Final Reflection
Design Thinking… My new way of Teaching
Drifting back to my thought process in the fall of 2014, I was quite bummed when I realized I would need to choose a different class to complete my Master’s. Especially when I saw the class was titled, Learning Tech through Design. My initial thoughts were, “What in the world is this class even about? Am I going to learn about designing new technology? How is this even relatable to education?” To put it bluntly, I was frustrated and wary about spending over $2,000 on a class that may not be applicable to my profession. (No offense intended) However, preconceived notions and judging a “class by its title’ usually means my misconceptions are proven untrue and I always end up enjoying my experience. Once the class began, I found that it was completely related to the realm of education, and presented a new route that I wanted to travel in my future as a teacher. Therefore, I want to focus my reflection on how the concept of design presented in this course has influenced my teaching style.
The story begins before this course even started, where I could feel myself becoming complacent in my teaching. I am currently in my fifth year as an Elementary Spanish teacher, and am at the point where I have a well-developed curriculum and understand the flexibility and mindset needed to be a good educator. I have heard that this is the year when teachers start becoming Master teachers at their position. However, I didn’t feel this way. I felt that when you become this comfortable, it usually means you need to find another challenge and realize you can still give more than what you are giving.
After the first assignment in this course, a 55 Fiction short story, I had a feeling that ‘design thinking’ was going to be both a fun and frustrating experience. I felt the creative juices flowing right away with this assignment, but also a feeling of good frustration, meaning I needed to use my problem solving skills to write something that told a story with only 55 words. And this basically initiated my feelings about the entire design process. This process allows you to be creative and at the same time become a problem-solver, and I have found that both are essential when you are a designer.
Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been on an exciting and ever-changing journey that has allowed me to ponder my current skills as a teacher, and push me to develop into a better one. While learning the steps of the design process, I was pushed to incorporate them in my own teaching through the problem of practice assignment, and I was also able to see them as a new tool my students could use to learn.
For example, in the past, I have always used a curriculum method of ‘Backwards Design’ where you create your assessments before the lessons in order to make sure you teach everything in the lessons that will be on the assessments. While I think this is a good method, I was leaving out a very important step that I learned in the design thinking process: Empathy. This first mode is truly the most important because putting it simply if you do not understand where your students are coming from and how they feel, then no matter what you teach, student’s will not be intrinsically motivated to learn it. The Stanford Model of Design has shown me that this needs to be an essential part of every teacher’s method when developing a curriculum and in meeting the needs of their students. The design thinking process completely helped me create my Project-Based Learning opportunity for the problem of practice because I took the time to interview students, survey them, listen to their input, and observe their feelings and reactions. Without the incorporation of the first mode, Empathy, my problem of practice never would have reached its true potential.
Working my way through each module, I felt as though each mode of the design thinking process was exponentially connecting to how a teacher should design a curriculum for their classroom. Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test are engrained in my brain, and I even created a flow chart next to my desk as a reminder. From this process I have learned design thinking promotes creativity, communication, collaboration, and cooperation. Further, it forces you to develop problem solving skills and allow the ‘crazy’ idea to emerge – that just might work! These were all skills I needed to continue to work on as an educator and incorporate in my teaching style and also skills I want my students developing as learners. It is apparent that this process is as beneficial to educators as it is to the students they are teaching.
Overall, one of most influential experiences I had from this course involved using design thinking to create my problem of practice: a Project-Based Learning opportunity for my students. I felt each mode could relate to a part of my planning process for this project starting with understanding my users (empathy), stating objectives (define), creating and performing activities (ideate), developing a plan of action (prototype), and showing knowledge learned in the end (test). This is expressed with greater detail in my Problem of Practice Final Report.
Now, taking it a step further, it is important to brainstorm (ideate) how I could use this process in other realms of my professional career. Not only does the design thinking process work with Project-Based Learning, but one way I could use it is when introducing procedures and rules each school year. For example, I could have students express how they want to be treated and what our classroom should look and feel like (empathy), then state a few guidelines of how we develop rules (define), brainstorm and discuss what we want them to be (ideate), create a plan of rules, procedures, and consequences (prototype), and then see how well we are putting them into place (test). If issues come up after this process, then go back to one of the modes and tweak it, or rework through the entire design process again as a classroom unit. I can also see this process being efficient when working with my fellow educators on a curriculum, professional development, or school environment issue. I believe possibilities will always emerge where this process would be a successful guideline to follow when trying to tackle a new issue.
Lastly, I wanted to have a chance to focus on the five phases/modes of design in my own words and in my classroom. Instead of describing each phase in a separate paragraph and showcasing what I learned, I wanted to be a little more creative. Therefore, I decided to enlist the help of some of my second grade students to create a video showcasing the five phases using my own thoughts and how they relate to my goals in my classroom. Check out the video below at the end of the reflection. To conclude, my misconceptions about this class, Learning Tech through Design, were completely proven wrong, and I am grateful for the new knowledge I have gained regarding ‘design thinking’ and am excited about where my teaching methods can blossom from here.
