The K12 Network spent an exciting afternoon diving into design thinking with the staff of Bayside STEM on February 18th. Bayside STEM Academy is a San Mateo, California middle school with a high-quality instructional program that is designed to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) and Design Thinking.
The design team at Bayside STEM wanted to get all teachers and staff on the same design thinking page before several different new school initiatives launched, so we got right to work.
We did a classic design thinking exercise with nearly all the teachers at the school as well as Assistant Principal, Joe Hadley. This challenge focused on redesigning their morning routines. Check out the activity here!
Participants drew journey maps and worked in partners to deeply listen, build and prototype solutions for one another. When we were in prototyping, teachers had all sorts of experiences and objects to share, from new age radios to lunch packing devices.
In our debrief of the design challenge, teachers shared that they learned a lot about their colleagues and themselves. One teacher mentioned that he learned that he needs to take time out in the mornings for himself. One teacher commented that he had gained new insight into the importance and power of empathy.
To wrap up, we gave them a template to begin to think through different experiments they could launch in their classroom and how to apply each of the phases of design. We are excited to go deeper with a few of the educators at Bayside to help build out their school-wide design day for students. More on that to come!