Let's REALLY get to know the HUMANS at the center of our design process

As we unpacked our first brainstorm using the Innovator's Compass, it became quite apparent that we were sharing the experiences of our users (students and parents) from the teacher perspective. We observe our students ALL DAY long and we hear from parents via email at least weekly so often we feel like experts on these humans at the center of our design process. But are we really?


"There is a lot of space to come at this from a lot of perspectives. Let's get to the why!" said Ela
"Let's put more in the hands of students!" said Ela
"Let's invite parents into the co-design process!" said Ela


"OK!" said US, reluctantly admitting that maybe we aren't the experts on our students' and parents' true feelings that we think we are...


And so we brainstormed questions to figure out what matters most to:

Students:
When do you feel most excited in school?
Draw a picture of your brain during math class
Tell a story of your favorite time in math class
Draw a picture of what math class feels like to you
Describe the personality and characteristics of a teacher that you felt was very effective.
What frustrates you the most about other people?
Describe 3 moments where you were happy in school (this classroom)
What is the most embarrassing moment you've ever had in school?
What's going well for you right now
What would you like to change, why?
When do you feel comfortable sharing ideas in math class?
What is math class like now and what was it like last year?
What are you interested in learning (in math)?

Parents:
When has your child been happy/enjoyed math class?
What should HTH teach? Why?
What is something that you've done in math class that you are proud of? Why?
What makes you feel most successful? Why?
What matters most to you? Why?
What do you want math class to be like? Why?
Draw a picture of an ideal math class



Moving forward we know that the more we engage the people, the better.  Today we will figure out the logistics on how we use these questions to get a more rounded understanding of the amazing, wonderful, creative, and thoughtful HUMANS at the center of our design process.

A first pass with the Innovator's Compass!

Thanks to the support of the fabulous Ela Ben-Ur, our math team has continued our forward lean into the Project-Based Math world and the tensions that we often feel in our environment!

We have been using Ela's innovators' compass to organize our thoughts. The first day we brainstormed as many possible sticky notes as we could about the sections of the Innovators' Compass.

Yesterday, we clustered our post-its and came up with the following thoughts on each of the sections of the compass:

Discover OBSERVATIONS:

Challenges of untracked classrooms

Parent mentality toward the math program

Challenging the math status quo

Making life-long learnings

Students being overly driven by grades

Students lack agency/perseverance

Bridging project and math learning

Expectations of what students know/should know/figure out

Define PRINCIPLES:

Emotional - how do the kids feel in our classes

Skills - what kills should the students have without a doubt

Mindset - how do the students approach learning

Teachers actions - what should the teacher be promoting

Dream IDEAS:

Better using time for improving math overall

Shift parent mindsets

Have more time for reflective processes

Classroom structures

School Structures

Design EXPERIMENTS:

Teacher grouping (tag team teaching/swatch subjects)

Things that build community among everyone

In class methodologies

Student Grouping

These represent our math team as a whole and we are looking forward to the continued quest to become a well functioning team AND to WIN or LEARN.

Meet the users...

"Your school is very beautiful and the students speak so articulately about their work!"
"Our school is trying to go PBL and are we really inspired by your work here!"
"The freedom you give your students here is really surprising and impressive!"

and then the kicker...

"But does any of this really work in math?"

The tensions...
These statements sum up a lot of the thoughts that the frequent visitors to our school have. Impressed. Amazed. Inspired... And what about math? And further along, what about those darn standardized math tests?!

We ask ourselves these questions often as well and attempt to find the balance in our own classrooms that feels right for each of us. Yet we still keep noting the pressure (internally and externally?) to do better on the standardized tests AND do better projects OH YEAH, AND have equitable learning environments where students find belongingness, value, and where all of our language and activities attend to the building of growth mindsets. No problem.

So what's new this year?
This year our director sat down with our math department to encourage us to make some "forward leans" in this math work. His commission to us was to address the tensions addressed above and, most of all, to do kick-ass math work. Equipped with his motivation, some extra budget, and finally, the help of a known expert in design thinking, Ela Ben-Ur (Innovator's compass) we are embarking on a journey to WIN or LEARN.


The USERS:
As a first step, we were tasked with identifying our "users"... the humans who are at the center of this work. The initial thoughts documented below are from observations though we have had a few empathy interviews with students and parents that informed some of this thinking.

Teacher experiences:

• Desire to be the best math program in the US!
• Unsure if we are ever doing well/progressing fast enough.
• A little wishy washy on a shared vision
• Desire to play the game a little and CHANGE THE GAME a lot!
• Freedom to create our own curriculum and pacing based on student needs
• It is hard to meet the needs of such a diverse population (esp high demand IEP parents)
• Overwhelmed by number of students and workload (xblock, advisory, college day, intersession)
• Space is an issue, trying to be progressive in tiny spaces
• Students doing math homework in other classes
• Moving to HTH is like being a first year teacher again

Perceived parent experiences:

• Appreciate high level of choice
• Uncertain of how to productively support their students
• Like Table Talk Math
• They don't understand math at HTH because it is "Different" than other schools
• Desire a challenge in math class (and define challenge very narrowly)
• This class is too hard or not challenging enough depending on the parents
• Worry about SAT/ACT a lot
• Unsure what we cover in our classes
• Really enjoyed the fresh perspectives offered in our parent night! Lots of positive feedback
• Have minimal concerns when kept in the loop about grading and curricular choices
• Largely fixed mindsets about math learning but many are interested in mindset work!
• Hard to help their children because they think math learning is too hard.
• Very concerned with grades.

Perceived student experience: 

• Math is hard
• Pockets of students with growth mindsets
• Grade concerns vs. learning - how to push self and not be ok with just being done
• A focus on answer getting over sense making
• We thought math here was supposed to be easy
• Anxiety around tests and quizzes
• Like SAT prep
• Mixed: Some like big picture math ideas and other don't think it is learning unless it has direct strategies.
• Lots of holes in past knowledge but unsure of gaps existing
• "You go too fast"
• Extremely varied teacher by teacher (and this is good to a point!)
• Desire a challenge in math class (and define challenge very narrowly)