What does the future of education look like? What do educators hope for in the year 2030 and beyond? What do current trends tell us about what might come next for public school students, educators, and the surrounding communities? Working with Prospect Studio, a strategic planning consultancy firm based in San Francisco, we spent 15 weeks exploring these and many other questions as part of our Graduate Design Studio course at Carnegie Mellon University School of Design.

Prospect Studio

Portland Public Schools 2035 Vision

The future vision for Portland Public Schools includes three areas: a Graduate Portrait, Educator Essentials, and Educational System Shifts, each with multiple criteria and characteristics therein. Our artifacts focus on one part of this vision plan.

Through secondary research we learned that teachers in Oregon have expressed feeling “overwhelmed, burned out, and not supported,” (2019 Oregon Educator Equity Report, p.51) leading to low retention rates and impacting their ability to show up for students. Additionally, research on teacher resilience is relatively new and expanding, encouraging our decision to design for the “Adaptive, Resilient, and Open To Change” section of PPS’s Educator Essentials tier. The vision plan described “Adaptive, Resilient, and Open to Change” as:

"PPS adults honor culture and traditions while being open to change. Each person supports this openness by understanding that failure, multiple attempts, and iteration are necessary, if not critical, parts of continuous learning. They demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement by developing the skills and persistence to shift the system and structures around them when necessary and build their own resilience through self-care, and collaboration with students, educators, and others."

We combine these three attributes to a single term we call ARC (Adaptive, Resilient, and Open to Change).

Process

Working directly with specialists, K-12 teachers, and both public and private school administrators, our team investigated the current state of public education. Our research process included three phases (each linked to a more in-depth presentation of research methods and findings):

Exploratory Research: Gathering insights through interviews and secondary sources (published studies, articles, news stories, etc.).

Generative Research: Conducting a series of workshops with K-12 educators to produce early prototypes and conceptual artifacts.

Evaluative Research: Receiving feedback from K-12 educators, helping us to refine our concepts for improved desirability.

Through these rounds of research, it became clear that designing for teachers to be ARC would require creating a culture of support, reflection, and collaboration, encouraging iterative growth, and structuring time for individual needs.

The ARC Services concept addresses these needs through creating structure for mentorship and coaching, facilitation of research-based problem solving, future-oriented simulations, and a shift to flexible, modular schedules for teachers.

Meet the team