Watching our middle schoolers and ninth graders participate in a design thinking workshop this week has been a lot of fun. We used the template provided by the d.school at Stanford University. The design thinking process begins with empathy, with thinking about the other, and defining a point of view that is other than the designer’s. This strikes me as very Crossroadian.
At Crossroads, we talk often about being ourselves and about having a voice. On the other side of both of these values is having empathy and good listening. The design thinking process allows us to practice listening to and thinking about others in a structured way. In this way, we become better at both, and in this case, we are able to use empathy and listening to design a product or solution meaningful to the person’s whose experience or point of view we are investigating. The design thinking process has the added benefit of allowing us to practice and receive feedback as we work, both of which are integral to the learning process.
Learning to use the design thinking process is great practice for the kind of creativity, problem solving, and relationship building that we value at Crossroads, and it is important to how we will use our Makerspace as well. I am looking forward to what problems our students to tackle, to what relationships we build and strengthen, and to what learn about each other . . . all by design.
With great expectations,