Kevin
Interviewee Name: Kevin
Course: Daylong Into To HCD - 2016-02-03 PART 1-2
Interviewed By: Edwin Rutsch Transcripts by Harsh.
Video of Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2X9Aplby2o
Edwin: You are a Middle school teacher.
Kevin:
I am here to help teach human centered design so I can become a better lead learner with my middle school students, whom I teach in a makerspace of my own design called "Digital Shop."
This is my 13th year teaching.
In my 'free' time, I enjoy photography.
Created a super cool design research class.
What do you like to say about yourself in terms of who you are?
This is my 13th year in education, my first year in middle school. Prior to that I did K-4 technology in what amounts to a computer lab. The last three years of that we had implemented engineering design processes using a curriculum from the Museum of Science in Boston called Engineering is Elementary. So we were doing engineering with Kindergarten through 4th grade students which is great fun. After three years of that, they offered me a position to come up here which I accepted. We got started over the summer and launched in September.
I was in the business world prior to getting into teaching. I always wanted to be a teacher and walked away from a six figure job after 9/11 to pursue my dream of being a teacher.
Edwin: we are exploring the theme of empathy,
What do you see as the need for empathy training in the classes you teach and as well as at your school?
Kevin: We have a very practical need for empathy training at our school. It the first word in our mantra, “Care, Think, Design, Act”, in our manifesto, which we wrote to christen the program. Care is the first element of that. We are using the design thinking approach to teach problem solving. We want our students to Care about a problem, to think about a solution, we want them to Design it and we want them to Act on it and put it into place. So for me empathy is core curriculum because they can’t do anything if they don’t care. And that is the biggest thing I am struggling with right now – getting them to actually care.
(Edwins Note:
Feeling?:
Unmet need for: Care.
Prototype: doing design projects )
Edwin: So you are struggling with having students care?
Kevin: It’s really interesting. I don’t have any data that would quantify that but I have enough evidence that they do care, not enough evidence that they don’t (care). It varies by grade level: 8th Graders do not care about anything other than getting out of school by and large; there are exceptions. Conversely, the lower grade kids do care, only some of those do not.
Up to this point the exposure the kids have had to empathy have been with scenarios. They did some work with Extraordinaire Design Studio (?) which is a wonderful product that uses characters with extraordinary abilities. The students are to design different objects for them – a place to live or a hideout or a vehicle of some kind. So they go through that process and build a prototype and that’s been great.
We are currently doing what we call the “Weather Challenge” using the recent winter storms as context for them to find out how the storm affected people, animals, businesses and then propose solutions that could make life better or solve problems. We are working towards Capstones which will start in a month and empathy is going to play a gigantic role in these. They are different by grade level:
5th grade: Brother of a 2nd-grade kid has a hearing aid which he can’t wear while playing sports. His mother asked me (Kevin) is there anything we could do to help him out. So we used this as the design study for the entire fifth grade.
6th grade: We have a teacher with multiple sclerosis who just had a double knee replacement and has mobility issues. She has a service dog but is difficult to move around with all the things she has to carry. She has volunteered to be the design study for the entire sixth grade.
7th grade: We are working with Thomas Jefferson University Medical school. They found out we were doing Design Thinking. They are going to have their Medical Students work with us on the challenge “How might we make hospitals less scary for children either as visitors or as patients.
8th grade: Students are designing, customizing and assembling 3-D robotic prosthetics for people who need them – the are from Enabling The Future people. We launched a blog post today – we need 30 people who need these things. We have to find them, they get measured, they have to go through an intake process. Then our kids will meet these people electronically and them and customize the prosthetics (do you like iron man, pony ….) and then use the other tools to deliver the prosthetic to the person to make it a truly empathetic project.
Edwin: So every class has a design project they are working on and it addresses a need someone has. Discover the need and then work on the project. Sounds like that you think it is important that the students really care about the people they are designing for. And you are looking at how can I really get them to care for the people they are designing for.
Kevin: And in case of the capstones it will be easier because each grade has a connection. The 5th grade there is the 2nd grade brother – so there is a connection there. 6th grade there is a teacher who all the kids know. 7th grade: people can relate to being in hospitals or having visited a hospital. And the med school students are going to visit to help that process. And in 8th grade, my most jaded grade, as an optimist, I am convinced that when they see these real people that are missing limbs, it’s going to change their entire perspective.
Edwin: So why is caring important to you?
Keven: In order to do a thorough job, even though the class is ungraded, we are going to be assessing them and they are going to be assessing each other to determine whether they have understood the problem well enough. There is a Question, Communicate and Create – three rubrics that we are doing to be applying.
Did you question enough, what did you create for them (detailed and painstaking or was it shoddy);
How did you communicate with them – were you expressive and well written?
They will rate each other and they will be harder on themselves that I would ever be.
Once they understand that, they are going to up their game.
Edwin: Are you saying they need to care because they will be graded and judged?
Kevin: They need to care otherwise the product will not be as good as it could be. We are talking about helping people. Can I make them care about helping people? No, realistically. Am I going to try? Yes.
( edwin's note: what about helping people by empathizing with people. The act of empathy is healing in itself. It may also make empathy relevant to each student if they can be empathized with and feel it. How about an empathy circle with the teams for mutual team building and building an empathic way of being.)
Edwin: So why is helping people important to you?
Kevin: I see what you are doing …. You’re 5-why-ing me. It’s all good. I want them caring about this problem so that they get a perspective on caring about problems so they go on to solving other problems they encounter later in life. Now you will ask me “Why is that important”?
Edwin: So why is it important?
Kevin: Because that is not what is happening in our schools. Schools today are about sit, down, shut up and do 1 to 21. Get the right circle in the bubble test. We need to get the scores up. No one is talking about empathy or problem solving. Whereas Tony Wagner’s Seven Survival Skills --- from Harvard had identified 7 professional skills. Problem solving is among them. We know this. The education system does not recognize this or doesn’t care. Trying to fix that.
(Edwin’s note:
Problem: Education system doesn't empathize and care)
(Problem: 8th graders do not care)
( Problem: students are not problem solvers.
Note: the biggest problem may be that there is a lack of empathy in the school system? )
Edwin: So why is solving problems important to you?
Kevin: It’s a life skill. Manifesto: trying to make our kids life ready. To be life-ready they need to be able to relate, work together in teams, to solve difficult problems. What we are finding is that kids who are academically proficient don’t know what to do if they are not thrown a worksheet. We need to give them those tools.
Edwin: So why do you care about making them life-ready?
Kevin: Because that is why I teach. I could have stayed in the business world. But now one’s going to remember what I did. So it is important personally. My legacy will be the students whose lives I have touched. I want to be remembered by students as that guy, on that day, in this subject, I decided I wanted to be a doctor, pharmacist, engineer, artist, or whatever it is …. I want to be that person who altered someone’s life trajectory. That gets me excited.
(Edwin Note: Feeling Excited - met need of contribution?)
Edwin: Why does it get you excited, affecting someone’s life trajectory like that?
Kevin: Because when they come out of school like that – so impassioned – think of the good they could do in the world! I am going to be dead soon. So we want to leave some people who can save the world.
(Edwins Note
Story:
feeling: impassioned
Met need:
Unmet need: care
Prototype: )
Edwin: Is there more around that.
Kevin: No that’s pretty much it. It’s exciting to be in the first year of the program. It’s been a little bumpy. We are building a plane while we are flying it. Luckily I have administrators who are supportive but it’s exhausting, 7-days-a-week commitment. But I work in the town I live in and walk to work and it’s good to be connected to the community.
(Edwin’s Notes:
Story: starting up a new design program and it is a lot of work.
Feeling: exhausting
Feeling: bumpy
met need: connection
met need: support
Prototype: )
Are there any unpleasant feelings that you experience around teaching empathy?
Kevin: The unpleasant feelings are the kids who are too cool for school. They aren’t hearing me. My classes are ungraded. So up to now it’s been varying degrees of care. They’ve been enjoying themselves and a lot of them do care but a lot of them don’t. I don’t know how to reach them. I can look into the 7th graders’ soul – and the same with 6th and 5th.
(Student: levels of care)
Edwin: So it sounds like the 8th graders are starting to detach and withdraw somehow.
Kevin: Yes. The typical 8th grader’s goal is to get in the front door and out again with the least effort possible, so they can get on with their actual life, which is being with their friends. School is a distraction. It’s not easy to get them to be invested or committed.
(feeling student: detachment and withdraw
school is perhaps not relevant to students lives?)
unmet need: commitment)
Edwin: So it’s painful for you to see their detachment ….
Kevin: Yes, because I want them to get it and make that connection.
Kevin is optimistic that when they connect with the kids in Panama, Mexico, etc., who needs a prosthetic wrist/hand.
Edwin understands and comments that empathy will lead to action.
Kevin: Imagine your brother or sister or you not having a limb.
Kevin cannot believe the kids would not empathize.
Are there any pleasant feelings that you experience around teaching empathy?
Kevin: Oh yea. Kids are doing inspiring work.
Weather Challenge: Using weather as a context for using design thinking to make the world better a girl and a boy designed a helmet for an autistic kids’ to wear during severe storms to reduce anxiety. It has a Google Glass type interface where they can project pictures.
Goggles or chickens to wear so they can find food in the snow.
Snowboards for dogs
Inside treadmills for dogs for exercise in bad weather with video of cat they can chase
Kevin: There’s a lot of empathy towards animals, less so towards people. That’s ok – we’ll take it.
Kevin: Watching the kids work together gives me joy. Watching the excitement (the activities generate) gives me joy. Hearing how they talk to their parents about what they did in class. Arguing whose design is better. (These things bring joy)
(Edwin notes:
Feeling: Joy
met need: see engagement)
Kevin writes a blog (http://blogs.ncs-nj.org/ted/?p=342) and posted a link to a Harvard website with a relevant video.
You mentioned an 8th grade class and the difficulty in fostering engagement?
How would being empathetic improve life for you and/or those around you? (KJ)
Edwin asks Kevin for his thoughts on this question a question Kevin posted.
Kevin: It’s a question I’d like my kids and the school community to take up because imagine a school grounded in empathy. Discipline, bullying, etc. would be gone. It’s potentially transformative at the school level.
Kevin is against the thousands of dollars spent on anti bullying consultants and programs that don’t work.
Edwin: How might we design a more empathetic school could become a design project. Students could work together, interview each other. What do you think about that? What would be the blocks or challenges of doing a project like that?
Kevin: I think it’s a great idea. The folks at Ashoka have this thing called Start Empathy, which is a program that does exactly that. There is a curriculum around it. You could change the culture of the whole school. Ashoka people do great work.
Edwin: How did 9/11 cause such a shift?
Kevin: There are more important things in life. Found it was financially feasible to teach. Advocates for a can do attitude. It took a couple of months to find the job in a school. Did it because Kevin likes kids. Kindergarten kids are best. Middle school not bad. Will never be more appreciated than a classroom full of kids. Derives meaning from it.
(feeling: appreciated
met need: meaning )