How Are We Helping Schools to Think Outside the Box and Outside the Frame?

Reimagining School and Reigniting Our Ingenuity in Crisis

Do You Remember April 2020?

All the facets of our lives converged that spring: from basic survival to professional identity, to social connections, to parenting and much, much more. 

I was leading a team of nine and all of our work was grounded in face-to-face seminars and graduate level programs for teachers and administrators. The sessions were 6 hours long, but in person, that included a balance and flow, projects and simulations that kept the time moving and the learning active. 

But it was all based on being in person and a range of flexible “in the moment” adjustments. 

So, in early April 2020, when I set up my laptop on an ottoman in my daughters’ bedroom, I was ready to unveil a new way to conduct a six-hour session online. 

Spoiler alert - I didn’t actually ask anyone to stay logged on for six hours. I was living firsthand in a world that wouldn't have allowed it for me as the instructor, so I couldn't have forced it on the students. My wiggly infant and preschooler who had been uprooted from her life (like we all were), were not allowing for that level of uninterrupted computer time. 

In the early days of the pandemic, we got creative. And we had a lot of compassion for others.

We got silly and had our own version of the Italian “bang the pans out the window to show our solidarity and connection”. 

We incorporated icebreakers to guess who was wearing shoes, share best tricks to sanitize your grocery packages and we had time to share when scary news filtered in from anyone in our group. We sat in silence when someone needed it and we had dance breaks, especially for those living alone and needing more interaction. 

But mostly, as an instructor, my team and I got creative in:

1. Purpose: We really dug into the question of what we were asking our participants to do in our courses and why it was necessary (and then we let the answers drive our revision of our projects and assignments).
2. Platform: How we could build an interdependent (and flexible) way for participants to build community and have the hours needed to make meaning of the content without being tied to one seat, one video screen for hours?
3. Passion: What gnarly questions were being asked in education and how we could use our many perspectives in class to dream up wildly implausible solutions and then make a plan to take the first steps?

Things that took my breath away in those first few months:

• A new elementary principal’s nightly online “storytime”  open to her school of 500 where she read a book to any families who could login to join.
• A middle school vice principal who went above and beyond the meager infrastructure in his district and mapped out all of the technology at his site and a distribution grid for hotspots, laptops and location and prepared technology kits and delivered them following the health protocols at the time. 
• An assistant principal with a PE background who made “Personal Gym” kits for her elementary students. They had images and pictures and a set of activities that could be set up anywhere -even in very small living situations - so that kids could move and have a semi-directed set of imaginary & immersive challenges to follow. 
• A high school history teacher who turned his content into a mini-business school, weaving the study of actual historical facts with an entrepreneurial track where students could imagine businesses for that period in history and he'd engage with them to flesh out the idea. It was all hypothetical but gave kids a way to keep connected to the teacher and others and fill up those large stretches of unstructured time facing them day in and day out. 

No one forgot that kids needed to play.

No one forgot that teens needed to connect. 

Everyone thought of wild ideas and shared them, and some got them off the ground.

We need that wild ingenuity in education right about now.

We’re not cordoned off in the early days of a global pandemic, but we are blocked from one another when we think of things like “What does our public school do for me?”  The crisis we are in now is one of not seeing things even remotely from the same perspective. 

It’s time to consider what schooling could look like if we free ourselves from the structures, policies and systems replicating outcomes that we have. The current structure is under attack, so while defending the inherent value of a free and public education for all - can we also radically redesign it? 

Here are a few places to start.

Shift 1. Rethink This Moment - E.N.T.I.R.E.L.Y. 

To Save Public Education, Let It Burn: The Case for Educational Renaissance

When everything is under attack, why not invite in the big questions about our current system and recommit to the ideals we've long held and never realized?

Instead of just adjusting the layers on top of the existing foundation, we create space for entire redesign.

Shift 2. Ask Yourself - Why Not?

As a leader, you are the one explaining, (very logically & usually backed by law, policy or common sense,) exactly why not when it comes to daily requests and demands coming your way. 

However, when we let our mind stay in the explain and inform mode, instead of the create and ideate mode, we stay stuck bringing variations of the same problem back as a semi-disguised solution. 

We get trapped in repetition.

Our thinking gets stale.

We are ready to say “no” instead of dream what a HELL YES!  might feel like. 

Action 1: Design Your Time to Dream

IDEO has been in the business of working with some of the world’s most innovative businesses and organizations to get them to a place of unlocking powerful, creative action plans. For upcoming leadership team work, engage with a process like
Frame Your Design Challenge 

Or Photojournal

When you are willing to interrupt the flow of your typical approach to leading, you invite the possibility of designing schools that are grounded in the true needs and aspirations of the students we serve and seeing the tools you need to leverage for a powerful overhaul.

What Happens When We Let Go of What’s Not Working?

We don’t have the luxury of “waiting and seeing what will happen” since we are talking about the lives of real students who need schools that are thriving today, tomorrow and next year. 

But we do have the luxury of using the crisis of the moment to unlock our imaginative thinking. 

We do have the opportunities to redesign and let actual data tell the story. Shape conversations, interviews and artifacts that support us in abandoning legacy practices in schools that don’t serve.

Five years ago, we had to find ways to make education continue. 

In the face of the assault on the public school system infrastructure, we are in the exact same place if we want the youth before us know to thrive and all those coming behind. 

We need to make free, accessible, education continue, and the path forward is one of reinvention.