key takeaways are completely based off of the reflection journal I kept, and my experience with the students.
I stole this concept from The Kelley Brothers' (founders of d.school and IDEO) incredible book Creative Confidence. It's pretty simple : the more someone who doesn't think they're a designer feels confident in their design skills, the more confident they’ll feel creating something new. Before we started building anything, we focused three weeks on doing a mini design sprint with the intention of making students feel like they can design-think in the first place. This took the shape of drawing journey maps for each other’s days (see photo above), making everyone write and share things they were awesome at, and thinking about solutions in the framework of
“How can we use [thing that I’m awesome at] to make [the lowest point of my day] better?”
For students, it was a time to think about the things they were good at (some students knew what they were good at more than others). For me, it was a window into the problems each individual student faced. For example, every single student in both periods who rode the bus had the bus ride on the frowny-face side of their journey map — an insight that I would put to use later.
Homework can be hard to see value in, especially if you’re a sixth grader in one few offered electives. When we made everyone share at least three things they were awesome at (even if it was eating, sleeping, Snapchat), I was transported back to my middle school days again — some students proudly put five post-its on the board, some could barely get out of their seat and whispered with their head down. And, these exercises always took an entire 45 minute class period because students lost focus easily. But, the loudest and quietest student alike came up to me and said “Goodbye, Ms. Cat!” after class. So, although we had pieces of paper to turn in “for a grade”, what was ultimately enforced was standing up and verbally sharing a piece of insight from the homework with the class. We realized this held students more accountable to completing homework knowing they’d have to share with the class. I’m not saying this was easy — the first couple times we enforced share-outs, they still lasted entire class periods. But, by the end of class, students were collaborating with assigned teams, and the quietest students were the ones dragging me by the arm to view their prototype.
I cannot overstate the importance of time with students outside of class. It's all in lunch, or hanging out with students before class. Seeing how each student behaved in their everyday environment, with friends that they were comfortable with was the best place to observe. Webster doesn’t have a cafeteria, so friend groups would congregate in different places around the school — from grassy fields to ledges in hallways to sparse benches and picnic tables. Sometimes, for remediation or for fun, teachers hosted students for lunch, and I was shocked by how candidly students spoke of their experiences. Through this, Ms. Sunaga understood that interracial bullying on the bus was a problem — and the rather wise students wanted "wellness”. But, the validation from the journey maps made us realize this would be an engaging and interesting topic to design for in class. Learning more about Fortnite and soccer and FIFA and fashion habits through lunchtime was what made me understand the significance of play in all forms.
Ms. Sunaga put a lot of work into strategically creating teams — not putting entire friend groups together, but making sure students would feel comfortable and civil with their team mates. To better learn team dynamics and to get to know team mates better, we did an adaptation of the “colored hat” exercise, where we made each team member play a role in the project team. But, what made the exercise more focused and fun for the students was making tangible items to define roles. Having a uniquely colored sticker (what evolved into a uniquely colored paper crown) to define each role was a small but significant detail led to increased engagement, from the time we spent making the crowns to acting like regals.
In hindsight, this one is obvious to me — at the beginning, I was obsessed with making sure that students learned the human-centered design  process— I pretty much wanted to simplify all the diagrams I had ever seen about design thinking in the past and replicate those experiences. But, from the moment I saw the students’ faces when I told them their first homework assignment was to talk to at least three other middle-school students including one stranger — that myth went away real quick. The students got a taste of design-thinking — but some of the cards I received after the semester was over reported “the most fun I’ve ever had in class” to “the first time I did something cool in school” and “I can speak up in class…” — and that is what made me feel more successful than I ever could have imagined at the start.
The whole point of teaching design-thinking should be to make everyone feel like they’re creative, that they have good ideas, that their opinions are valid and their voice is worth hearing. And in middle school, where school is a drag and it’s really hard to believe that you have something worth saying — I hope I helped make the students feel a little more confident, a little more creative.