Our land-based group has now shrunk substantially to a small group of 11 tenacious students, as our first semester has finished and our second has begun. One of our teachers, Kim, has left us for other community-based work and Joann (our EA) has been re-assigned to support other classes. As a small group, we decided to focus on the Somenos Marsh project as it will allow each student to get the credit they need in a meaningful, community-minded way and hopefully allow students to find an area of interest within the broader project's aims.
At a recent staff meeting, we were introduced to a design thinking approach to planning for change. As a teacher who is always looking out for new and creative ways to engage my learners, this approach seemed like the perfect way to get my students thinking like designers using a clear, step-by-step "placemat" approach. With some minor tweaks, I was able to modify what we did as a staff to suit the needs of my students in their planning for this project (see examples below).
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| Examples of design thinking placemat process (#8 is our community list shown later in this post) |
Individually, a few students struggled to come up with talking points, however,
their conversations with a partner really encouraged shared thinking and the piggybacking of ideas. I was very impressed by the proposals that were presented to the larger group in our whole group community brain share-out (see below). Some of their suggestions were beyond the scope of this project, however, we still listed these as the students decided that we could present them to Elizabeth Bailey, who is the co-ordinator of the Somenos Marsh Wildlife Society. Additionally, we began to link ideas with subject areas and students signed up for projects that at this point they were most interested in (see below). We also began to brainstorm some next steps which we will modify and expand upon this week as we jump further into the project!
Overall, what I loved about this process is that other than creating the tool (the placemat) and facilitating some of the discussions, I really wasn't in the driver's seat. Instead, my students were taking over and deciding on ideas and ways of presenting this material that made sense to them.
