Piper School District takes on Design Thinking!
The Challenge:
How might we create an academy model that meets the wants and needs of our staff and students?
Piper School District (USD 203) is leading the way in Real-World Learning (RWL) in our region––implementing wall-to-wall academies at their high school, as well as experiential and design-based learning at the elementary and middle levels.
After a wildly successful pilot of our Student Voice program (in partnership with Kauffman Foundation), the Piper High School team paved the way for further design thinking implementation at the Piper district-level.
Keeping student voice front and center, the district is now taking part in a three-day training with Startland Education that teams up students and teachers to plan for Piper’s upcoming shift to an academy model.
Check out some photos from the project below!
The Design Thinking Process
Grounding and Goal Setting
Piper’s programming began with students and teachers getting acquainted with the human-centered design thinking process, and learning about what their outcomes would be by the end of the program.
Define, Empathize, Ideate
Making sure every minute of the design sprint was effective, participants would dive right in on day one––immersing themselves in the beginning stages of the design framework and ending the day having established a solid base for their individual projects.
Prototyping and Pitching
For day two, teams would spend their time building out a soft-model of their ideas, and creating their pitches to show other teams what they had been working on.
#MakeItReal
The day didn’t stop there. After pitching, teams reflected on their overall progress thus far, and discussed how these projects could be implemented at their school.
The Next Phase
Implementation
Piper would like to see this human-centered methodology scaled throughout courses and used as the basis and unifying framework for the different academies, as well as the student-led initiatives.
The group will reconvene in August for their final day of training and to continue implementing their projects across their district’s curriculum.
Testimonials:
“I loved the process we used today to have authentic dialogue about real-world problems in education.”
“I thought the empathy conversations were really powerful.”
“This design thinking process will fit well into classes going forward.”
“LOVED having the student input. Proud of the vulnerability of ALL!”
Interested in having a design thinking workshop at your school?
Contact us to learn more!
