Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1081161
" What does safe mean? It gets kids thinking about their part in the community. ey become aware of their place in this world and how other people think about things," Dickerson says. "When we give them this kind of foundation, it validates them as learners and individuals. Everybody can be a part of the process, have an idea or draw a picture." e design thinking program at Vista is a partnership between global design firm IDEO and The Teachers Guild, a professional community created to activate teachers' creativity to solve major challenges in education. IDEO provides the design for learning techniques and foun- dation, while The Teachers Guild provides resources and support for implementation. Vista is one of three Teachers Guild chapters in California (along with Oakland and Fre- mont) and seven nationally. T e a c h e r s G u i l d d i r e c t o r M o l l y M c M a h o n s a y s t h a t a l l t e a c h e r s a r e i nh erently d e si g n ers , a n d d e si g n thi nk- i n g s e r v e s t h e n e a r - c o n st a n t n e e d f o r e d u c a t o r s to cre ativ ely pro b l em - s o lv e f rom th e l en s of th e i r stu d e n t s a n d c o m m u n i t i e s . "In the design thinking process, there is a strong focus on empathy in the work we do," she says. "We tell teachers: 'If you're going to create change, you start with yourself, your own biases; start with questions and not answers; and believe that you can create change.' So we create opportunities to understand yourself and others. Equity and innovation go side by side." Learning to let go of control English teacher Vickie Curtis is one of eight "design leads" and oversees the design thinking program in Vista. Working closely with e Teach- ers Guild, Curtis helped facilitate workshops that taught the approach and each stage of the process. Vista educa- tors were then given their own design challenge to complete: "How can we make learning more relevant for our schools?" Curtis says her fellow educators worked on ideas for that question all year in their classrooms before reconvening at the end of the year to share their ideas. "It was really inspiring to see how teachers made the work relevant to education," she says. "It can be scary for teachers and it can be a risk, but that's the beautiful part." Giving students control of the learning process and guiding their experience is a major part of using design thinking in the classroom, says Paula Mitchell, an Oakland Unified elementary school teacher and design lead in the Oakland chapter of The Teachers Guild. There, the Guild partners with educa- tors from public, private and alternative settings throughout " I tell the kids that mistakes are great because that's when we learn, and I realized I wasn't living up to that. Letting go of control helps educators grow, just like we ask students every day." — Tess Dickerson, Vista Teachers Association Vista educators take part in a Creative Leadership Institute in September to develop their design thinking skills. In the test stage of design thinking, students have built the cities they brainstormed. 27 F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 019 Vickie Curtis