ASFM Moonshots: Interpretation > Ideation

Listening to students express their hopes and desired for a different learning experience has been some of the best PD we could have hoped for. I wish I would have done so more often as a classroom teacher. Throughout this process we have been intentional about honoring the Design process and gaining empathy into the user experience, in this case school/education experience for our high school students. The better we listen to understand and position ourselves as ethnographers seeking to learn more, the better can facilitate the development of another experience at ASFM, a school within our school.

This has been a continue process of prompting, listening, circling back, asking why, and digging deeper, over a period of literally months. I fully recognize many schools, ours included, do not have time, or make time to do this but in doing so we have been able understand more than we ever thought possible and move forward with conviction.

A challenging, yet simple concept to dig deeper into has been, What is School for? What is the real purpose of it education? Our student group consistently kept coming back to this concept during our group empathy sessions and to be honest, we couldn’t find a collaborative or community agreed upon response. The ASFM vision statement reads that, “We believe in OPEN MINDS, CARING HEARTS, and GLOBAL LEADERSHIP as essentials for a healthy and successful life.” and resonates at a high level of frequency with our student population. Yet, we when we ask how this is expressed in common behavior patterns there is little consistency or alignment. That made us curious.

How might we prototype a series of experiences to inform and mould the future ASFM Moonshots academy? After much discussion around what a prototypes might look like it we eventually arrived at some understanding that we this needed to be a personalized experience for all students. That we had to honor their individual needs and differences in two key ways. We had to customize and personalize their learning experience as it applied to the structures of school and the structures of learning.

By “Structures of School” we are referring to the non-academic components of school. The schedule, location, classrooms, “graduation requirements”, generations, etc. Students we talked with expressed that there where various constraints to the confinements of the structures of schools but that these were not equal to all experiences. For example, one student may prefer to a classroom setting for their literature course but would like to experience science externally with an expert or mentor.

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By “Structures of Learning” we are referring to the academic components of school. The standards, nature of courses, assessments, projects, assignments, tests, etc. Students expresses that in some cases they prefer to learn about a topic in isolation but in others they would like to explore cross sections between subjects. For example, what might we learn about chemistry when we explore through the lens of literature and art? These types of curiosity statements are unique to each students.

Combining this framework with the emergent ASFM emergent drivers drivers can now serve as to fuel ideas to launch prototypes of what an ASFM Moonshots experience could be like.

ASFM Moonshots: Discovery > Interpretation

Since November we have been engaging with our Moonshots students on an almost weekly basis. The invitation brought students who were interested in redesigning school yet were unsure what that meant. Truth be told, we as a teacher group were a bit unsure as well. Our next step was to engage with students to provide some clarity and direction in regards to where we were going, how we were going to get there, and start putting some work in.

What has been amazing is that our students have gone far further than we could have ever mandated. As mentioned in a previous post, in our first few meetings we explored the current reality, a desired result, and a better plausible future. As a design team, this allowed helped us develop Drivers, (Choice, Autonomy, Motivating, Personalized) and Constraints (Tired, Homework, Stressed, Tests) but we needed to understand what students meant by this. In design we call this activation and validation, the process of saying to the user group, this is what we heard, did we hear correctly? Can you tell me more? What did we miss? Over the next few weeks, a series of group empathy activities took place where we prodded and probed for deeper understanding of the students experience and future desires for learning. Below are the initial findings from that series of meetings.

When we dug deeper for understanding we were very impressed with the level of sophistication to which our students could express and advocate for choice, autonomy, personalized and autonomous learning. We couldn't have scripted better responses if we tried. For example, “ we’re learning at a superficial depth in courses and there are topics which I would like to spend a significant amount of time on because I am interested and this would further develop my general understanding in the course or topic.” For personalized learning students would express that , “in a class of 20+ students I am always held up or holding up other students as we go through the content. This always results in non-optimal learning for everyone.” These are not students who are trying to escape from learning, they are trying to escape from learning which does not respond to their needs and enhance their talents and passions nor is the learning applicable in the “real world”.

When it comes to understanding constraints we had to really understand what they are enduring and what obstacles to learning exist. I used to think that students were playing a collective con on teachers by claiming they were “tired”. By far when we have asked students how they feel when they are at school this has been the most frequent response. It’s impossible that they coordinated at this level. We had to dig deeper.

Something we mention to students as we are going through this process as “Designers” is that everyday they are victims of design and I can think of no better example of students being a victim of someone else's prototype which is entrenched in tradition and ignores the needs of a user group than the “school schedule”. The user group it does respond to is parents, business, and adults in general but with what we now know about brain research ,sleep patterns and the needs for youth now, how is it that we we have not dramatically altered how we schedule school? This seems to be a major obstacle to optimal learning for this student group and greatly contributes to their stress levels and anxiety. Second to this is the general nature of assessment they are experiencing, mainly homework and tests. They are not seeking to absolve themselves from work but rather work which they see useless, irrelevant and uniformed.

An example of their passion for learning and willingness to work, is the behind the scenes, out of the sight of us, creation of an ASFM Moonshots Project website. While we were working on facilitating this process and meeting with them once a week during their Access period, they were continuing the conversation and exploration among each other and with other students, even elementary students, on topics they felt were work challenging. Such as, schedules, sleep patterns, extra-curricular activities, teacher’s mindsets, and the overall purpose of school.

Again you couldn’t have scripted this and we cannot be thankful enough. We just have to be the best we can be to listen to understand and guide the process with as little bias as possible. The challenge and opportunity continues.

ASFM Moonshots: The Pitch

In early October the ASFM Tech Action Committee gathered to discuss innovation at ASFM. Most of the committee, comprised of our Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Principals, Assistant Principals, Directors, Coaches, etc, had just returned from the annual Tri-Association Educators conference in the Dominican Republic. As a result we asked, “what are you curious about?” The responses were varied yet interesting. From there we shared out, partnered up, and committed to plan the next steps to explore. I shared for example, was that “I’m curious about authentically published learning platforms,” but that isn’t the focus of this post.

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What I want to share is the journey we have started as a result of Sheldon Guenther and Jonathan Chenier’s being curious about an alternative education program which starts with our students as the designers. I am proud and honored to say that this week, less than a month after the spark was lit, we started with just that, students. We created an invitation to a journey to think differently about school with the video below. When the 9th grade generation met for an assembly, we took five minutes, pressed play, and walked away. We wanted to be as faceless as Daft Punk and let the idea move them.

Join us in redesigning the future of education, now.

As you can see, we started with “Why” and were purposefully unclear as to the direction we are headed. We also shared this out with students before we pitched to teachers. We are not sure to what extent that is a good idea but we wanted to emphasize our commitment to students being the focus.

On Thursday, November 1, we waited to see who this message resonated with enough to move them to take the first step. To our surprise, 15 grade 9 students felt compelled enough to explore the better plausible future. And so it has begun.

One non-negotiable aspect of this project is that we are going to follow the Design Thinking process and cast ourselves as designers and therefore relinquish, as much as possible, our biases admin, principal, teacher, adult. Those are layers of self which we want to inform but not influence. This an experience we are designing with students. As we move forward, we want them to be advocating to their parents, the board, teachers, community members, peers, etc, for a more personalized and autonomous learning experience.

By David Jakes

The first step of our ASFM L2E2 Design Thinking Process is Discovery. We need to know how students feel about their current learning experience, understand how they want to feel, and explore alternative mindsets and challenge the current model altogether. Everything is on the board to be redesigned. When we shared this with our Explorers, their posture changed. We have lift off.

What has been most impressive has been the extent to which our students have been able to express themselves with precision and articulateness. They have been able to express that they understand the structures and needs of education but also state why and how it doesn’t maximize their potential, time, or abilities. I have summarized the findings from our first sessions below.

How we feel about school?

Emerging Driers: Tired. Stressed. Unmotivated

How we want to feel?

Emerging Constraints: Inspired, Happy, Excited

If you were given a day to learn about anything, what would you choose to learn about?

What amazed me here is that what they chose to learn about wasn’t all that exotic but learned towards the practical. First aid was definitely not what I expected. The group also very quickly decided to increase the frequency of meetings from once to twice a week, with some also looking to extent the Discovery process beyond their grade level by connecting with Elementary students. In their words, “this may impact us in the short term but will mean more to them in the long term.” I’m going to let that breathe and wait to see where it lands.

The journey continues.