MIT 2020 - Step 4: Tweaking and redefining the challenge

Below is my original challenge statement which reflected my concern around figuring out how teachers could equip Year 8 with the necessary life skills to make the move to their first year of high school as seamless as possible

Taking on board comments from the from the School Hall scenario, I realised that 'life skills' was too broad and could legitimately include skills such as how to cook which although useful life-skill was unlikely to be a dealbreaker for a Year 8 transitioning to high school. Clearly, I needed to consider more carefully the type of skill set that would be both appropriate and beneficial to support Year 8 students in their move to secondary school.

For me, the logical 'next step' was to look to the New Zealand Curriculum document for inspiration, in particular the five Key Competencies..  I found myself gravitating towards the competency of  MANAGING SELF and re-worded my challenge statement to now read:

Preparing Year 8 students with the self-management skills to confidently transition from the primary to secondary school learning environment.

This one tweak has helped me drill down to where I need to focus my design thinking -i.e.  developing a Year 8 student's capacity to cope in new or unfamiliar situations.

MIT 2020 - Step 3: School Hall Scenario

With my moonshot proposal and 5 WHYs completed, the next part of the design thinking process came unexpectedly!

Matt and Dorothy took us through a role play centred around a fictitious School Hall scenario. Each of the MIT 2020 group were given parent personas  from the local community to act out (e.g a pizza maker, a lawyer, a bach cleaner).  The gathering was led by a senior staff member (Matt) with a representative from ERO (Dorothy) in attendance. Parents were asked to prioritise a series of issues impacting the school. There was a tangible sense of frustration as we progressed from one issue to another. Indeed, comments from 'the floor' got quite heated at times:

               "We need more information! 

                What do you mean my kid can't listen!

                Are you telling me my kid is dumb? 

                It's not my problem? 

                What are the teachers doing to fix this?  

                Why are we only hearing about this now?

The senior staff member (Matt - heroically sticking to character!) pretty quickly came under the pump. Due to circumstances out of 'his control', he could not provide any of the details requested by parents to help clarify each issue and figure out which were the most pressing.

At some point, the penny dropped. It turned out that the 'issues' we were hotly debating were in fact the achievement challenge statements from each MIT member.

GENIUS! 

Having each MITer in character as part of an audience dialled down any potential awkwardness or defensiveness that might have come up had we been asked instead to present our ideas in front a group of relative strangers.The role play was a way for us to hear an upfront critique of our initial musings and prompted each of us to go back and re-examine our initial problem statement.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:- was the issue expressed in concise language? was the issue actually worthy of investigation as a design thinking project?

MIT 2020 - Step 2: The 5 Whys

Step 2: Use THE 5 WHYS methodology to identify the root cause of a challenge/problem

The 5 WHYS in action: Paired up with Tina Takimoana from Ahipara School, I found it humbling to trade WHY questions with her in an effort to unpack the root cause of our respective challenges or problems.

The process was thought provoking because it forced me to unpack and then consolidate my thinking around the challenge I had identified. In our responses to each WHY question, the crux of the problem was slowly revealed and the 'real' challenge we needed to solve started to take shape.

Below is a slideshow (THANK YOU DOROTHY!) that shows the questioning and answering of Tina and I had with each other as we went through the 5 WHY process.

Slide 1: Managing Change: Navigating the transition of students from primary to
secondary school (KIRIWAI)

Slide 2: Accelerating students learning to reach the norm in mathematical understanding (TINA)

MIT 2020 - Step 1: Moonshot Proposal

To kickstart my Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) 2020 project, I needed to prepare a moonshot proposal. This is a working document which essentially lays the groundwork for my design thinking project.

Step 1: Identify the challenge impacting achievement that I want to focus on in 2020 through the MIT design thinking process?

As a Year 7 & 8 teacher, one of main areas of concern is around those Year 8 students who leave ill-equipped to adapt and cope with the move to secondary school, and so are at greater risk of dropping out of school before they have the qualifications (NCEA Level 2) that will allow them to build better life outcomes for themselves.

Keeping this in mind, I developed an initial CHALLENGE STATEMENT is shown below:

All ten of the MIT 2020 cohort gathered at Kuaotuna at the end of February and with guidance from Dorothy and Matt, there were plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate our initial statement (more posts to follow!) and craft it into challenge that would be worthy of exploring over the coming year.