Tell us the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?

Milton High School is a place where there is a lot of success both in and out of the classroom. 


What was your original HMW (How Might We) question coming out of the January 14th Design Workshop?

How might we create a community-based experience where all students feel valued?

Tell us about your team's experience with the Empathy phase and the biggest surprises and unexpected insights you found.

We created posters and placed them around the school with the question: When have you felt valued at school? The students were very willing to talk about experiences and share some great stories. Some of the bigger "surprises" were that students felt valued when the teachers made sure that they were learning, and while grades are still very important, they valued learning over a good grade. More importantly, we started hearing teachers asking why they weren't a part of the empathy interviews and students saying that we should be asking the teachers this question. So while we started this with the student as our user, it became clear that we needed to look at the teachers and gain empathy from them.

Tell us about your team's experience with the Design Summit. What stands out most? What will you take with you?


We enjoyed the opportunity to spend some dedicated time to dive into the empathy gained and getting comfortable with the idea that we were going to be changing our user. The chance to build on the ideas of the group and prototype was very powerful. Even more empowering was the groups ability to truly listen to feedback during the testing sessions and make slight variations between users. Overall, the group was able to effectively utilize that time and come back to Milton and really engage the teachers in what has been done and the possibilities moving forward.

What POV (Point of View) statement did you settle on at the Design Summit (at least for now)?

We heard that teachers felt devalued because they were not included in the empathy interviews.

We were amazed to realize that teachers at Milton find value in recognition/inclusion/connections.

It would be game changing if we created an experience at Milton where every teacher feels valued in the way they need it.

Tell us about the prototype you built at the Design Summit. What was it? How did it address your POV? In the testing you did with users, what did you learn?

Our prototype was built around the idea of a "Trading Spaces" opportunity for the teachers. Essentially we would have departments work with each other to redesign each others workrooms during the added teacher days at the end of this school year. At the summit, we presented a developed a skit where the user would be a teacher at Milton and be a part of the redesign of another departments workroom. The user testing was powerful for the group because we really had to get comfortable with listening to feedback and not tell the user what they were supposed to experience.

Tell us about what you're going to do next to continue iterating. What's your action plan? What are you doing on Empathy? What are you doing on Define/POV? What are you planning to do on your prototype?

We have come back to Milton and really started to have the conversations with the teachers and gain empathy from them. In early April we had three days where we held our Design Challenge Chats with the teachers to explain what the team had been doing, where we were in the process, and begin to gain the empathy. We asked teachers to write about when they felt valued (or not) and we also had them brainstorm ideas about things that can bring value to them. We have identified an area in the building that will be our Design Thinking space and continue to build on the things that teachers have shared and continue to iterate. We are in the process of unpacking a lot of what was shared during our lunch chats and will solidify our action plan over the next week.

What other reflections on the process to date and the collaboration with other schools would you like to share?
The opportunity to be involved with this has been powerful and very timely. I believe that Milton can benefit greatly from the work generated during the summit. I know that some of the others schools identified teachers as their users also, so I will be interested to see what they ultimately prototype and test and see the similarities and/or differences to what we ultimately do at Milton.

Tell us the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?
Lovett is a K-12 school committed to educating the whole child. Our mission statement accurately defines us as a community that seeks to develop young men and women of honor, faith, and wisdom with the character and intellect to thrive in college and in life. At Lovett we value offering students a variety of experiences academically, athletically, and in the fine arts. Our Vision for Learning defines the types of experiences our students will encounter as they move through Lovett and states the following: Lovett offers experiences that inspire our students to love learning. We encourage them to think critically, communicate effectively, engage creatively, and collaborate purposefully. We provide the opportunities and resources that help our students develop independence and self-direction and extend their learning beyond the walls of the classroom as they grow intellectually, emotionally, physically, aesthetically, morally, and spiritually.

What was your original HMW (How Might We) question coming out of the January 14th Design Workshop?

How might we cultivate student curiosity K-12?

Tell us about your team's experience with the Empathy phase and the biggest surprises and unexpected insights you found.

Tell us the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?

Tell us s the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?


Our vision statement is:
Westminster belongs to a changing world, and we contribute to these changes. We yearn for learning to
be relevant to our lives, and we are guided by these essential questions:
How is the world changing?
How does this shape our learning?
How do people learn best?
We begin knowing we must model and promote lifelong learning in a global community. We commit
to use technology and research to help us learn these essential skills. To this end, our learners—adults and children—will:
Communicate and collaborate
Problem find and problem solve
Create and innovate
Reflect and revise
Serve and lead
We also have a longtime reputation as a school of excellence where students perform well on AP exams and SAT's, and matriculate to ivy league colleges.
What was your original HMW (How Might We) question coming out of the January 14th Design Workshop?

How might we create a hub of innovation in the Middle School in order to nurture creative confidence (empowering teachers and students to take risks, to learn from failure, to feel empowered, and to know that their voice can have an impact)?

(We continued to edit and streamline our original statement as we went along so this is not it's absolute original form.)

Tell us about your team's experience with the Empathy phase and the biggest surprises and unexpected insights you found.


We were surprised to see and hear how much tension there is between our school’s vision statement and the need to cover the content that has traditionally prepared our students to score well on AP’s and SAT’s in high school.

We were surprised to discover that our MS teachers yearn for a pedagogical sense of community, and that some of our newer teachers feel frustrated by roadblocks to innovative teaching.

We were surprised to hear students describe the grind of “real” learning and their inability to imagine that it could be changed. We were surprised to hear them say the “side” learning is what they “reminisce” or “remember”, and look forward to; but the “real” learning is what is important.

Tell us about your team's experience with the Design Summit. What stands out most? What will you take with you?
We were impressed by Scott's passion, energy and commitment to nurturing innovators.

Everyone on my team said they were using Design Thinking in other areas of their teaching responsibilities.

We were struck by how hard this kind of work is and that solutions are often forged out of challenging dialogue.

The empathy phase was very powerful and taught us to really take the time to stop and listen.

What POV (Point of View) statement did you settle on at the Design Summit (at least for now)?

Today we met: a frustrated MS teacher who is motivated to take risks and innovate his/her teaching.

We were amazed to realize: that despite our vision statement this teacher doesn’t feel supported in actualizing innovative teaching strategies.

It would be game changing if: we could develop a support system to empower and support a community of teacher innovators.

Tell us about the prototype you built at the Design Summit. What was it? How did it address your POV? In the testing you did with users, what did you learn?

We debated whether an innovation lab or using our hallways as spaces to make learning visible would best support, affirm and promote innovative teachers. We decided to build our prototype around "making learning visible" in our hallways. We got mixed response to our original prototype. The positive response was based on the conversations that occurred around looking at the documentation of student learning. We decided based on the feedback that we needed to add a "connector" or innovation coach to support teachers in this effort to MLV.

Tell us about what you're going to do next to continue iterating. What's your action plan? What are you doing on Empathy? What are you doing on Define/POV? What are you planning to do on your prototype?
We continued to refine our POV and give it a slightly more positive slant. We returned to our ongoing dialogue and decided to prototype and test three aspects of a possible approach to empowering an innovative teaching community.We prepared a three part prototype:

1. innovation coach job description
2. using MS main atrium as a space to MLV
3. innovation lab with a focus on being a space for collaboration, professional development and the initial focus on green screen technology where all disciplines could harness storytelling as a tool for learning ( this storytelling focus came from our empathy interviews with students)

We are interviewing an apple innovator coach to find out some of the obstacles to success he has experienced in his work with schools. 

Our action plan:
Build 3 part prototype (3/31/14)
Test it with MS principal for feed back (4/1/14)
Refine prototype 4/8/14
Present to Admin. Team in April
Test prototype with MS teachers in early May
Two of our team members needed to drop out b/c of time commitment/we plan to add one more MS faculty member to our team
Send 2 MS faculty members to Design Thinking at Mt. Vernon summer institute this summer

What other reflections on the process to date and the collaboration with other schools would you like to share?


I think my whole team loved the storytelling exercise. You learn a lot as you edit your story down to its essential elements.

It was an incredible experience to work across schools in a collaborative, rather than a competitive way.

Tell us the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?


Mountain Park is a high achieving school with tremendous community support and an incredibly devoted staff. Most of our students have numerous advantages with varied, rich, life experiences. Therefore, they come to school eager to learn. Our high achievement earned us the 2013 National Blue Ribbon Award. Our motto is simply stated: "Learn to Think, Think to Learn."

What was your original HMW (How Might We) question coming out of the January 14th Design Workshop?

HOW MIGHT WE…Utilize our time to create more opportunities for students to engage in real world problem solving?

Tell us about your team's experience with the Empathy phase and the biggest surprises and unexpected insights you found.

The empathy interviews started out with fairly predictable and similar responses from both students and teachers. However, as we dug deeper, we realized that the focus needed to be on the teachers to reveal more insight - and thus gain more empathy. What started out as a project to design a complex schedule, evolved into navigating "change management" through designing a plan to reduce staff angst and build confidence about pending instructional change. 

Tell us about your team's experience with the Design Summit. What stands out most? What will you take with you?


The evolution of my design team is what stands out most...it was incredibly hard work to synthesize the empathy data AND achieve consensus. What I will take with me is that the deep understanding achieved through empathy interviews needs to be a guiding practice, particularly when facing change.

What POV (Point of View) statement did you settle on at the Design Summit (at least for now)?

We met…several hardworking Mountain Park teachers who hold themselves to extremely high standards.

We were amazed to realize…how much they feel like their day-to-day schedules and tasks prevent them from making the most of the time they have with their students and colleagues.

It would be game changing if ...
staffers had clarity, confidence, and ownership to implement school-wide enrichment to help students become real-world problem solvers.

Tell us about the prototype you built at the Design Summit. What was it? How did it address your POV? In the testing you did with users, what did you learn?

We prototyped an intimate lunch meeting during which the concerns about change shared by staff were addressed through a master schedule, benefits for staff statements, and an FAQ sheet about EB (enrichment block). In testing with users we learned that the intimate setting and tangible take-aways were highly valued.

Tell us about what you're going to do next to continue iterating. What's your action plan? What are you doing on Empathy? What are you doing on Define/POV? What are you planning to do on your prototype?

We have begun rolling out the prototype. We have invited grade level teams to lunch and learns where the tangible items have been shared, explained, and questions have been answered. We are continuing the empathy conversations as we work on refining our EB roll-out while meeting the needs of out staff. We are collaborating with one of the schools we connected with through the Design Challenge to observe and learn about their implementation of project based instruction to help inform some of our decision-making as we move forward with our challenge.

What other reflections on the process to date and the collaboration with other schools would you like to share?


The collaboration was amazing. Gaining feedback from potential users and learning from the challenges and insights of others has proven to be very helpful to my team as we refine and reflect about our project.

We are very excited to begin sharing updates and reflections from our school teams. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we will feature posts from each school team as they reflect on where they have been and where they are going. The set of survey questions/prompts is posted below. 

Between now and the first of June, teams are working hard to finish out this school year building more empathy, iterating their POVs, and hitting a "pause button" that will allow them to either continue work over the summer or leave the work ready to pick back up when they return in August. 

Tell us the story of your school and what makes it unique. If you were to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?


What was your original HMW (How Might We) question coming out of the January 14th Design Workshop?



Tell us about your team's experience with the Empathy phase and the biggest surprises and unexpected insights you found.



Tell us about your team's experience with the Design Summit. What stands out most? What will you take with you?



What POV (Point of View) statement did you settle on at the Design Summit (at least for now)?



Tell us about the prototype you built at the Design Summit. What was it? How did it address your POV? In the testing you did with users, what did you learn?



Tell us about what you're going to do next to continue iterating. What's your action plan? What are you doing on Empathy? What are you doing on Define/POV? What are you planning to do on your prototype?



What other reflections on the process to date and the collaboration with other schools would you like to share?