Design Inspired Schools: Getting from the schools we have to the ones we want.

Session 6

Timothy Comer, Walter Brown, Phil Linder — New York City Department of Education

Room 1080

“Design is the rendering of intent”. According to Gallagher and Thordarson (2018) teachers and school leaders are constantly designing, but only “occasionally stumble upon innovative ideas or solutions.” To them, “design inspired leaders” “act with greater intention and achieve greater impact”. The shift from traditional leadership to design thinking leadership is predicated by the mindsets in the learning community. To help catalyze this shift in schools, our session objective is to cultivate a culture of design thinking by engaging in discussions and protocols that model this process. For instance, we will begin the session with a disruptive thinking protocol intended to shift the focus of school leadership from “problem solving” to “problem finding”. Then, through a collaborative discussion protocol, participants will consider school systems and structures from the student perspective in an effort to become “experience architects”. Small group discussions will extend the conversation and will include topics such as harnessing “imagination” to overcome constraints in the design process, educators as “producers” of learning, and the importance of “storytelling” in the teaching and stewarding of a design inspired vision of learning.

Works Cited -Gallagher, Alyssa, and Kami Thordarson. "Front Cover." Design Thinking for School Leaders: Five Roles and Mindsets That Ignite Positive Change, ASCD, 2018, p. 0.

-https://xqsuperschool.org/