This video shares how one educator in Santa Barbara Unified School District implemented #justmoveit5 with her elementary students to get them moving 5 minutes every single day and includes specific ways to implement it with your own students.
In our work to support seven school systems from the Strategy Lab through the Real-Time Redesign process, we encountered three powerful takeaways about what it means to advance equity and resiliency in teaching and learning in a school system context.
As part of their pilot for Real-Time Redesign, one of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District design team’s initial priorities was to orient students and teachers to their role as co-designers. The team designed a short training session in which they gave participants an overview of the liberatory design process and created space for interactive discussion, questions, and reflection. The design team also shared their vision and problem of practice (“How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?”) to prepare participants to create solutions that would build relationships and strengthen student belonging in the district.
Monterey Peninsula wanted to solve a problem in their district: “How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?” After seeking stakeholder input and brainstorming a range of options, the design team decided to pilot a process to engage students and teachers to design new systems for personalization and connection.
This pilot had several assumed benefits. It was a chance to make sure that those most impacted by teaching and learning – students and teachers – led the change. Bringing together students and teachers for this work created an early opportunity to build connections. Lastly, the design team was also excited to build a reusable process that could be replicated to drive similar changes in the future.
To start, the design team wrote a project plan that would help identify participants, prepare them to engage in a design thinking process, and help them focus their efforts. They identified two teachers, two administrators, and 12 students as participants. Then, the design team curated resources and created short training sessions to introduce the participants to the process and design principles. Finally, they created a timeline for participants and a process by which participants’ solutions could be integrated into the district’s broader approach to teaching and learning.
Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?”
The team decided on a solution that would engage students and teachers in a design process to design new systems for personalization, flexibility, connection, and belonging. Though Monterey Peninsula had engaged students and teachers throughout its design process (e.g., to identify the problem of practice), the design team knew that they also needed to be part of defining the solution.
This solution supports equity because it cedes decision-making authority into the hands of those closest to the problem. This solution supports resiliency because it requires the district to be positioned to respond to the solutions that teachers and students develop. It also introduces a new method: teacher- and student-involved design sessions, which the district can use in the future to address other problems.
Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?”
The team decided on a solution that would give students space and structures to reflect on their own learning.
The team intended for this solution to empower students to set their own goals (in academics and beyond) and to prompt conversations between teachers and students about the purpose of the learning and the students’ progress toward goals.
This solution supports equity because it respects each students’ individual goals for and pace of learning, and it provides each student with the feedback and support needed to help them advance. It supports resiliency because it enables teachers to adapt their support of students based on valuable information gathered via the goal-setting and feedback process.
Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?”
In brainstorming solutions, the team identified six categories of solutions:
When designing change in a district, it is essential that leaders hear directly from students, families, teachers, and classified staff (i.e., those most impacted by teaching and learning); this is often done via empathy interviews.
Themes from Monterey Peninsula Unified School District’s empathy interviews fall into multiple categories: developing stronger connections between and amongst students and teachers, and personalizing support for students’ academic development. The team’s discussion connected the themes from interviews to broader efforts across the district to increase flexibility and personalization while strengthening students’ sense of belonging.
Through their redesign work, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District has explored deepening personal relationships and students’ feelings of connection within the school community. The design team knew that such personal relationships and feeling of connection are important foundations for student engagement and student learning – but that too often, there are inequities in terms of which groups of students feel most supported and connected to school.
The team conducted research to better understand the equity implications of personal relationships and students’ sense of belonging. They also explored options for adapting their district structures and processes to better prioritize the work of building these relationships and connections; for example, the team reviewed staffing and scheduling changes other districts had made so as to build intentional structures for relationship-building.
This Pear Deck slide includes an example prompt for a social-emotional learning small-group conversation about a time a student accomplished something, conquered a fear, or felt proud.
