The wheels of the cart clattered along as I made my way over to Nicholas Commons, which is a meeting space located in our Upper School. However, this was no ordinary cart of supplies. Typically when I set up for meetings I have chart paper, computer dongles, pens, markers and notecards... but today the cart included several extra items, including glue sticks, discarded wood remnants, some cardboard, pipe cleaners, and modeling clay. The cart ingredients sent a clear signal: the upcoming "mini conference" was going to be just a bit different than any other educational seminar that I'd coordinated.
The sun cast its rays through the windows of the meeting space and a gentle breeze came through the louvered doors while I began setting up for our mini conference on design thinking. Division principals and pre-identified faculty "pioneers" had been identified and invited to participate in this mini-conference. During the two day session, we would take on defining "design thinking" for Parker, as well as identifying our process for both design thinking and the implementation of design thinking at the School. The faculty pioneers attending the sessions were secondary level teachers who were teaching design thinking specific classes and elementary school representatives who would be tasked with facilitating implementation across grade levels and curricular areas.
Ironically enough, the Francis Parker School was introduced to a person by the name of Parker in the spring of 2014. Parker Thomas had been referred to us as a potential partner and collaborator as we embarked on our design thinking journey. He is a self-identified "maker" with a deep belief in and a deep passion for design thinking. Furthermore, had recently helped open an elementary school that is based on design thinking principles, as well as having undertaken some extensive design thinking related work in the "real world" with Maker Media and Intuit. He was moving into more and more consulting with schools like ours to incorporate design thinking into their teaching and learning practice and received strong recommendations. As a result, we invited him to help us begin our work with design thinking.
During previous phone calls with division principals and our Head of School, Parker had done quite a bit of listening to those with whom he spoke. The week prior to his visit, he and I had a long conversation wherein we came to the realization that we needed to approach design thinking in a largely unprecedented way, but it was also a way that felt "right" given what he had heard and what we had both observed from visiting several other schools that had been on the design thinking journey. Unlike every other school we'd collectively seen, Parker was going to truly begin at the beginning.
What does that mean? Well, the process of other schools, as we had seen, appeared to be that the schools approached design thinking from the perspective of having the space determine their process. They first set aside a space, then they spent a lot of money buying equipment and supplies, and THEN they presented the space to their school to figure out what to do with it. In most, if not all, scenarios, the schools then undertook a struggle that lasted anywhere from one to several years trying to figure out what precisely to do with the space, and how to incorporate design thinking for their school via the space. The lab spaces were not used to their maximum potential, and design thinking was not pervading the school environment. In essence, it felt like that process was backwards.
Our School was in a unique position to do things differently. While a room had been identified for each of school's campuses (note: Parker's Lower School is on one site, while our Middle and Upper Schools are combined on another site), no specific equipment had been ordered or placed in the areas. The determination had been made to furnish the MS/US "design lab" with whiteboard tables and swivel chairs that would afford adaptability and flexibility, and to make some more collaborative work spaces in the area surrounding the room. At the Lower School, there would be no forging ahead with a specific area at this point in time, and the "design lab" would take shape across some classrooms and spaces where faculty were already experimenting with design thinking.
In essence, we could "turn the process on its head" - rather than creating a space and trying to force everything else to conform to it, we could begin by determining our vision and goals, and then let the space reflect student needs and outcomes based on our vision. In other words, we'd let our vision create the space rather than having the space determine our vision for us. It was, and still is, an exciting and innovative approach to the work. Our two day mini-conference would be when we would come up with our "version 1.0" vision and design thinking process, with the hopes that as we moved more deeply into the process, we might apply design thinking principles into our very work with instructional practice and our design lab spaces.
During a planning conversation the week prior, Parker had helped me determine the best setup for our meeting space, Nicholas Commons, as well as how to set out supplies to foster collegiality and collaboration. I carefully put out the various materials around the room and added some prompting thinking cards to the tables and easels. After an hour's work, the room looked ready.
In the end, the two day mini conference was determined to be a success by all involved. Read the next post entitled "The Mini Conference"to learn what we did during our two days together, and read the post "The Parker Process" to view the outcomes of our sessions.
Are you interested in setting your vision version 1.0 before you furnish out your lab space? Are you thinking that having a mini-conference with a core team or pilot team of faculty might be a good path for you in your process? Feel free to contact us with questions!
