Cedar Rapids: Engaging Students and Teachers in Design
When Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) began a design process to improve teaching and learning, they started with a set of leaders from their Teaching and Learning team; all were strongly committed to the district’s vision for equity – to “develop a system that assures all students have equity of voices, resources, opportunities, and expectations.” As team members reflected on their own identities, they realized they would need to include other voices at the table, especially given the incomplete set of perspectives represented by their predominantly white, male group of district-level administrators. This led the group to engage a much larger, more diverse set of students and teachers in the design process. This approach broadened the set of voices that helped shape important district efforts. It also helped the team more quickly understand the day-to-day realities of their current approach to teaching and learning, as the students and teachers that the team engaged live that reality every day.