The Design Process
Learning Skills and Content While Exploring Your Interests
Project-Based Credit Recovery
Over four weeks, students will create a Career Passion Project connecting their dream job to content area standards. Successful projects will demonstrate missing skills and earn credit for failed courses. Students will be supported by teachers and local professionals from their dream job fields. Finished projects will be shared at a community forum, and students will enter the following school year one step closer to graduation, emboldened by new resourcefulness and by networks of support toward their dream job.
Through support of John Legend’s Show Me Campaign, the National Writing Project, and the U.S. Department of Education.
USING THE DESIGN PROCESS
What is design thinking? According to Spencer and A.J. Juliani in Launch, "Design thinking isn't a subject, topic, or class. It's more a way of solving problems that encourages positive risk-taking and creativity." When we apply design thinking to something we're interested in, we engage in a way of viewing the world that honors our personal passion--our unique interests--while empathizing with the needs of others. Design thinking requires individuals to engage in a growth mindset by acknowledging failure, learning from mistakes, and persevering through our difficulties. Overall, the design process is not just about an end product but about all the learning that takes place from start to finish.
The design process is called many different things in education: project based learning, 20-time, genius hour, etc... etc.... In this website, the design process is broken down into six parts (with six individual page for you to explore): empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and (additionally) launch:
RESOURCES
PBL Credit Recovery Flyer_2021.pdf
Summer academy enrolmentResearch and Articles:
What Teens Need from Schools (ASCD, 2019)
The Novice to Expert Shift (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2020)
Project Based Online Learning (PBLWorks, 2017)
THE THREE TYPES OF CONFERENCES
FEEDBACK CONFERENCE
Focus: Targeted help / instruction in specific area of reading
Role of the Student: To ask questions and seek out specific feedback
Role of the Teacher: To answer questions with accuracy and precision and allow for students to practice a strategy under supervision
Further Application: Students leave with actionable steps to fix a particular work
Role in Cultivating a Growth Mindset: Every student has a chance to admit to failure and learn from it
REFLECTION CONFERENCE
Focus: Guiding students towards self-reflection
Role of the Student: To answer questions and reflect on their learning
Role of the Teacher: To ask questions, paraphrase answers, and guide students toward self-reflection
Further Application: Students can select the strategies and plan for future improvement based upon self-reflection
Role in Cultivating a Growth Mindset: Every student has a chance to articulate areas where they are growing and where they still need to grow
ASSESSMENT CONFERENCE
Focus: A conversation about the mastery of standards
Role of the Student: Talk about progress toward specific standards
Role of the Teacher: Asks questions about progress and share information based upon evidence of student work
Further Application: Students can figure out what standards still need to be mastered and how to get there
Role in Cultivating a Growth Mindset: Every student is able to realize that there are as many retakes as necessary until they master the standards