Behind the Data High School Class Puts Students at Center of Design Challenges
As a high school student interested in pursuing a career in medicine, Priya Ganesh wasn’ t really sure taking teacher Garreth Heidt’ s Design Thinking class was going to help her look impressive to colleges or bolster her grade point average. But looking back a year later, she is thankful that she had the experience- because it helped her land access to an exclusive class at Syracuse University and also gave her a perspective on problem-solving and collaboration that will serve her well into the future.
“ So much of what you learn here is applied outside the PV bubble,” said Priya, who graduated from Perkiomen Valley High School in 2017.
Priya was part of the first class of students to take Design Thinking, which is offered as an English elective. Mr. Heidt modeled the class on a method of thinking called“ design thinking,” and borrowed heavily from Lehigh University’ s“ Moutaintop Program.” He was also influenced by the work of teacher Don Wettrick at Noblesville High School, Indiana, and his“ Innovation and Open Source Learning” class.
Mr. Heidt first became interested in the educational potential of design back in the mid-2000s. He was driven by two questions:“ Why are things the way they are?” and“ How can we make them better?” Those questions also were the kick-off point for Design Lab at the high school.
“ Design is a way to engage students in real-world learning but to do so in a way that they recognize how the things they’ ve learned are already important to real-world learning,” he said.“ It’ s a holistic application of everything that students have learned and it also gets to the four Cs of 21st Century Learning- critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration.”
During the Design Thinking class last year, one of the students’ first challenges was to design their own classroom in a way that would make it conducive to their work. They interviewed each other and Mr. Heidt, made observations, researched materials they could use to redesign the instructional space, and then purchased and installed their new furniture. The students were used their design-thinking muscles to help move ideas forward with the redesign of the Perkiomen Valley Middle School East library.
Priya found the Design-Thinking class unusual, in the beginning.
“ Design Lab is not like any other classes I was taking,” she said.“ The rest of the classes I was taking were lecture style. In Design Lab, there’ s no right answer, which bothered me at first.”
But she became more comfortable with that idea as the class went on, as she grew to understand that the“ right answer” can be elusive when a team is always working to improve upon what it creates. In addition to developing a
Above, students in Mr. Heidt’ s Design Thinking class present their ideas for a classroom redesign. At left is a picture of the prototype of the classroom redesign that students created.
new classroom design, the students were also challenged to come up with their own idea to solve a problem, develop a prototype, and then present it to the class. Some examples of the ideas students worked on included a proposal to add an 11th grade gifted honors English class, and a project to present a winter showcase to raise awareness about social issues like addiction. Following presentation of the prototype, students had to reflect upon what they had learned. These reflections were one of the best parts of the class for Mr. Heidt.
“ The students said,‘ Here’ s where we failed and why.’ At that point, I’ m really happy because it’ s not about the grade, it’ s about the growth,” he said, adding that having a former student return and say she liked the class is also great, too.
Priya went on to Syracuse University and is now a freshman majoring in chemical engineering. But she found herself in a design class there- one that is required of those who receive the leadership award that she received. She was one of the few students in the class who already had design-thinking experience.
“ Learning how to go through the design process is so helpful. I went to school and once you go into the outside world, this is how people think,” she said.“ It’ s about how you can take what you already have and make it more efficient.”
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