Looking back, we should have been able to predict it. But, at the time, it came as a complete surprise. When every teacher at North Rowan High School was asked in an Instructional Design Team meeting to state the most important thing they taught, the answers were consistent and clear. No teacher shared a content-specific fact or skill. No teacher referenced their standards or end-of-course assessment. Rather, each teacher identified a thinking or life skill.
Some of the most frequently shared skills were:
In the debrief, teachers identified how a love of learning and the skills to learn were some of the most important concepts they needed to equip students with for their future. They recognized how the content skills needed in careers are ever changing, but the soft skills are enduring. Our teachers also feared that all too often we fail to directly teach these most important life skills in deference to content. Viewing the documentary Most Likely to Succeed confirmed our fears. We were not explicitly teaching students the skills they would most need for the rapidly changing world they would enter after graduation. That world would require mastery of the very things being neglected in the classroom. We began to explore processes that would support critical and creative thinking as students explored content knowledge. In the book Designing Your Life by Burnette and Evans, our staff was introduced to the process of design thinking. Design thinking is a way to approach a problem with no known solution. It builds on a humanistic approach of developing empathy for the intended user or audience, and then prototyping to move through an iterative creation process. The d.school at Stanford offered many resources on their website such as their design thinking bootleg and virtual crash course. Exploring these resources allowed us to imagine how design thinking could become the engine by which we drove change towards a more critical and creative approach to student learning. Our design labs are now the home to our design thinking instruction. Design teachers, along with Career & Technical Education and Exceptional Children’s teachers, work collaboratively to engage students in Challenge Based Learning. Their pedagogy is based on the d.school design thinking process. Students work to develop empathy, define the problem, brainstorm creative solutions for their intended user, prototype, and test their solutions. Through the process students apply their core content learning to real-world challenges. They work in teams and begin to see themselves as designers. They work through mistakes and missteps, collaborate with peers, communicate through through writing, speaking, and visual exhibits, and discover their own power to create solutions. Although most of the final products are impressive, design students are graded on agency and the 4 C’s – collaboration, communication, creative and critical thinking throughout the entire design process. For North High, design thinking is a method for assuring our graduates are fully prepared for the world they will enter after their senior year. It is how we equip students with skills that allow them to design their best possible life, overcome obstacles, and make learning their own. See our Design Lab course description here.
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AuthorMeredith Williams is the principal at NRHS. A graduate of NRHS and an community member, Mrs. Williams is invested in the success of the NRHS student population. ArchivesCategories |