Process over Product

A Conversation between Agency by Design Oakland Teacher Fellows

Learning is messy and beautiful and we’re here for all of it. At this point in our teacher fellowship we’re handing over the microphone and witnessing teachers’ journeys. Check out this conversation between Fatimah Salahuddin and Kara Fleshman, two Oakland teachers in our teacher fellowship, who are at the beginning of their independent inquiry work.

Emergent Inquiry Questions

““Who am I as a maker-centered learning teacher?” 

“How is distance learning shifting and destroying some of these maker-centered learning strategies? And how am I bringing my special sauce to these different strategies?

Fatimah Salahuddin, ELA & Ethnic Studies Teacher, Fremont High School, Oakland Unified School District”

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““How can I create independent work that isn’t an added burden on families and is truly fun, enriching, challenging, and inspiring?”  

“I have been trying to learn how to become tech savvy. How do I create the resources my students need?

Kara Fleshman, STEAM teacher, Lazear Elementary School”

Student Agency is at the core of our work. And what we envision for students we must cultivate for the educators! In order to design for agency in the classroom educators need to know what it looks like, what it feels like, and why it’s worth it. The path to agency is different for everyone but it follows a similar structure—an inquiry cycle.

Agency by Design Oakland uses a multi-pronged approach to design for Teacher Agency. We use research on maker-centered learning to support teachers in their pedagogical understanding. We invite teachers to present and showcase their work to cultivate their leadership as educational visionaries. And we use an inquiry cycle for teachers to be in charge of their own classroom action research.

We help teachers lean into the design skills they already have but to slow down and be reflective about what they’re doing and why. We lead teachers through the inquiry process of defining their inquiry, prototyping a tool, testing and documenting in the classroom, looking at student work, and reflecting and refining their inquiry. We support this work with a community of peers, a coach, as well as grants for classroom materials.

Reflection

How do you cultivate learner agency? At this point in the school year it’s common to pull back some of the scaffolds and encourage your learners to do the heavy lifting. It might look like students engaging in a complex interdisciplinary unit and they’ve written their own research question, or it could be more basic—like having students lead the class routines or asking them to write a paragraph without the sentence frames you usually provide. 

Resources

• Agency by Design Research Project 

• Book: Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds

• What are Thinking Routines? 

• A Picture of Practice: Redirecting Authority 

• A Picture of Practice: Letting Go of Power

• A Picture of Practice: Student Voice & Choice

Building Empathy During Distance Learning

By Brooke Toczylowski, Co-Director, Agency by Design Oakland

Teaching is designing, and building empathy is core to the design process. Like planning lessons or engaging in ongoing assessment, Empathy Hacks should be a core part of one’s teaching practice. 

This past week teacher fellows with the Agency by Design Oakland Fellowship have been engaging in one such Empathy Hack. After looking closely at and considering “What are the Parts Purposes & Complexities of distance learning?” the educators are now using the Think Feel Care thinking routine to guide them in interviewing a student or family member on their experience of the system of distance learning. 

In a team meeting with Community Day School, educator Michael Gebreslassie shared that he chose to do this by asking one of his students, Jared, to draw his experience of distance learning. Michael told us that Jared wanted the drawing to look dark in order to represent how he feels, and that he’s bored by the same thing day after day. 

"Distance learning is the same screen and same window, every day.”

Jared, a student at Community Day School, an alternative public school in Oakland, visually represents his experience of distance learning.

Using the drawing, as well as their prior experiences with Jared (with whom all had worked), the team was asked to take on his perspective and consider the following questions: 

Think: How does this person understand this system (distance learning), and their role within it? 

Feel: What is this person’s emotional response to the system, and to their position within in? 

Care: What are this person’s values, priorities, or motivations with regard to the system? What is important to this person? 

The educators shared that Jared is a “why person,” someone who needs to understand the purpose behind an assignment or experience. But during distance learning, where the purpose of many activities are elusive, maybe he’s not sure it matters. Educator Elisabeth Barnett imagined Jared saying, “Does distance learning matter? Is this feeding into what I can do with my future? “ Another team member, Trey Keeve, the English teacher and also a poet, took it to another level, and imagined this student’s experience in the first person. Listen to hear Trey perform his incredibly moving piece:  

Transcript: “I am an artist and I have been cut off from everything that inspires and motivates me. I am a tactile learner and now my hands only touch computer keys. I like to paint trees at times, but now I can only see the ones from my window. The window controls what I see, as does my computer. I don’t have the freedom of fingers to feel, the freedom of eyes to see beyond these windows. I am an artist suffocated, cut off, uninspired. To remain in this place. And yet I am stuck. I would rather fail than succeed in this. I valued in-person education more than I thought. I took it for granted. I need to get outside, I need to feel the wind on my skin. I need to see my friends laugh in person. I need to hear their sounds as they manifest and not as they are digitized and sent through wires. I need to be in a classroom surrounded by tacky posters, art supplies, and people.” 

After a deep breath to take in each others’ reflections and appreciate the deep empathy work they had just engaged in, the Community Day School team started brainstorming.  

• They envisioned care packages of art materials for students to express themselves! 

• They imagined ecological projects in the park examining and drawing specimens!

• They conjured up ideas for interdisciplinary Math, Science & English projects using Design Thinking!

The zoom mood slowly shifted—the educators felt lighter, and ready, and eager.

Because Empathy leads to Hope. 

“I really didn’t want to be in another zoom today. But I didn’t know this is what I needed.” Teacher, Community Day School 

Empathy building is a part of exploring complexity, one of three capacities in the Agency by Design framework, which supports cultivating a sensitivity to design and ultimately—maker empowerment. Exploring Complexity is about systems thinking, including looking at which players are involved in a given system and understanding different perspectives within it. Learn more about the framework here. 

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Empathy Hacks 

Think Feel Care Thinking Routine: Choose a learner whose perspective you want to explore. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and quietly reflect on paper. Consider how you want to organize your thinking—stream of consciousness, three columns, a concept map? When you’re done, be sure to notice your biases, what assumptions you may have made, and what you’re now curious to go learn more about. 

Lawrence Teng, a 19’ - 20’ Agency by Design Oakland Teacher Fellow, holds up a poster he just screenprinted of the Think, Feel, Care thinking routine. Download a PDF of this design below.

Shadow a Student: Join a student on their zoom schedule for the day. Inspired by SchoolRetool.org.

Class Activity/Assessment: Invite learners to draw a picture of their distance learning experience and share out. Inspired by Community Day School educator, Michael Gebreslassie. 

Interview a Student, Parent or Guardian. Give them a call, use a series of text messages, or drop by their home for a socially distant chat.  

Community Walks. Invite (and stipend!) students to design and organize a day of professional development for students where the learners lead workshops, walks, and discussions within their own communities. Oakland International High School is a leader in student-led community walks. Learn more here. 

And here are few more of our favorite Empathy Tools from the Design Thinking world:

The d.school’s Liberatory Design Cards go deep into mindsets—they’re an essential tool with a free download. Use Ideo’s Travel Pack cards for creative ideas to get you thinking outside the box, like “Try it Yourself,” where you gain empathy by trying out someone’s favorite activity or hobby for a week. And don’t miss out on Lesley-Ann Noel’s “The Designer’s Critical Alphabet,” a comprehensive vocab lesson.

A Letter from our Co-Directors

“We can’t do it alone. No individual alone can transform our schools into places where all children get what they need every day.” Elena Aguilar, The Art of Coaching Teams 

In this most unusual of school years, Agency by Design Oakland has adjusted our fellowship and organization to meet the needs of the times. 

The first announcement is that our leadership structure has changed to a more distributed model. Brooke Toczylowski, formerly Executive Director, and Paula Mitchell, formerly Fellowship Director, are now Co-Directors of Agency by Design Oakland. Both are excited to lead the organization together through this extraordinary time of change and opportunity. 

We believe in collaborative governance structures that distribute leadership to a team. Seen here is our Fellowship Leadership Team, which designs, facilitates and coaches our Oakland teacher fellowship. From left to right: Paula Mitchell, Teacher on Special Assignment at Grass Valley Elementary School, Alia Ghabra, Humanities teacher at Elmhurst United, Susan Wolf, Teaching Artist, Ilya Pratt, Director of the Design+Make+Build Program at Park Day School, and Brooke Toczylowski, Instructional Coach at Oakland International High School.

“If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together. “

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Secondly, as the current conditions have taxed even the most resilient of us, we have shifted the Oakland fellowship from a focus on individuals to a focus on teams. We know that maker-centered learning pedagogy holds the promise of creating both more equitable and engaging learning environments and we need this now more than ever. We decided to shift our focus to teams in order to help foster conditions for sustainability, spreadability and success at sites. To this end, we are also intentionally engaging site leaders for the first time in the fellowship experience. Principals and school leaders will join their teams for three experiences throughout the year. This work is supported by our participation and collaboration with Maker Ed’s Making Spaces Program, a national network of hubs supporting schools to integrate making.

The message of collaboration, joy and healing that we set as the themes for our ‘20-’21 fellowship seemed to resonate with our applicants. Upon opening our application process in June, our leadership team was immediately struck by the thoughtfulness and creativity of the applications and their stated desire to be in community with one another. At this particular point in history, humans desire to be in fellowship with one another and teachers, who are often stuck in the silos of their classroom, are realizing how much they need each other to meet the demands of distance learning.

In addition to figuring it out together, our latest group of fellows are dedicated to bringing culturally responsive pedagogy and equity through making into their practice. Perhaps because of this, or because we are in such extraordinary times, our fellowship is one of the most diverse we’ve ever had, with the largest number of second year fellows to date. We are thrilled to have so many returnees and are looking forward to the creation of richer experiences with the entire cohort. We are committed to discovering what student agency looks like during distance learning to ensure that all are cared for and engaged during this challenging time. We will update you on this work as the year progresses; below is a snapshot of our cohort makeup.

We wish you health, happiness, and even joy during this difficult time. 

In Community,

Paula & Brooke

P.S. Show Up for Democracy- VOTE!