The stage was set for all faculty by a dedicated group of facilitators, all of whom arrived early to help us get the tables set up and have the room ready!
First things being first, the facilitator group felt that it would be important for our faculty to experience the design thinking process first hand. As we had some time constraints combined with working with a very large group, we settled on having a design thinking experience wherein the faculty themselves would be the client or user - as such, they would do the empathy work (notice) collectively for themselves.
The challenge we gave them was: How might we design and create the ultimate faculty lounge?
Faculty dived in to the challenge, and we methodically worked through the Parker Design Thinking steps, pausing to provide instruction at each phase. Facilitators roamed the full room, providing follow up instructions and suggestions as they moved around. At the close, groups shared out with one another, after which we had a few groups share out their ultimate lounge with the full group. Pictures really tell the story better than words, and so here are some photos from that first part of the morning:
Groups practice "noticing" and collecting thoughts about how they have experienced teacher lounges in the past.
This group is brainstorming ideas to make an awesome lounge and they are gathering the brainstorming into themes to focus their work.
During the create and design phases, the room was a hive of noisy activity!
All hands on deck to complete the task in a short timeframe!
This group takes their brainstorming to create and design an ultimate lounge.
An "ultimate teacher's lounge" takes shape.
A finished prototype of an ultimate lounge!
Following the hands-on design thinking session, we had faculty reassemble into practical work groupings (grade level teams for Lower School, and department teams for our Middle and Upper Schools). Faculty then engaged in an exercise wherein they applied design thinking to a lesson they already had in play. We asked faculty to collaborate and improve the lesson by incorporating some or all of the design thinking steps. We overheard some truly outstanding conversations among collaborative teams about improving lessons and how they could/would incorporate design thinking into their classes. Our English department came up with a wonderful capstone project concept which they then shared out with our full group when we debriefed the session.
Collaborative teams work receive instruction from our consultant, Parker Thomas, before diving into work on their lessons.