For the interpretation phase I found many challenges throughout this process. The first challenge was that I took on the role of observing design thinking in process. As I am a TOSA and have a little more flexibility in my schedule I thought this would be the best for my team considering the rest do have classrooms. Finding a time the last two weeks of school where both my schedule and the teacher I was observing found to be quite challenging. There are many great things happening at the school I observed, including a CBS news crew coming, other schools observing and odd scheduling conflicts. Thankfully we managed to set up a time that I was able to observe! The next part of the process that was challenging was observing so late in the school year, on top of never observing a design thinking classroom before. I had so many questions! What did the teacher already teach before the students were in this step of the process? How did they decide what to make? Are there any rules? The class I observed was in a thinkabit lab using art and robotics combined. Many of the students were cutting the heads off of plastic animals while building a carousel that moved once the students created the appropriate code through the computer. How much training in coding did the students receive? Were they completing a novice coding job or something in depth? How does the teacher grade a project like this? Does grading work? Right as I was walking around the room the teacher approached me and gave a quick synopsis of the students and the learning taking place. I think he could tell by my “what is going on” look that I was not quite sure what was happening! Right away my eye is trained to see the students that are not participating as I work with English learners. A lot of my students have learned to quietly sit back and wait for a more dominant student to take over. I was curious to see if during this type of learning were all students engaged? Were any English learners and if so, how were they participating compared to their peers? Because I did not go in with specific questions I tried to focus on just observing. I wanted to take in as many details as possible about the learning, the environment, the role the teacher took, how the students were interacting and what they were doing.
Once back to the group, reporting back was a little challenging other than sharing out what I learned. The interpretation part could have been a little biased on my part as I asked questions but I didn’t ask specific pre made questions. I think in the future I would love to observe in the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and the end of the year. Also, being from the elementary world, and visiting a middle school classroom the light bulb went off as to how they are able to give design thinking to middle schoolers as one specific teacher is responsible for that class. My next steps will be to observe this learning environment in an elementary setting to see how K-5 teachers use design thinking in their everyday learning, and not in an isolated classroom. I don’t want it to sound that I believe it is easier for middle school to do this as they have blocked classes, I just mean that for the question we are trying to answer the learning that takes place has more structure when the class is broken up by teacher and time. Once we all shared out it was easy and yet difficult to see common threads throughout our interviews and observations. The easy part was seeing that teachers for the most part are just not there yet. The difficult part was determining what was said without repeating the same things just written in a different way. Which themes could be combined? Which ones were not really supporting our work? Which ones helped us bridge the next step in our process? Finally, which themes were the loudest throughout? It was as if we were Interpreting the interpretation of each of our findings yet each one of us have a different perspective and bias as to how we have used 21 century skills in our school and or classrooms. Throughout this process I was continually reminded of how much learning takes place by asking questions knowing the answer is not going to necessarily be there and how important it is to observe! Our teachers need to observe each other more, ask more questions of each other and allow for the space to ask questions of each other without feeling threatened. Questioning challenges our minds to process and reflect and hold the space in our heads for possible answers without having to have the answer. Since working through the interpretation phase with my team I have been thinking about ways our students should be given the space to converse with each other around questions yet so much of their learning is still sit and take. Finally, taking a look at Emily Pilloton work through project H in Bertie County has challenged me to realize that design thinking can happen in any community. Many times new ideas are not supported because of funds or thinking there just is not a way. However, listening to Emily how can one not be inspired to think there is an answer to everything! A few points that stood out to me was that Project H focused on using schools to build up a community. The blue dot image speaks volumes of creating an image of connecting through wifi and extending the learning through the schools. The other point that stood out was using the tires for playgrounds to teach math through gaming. Cost was not mentioned but I believe used tires were used and chalk. Combining the two with multiplication students are able to play, get outside and learn! The third is how incredibly inspiring Emily is! Throught the 16 minute video she touches upon hundreds of ways design thinking is impacting the county, the students, the community (both young and old) Using community projects and the youth the community is able to see the work that is being done for and with the community. Before starting this class I would have watched that video and felt overwhelmed as to how Project H got to where they are at. Now after experiencing just a couple steps in the process I know they started with asking a lot of questions and asking questions of those questions and challenging themselves to find answers that have been used before!
1 Comment
Sandra Leu
6/8/2016 12:27:24 pm
Hi Kelly,
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