Practice 1

Design school as a learning experience, not a factory

Overview

In April 2021, Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta became a community vaccination center as the nation emerged from the COVID-19 lockdown. On the day it served the highest number of citizens, 12,726 people received a COVID vaccination there. From the parking garage to each stage of verification, the experience was one that humanized every person. People were met and directed from their cars in the parking garage to the gates. From the gates, checkpoints were set up at short distances along the journey. At each checkpoint, friendly faces greeted patrons and directed them to their next stop: up an escalator, down a hall. It was staffed with enough people that waits were fewer than 2-3 minutes at each checkpoint. In the staging area just before the vaccine administration space, an announcer jovially narrated the numbers of those patrons welcome to move on. There were smiles all around. A sense of community among those gathered. Even though more than 12,000 people were moving through the process, it felt joyful, communal, well-organized, safe, and personal.

By contrast, the experience of school for too many students – and teachers – is more like being in a factory for inanimate objects. We have Frederick Taylor, the Father of Scientific Management, to thank for this. His innovation in the late 1800’s closely monitoring time and motion in factories to minimize wasted motion was the design foundation for many businesses and factories, as well as how public schools were conceptualized to process large numbers of students efficiently through a uniform program. Taylor’s design aims were to maximize productivity and profitability.

Schools in 2023 must aim for a vastly higher standard than merely minimizing waste. Our public schools are the bridge for the majority of Georgia’s children to the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to have choices about their lives, support their families, contribute meaningfully to their communities and meet the challenges of a rapidly and radically shifting future. As we navigate a world in recovery from the pandemic, schools have the potential to be places of community healing, bringing together disparate factions toward a common goal of supporting our children and each other in pursuit of a future where we not only thrive economically but repair trust and restore strong social ties across our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

This vision of school cannot be designed as a factory.

For school leaders who embrace this practice as learning experience designers rather than factory managers, the key questions they start with are:
• How do we want people to feel about our school and when they are at school?
• How could we better know all of our students? Parents? Teachers?
• Whose voice and perspective do we understand the least well?
• What is important to our students (regardless of whether we think it’s important)?
• How can we use that insight to ensure their experience of school is meaningful to them?

In recent years, studies of school effectiveness – still influenced by Frederick Taylor’s emphasis on time usage – have led to scheduling and instructional reforms to ensure “bell-to-bell instruction” and “increased time on learning” as tactics to increase student performance on standardized tests. Ironically, we can lose sight of creating conditions for learning in our emphasis on getting students into their desks in classrooms with teachers teaching.

Students spend 7+ hours per day at school. From K-12, that’s 16,380 hours. In that dosage, school is more than merely “reading, writing, and arithmetic.” It is profoundly formative.
Everyday at school, the experiences students have contribute to becoming who they will be as people. Students come to school not merely as disembodied brain-receptacles there to receive academic learning dispensed at school. The entire experience of school – whether we design or acknowledge it – is a learning experience.

The greeting or smile a child receives when they walk in the door; the tone and climate of the hallways during class transitions; the interactions with adults and peers at lunch, at the bus, at dismissal – all convey messages to a young person about whether they are seen, known, cared for, and can trust school to develop and tap their talents to unleash their highest potential and contribute to/benefit from their community.

Quick Start Actions

Shadow students

Select 3-5 students representing a range of experiences and perspectives especially outside the “mainstream.” Ask if you can shadow them for a day to better understand what school is like for them, from the moment they first step foot on campus and including lunch. The aim is to simply experience school exactly as they do. After you have completed your shadowing, bring the students back together and share the insights you gathered with them. Invite their voice to shape a plan for change.

Name how you want them to feel

Engage your staff in a generative dialog around the question, “What feelings do we hope to evoke for students when they enter school?” Study organizations that do a good job for you in evoking that feeling - what do they do that makes you feel that way? How could you replicate or adapt that practice into daily routines and practices at school? How will you know and check in on how students feel at school? How will you ensure you are seeing and supporting students who may not fit typical profiles?

Answer the question, What is learning?

There is an irony in school leadership that precious little time is spent thinking about or defining what we mean by learning despite the fact that the primary purpose of schools is to spark and amplify learning. We assume that learning takes place when students are in a classroom with a teacher. We assume that test scores are evidence of learning. We often assume that everyone knows and agrees what learning is. Rather than assume, it can be productive to invite teachers, parents and students into dialog about what meaningful “sticky” learning is and how it differs from mere transmission of information.

Take a human-centered design or theatre class

Recast your identity as a leader from administrator of buses, schedules, tests and rosters to designing an experience for students, teachers, yourself, classified staff, parents, community members that vibrantly, lovingly and relentlessly pursues learning, and creating the conditions in which learning and connection thrive.

Attend to all aspects of the human experience of school beyond formal instruction

The physical space of school signals what is expected to happen within the walls. Utilize natural light, color, and art to infuse in the space with creative energy and reduce the prevalence of physical spaces that dictate compliance and isolation. To make the school a gracious social gathering place, ensure it is someone’s job to greet each student or visitor at entrances and exits. Model, encourage and incentivize smiling among leaders and adults in the building, as well as at students and visitors. An easy way to make people feel seen is to actually see them and acknowledge them!

Practitioner Highlights

Premier Experiences in Carroll County

Scott Cowart

Superintendent

Carroll County

Premier Experiences in Carroll County – Five years ago, superintendent Scott Cowart led the adoption of five Vision Commitments that set the bar for what a “premier” school system looks like and what the community can expect. The first two commitments, “Focusing on learning” and “Providing premier experiences,” are examples of how to lead enactment of this Learning-and-Connection-Sparking practice.

“As a leader, I’ve always focused on results. But if our data don’t represent actual learning on the part of students, teachers and leaders, those aren’t the results we are looking for. We need school leaders and a community that aims for more than only high test scores if we are to prepare our young people for the most robust opportunities to contribute to our community’s future. Our commitment to focus on learning means we live out learning as a system in everything we do. Learning doesn’t happen only on test days or days when a teacher is being evaluated. Learning happens in my office. In principals’ offices. In teacher meetings. Everyday throughout the year. That’s how we get premier learning results – including being a premier place to work that attracts the best teaching and leadership talent.”

Cowart pairs this commitment to learning with the commitment to “provide premier experiences” that recognize students are not merely in school as minds, but as full humans. One example of this was how the district crafted experiences for students and families during the pandemic who were in transition years (incoming to Kindergarten, moving from elementary to middle school, and from middle to high school). To ensure every child arrived at school having made a personal connection, they hosted meet and greet events in batches to ensure guidelines in place at the time for social distancing did not have to mean social isolation. Jared Griffis, principal at Central High School at the time, later reflected that the incoming class of freshman that year was noticeably more tightly connected and socially supportive of one another than typical classes.

Learn More

Carroll County’s Vision Commitments