Education Group

Thanks to the rumble, we got a better understanding of the whole picture our service.

We filtered 5 most important insights from overall research.

#1 Highlighting a topic from different angles can help students gain a more holistic understanding of the particular topic

#2 Personal networks are an important source of ideas and resources for teaching.

#3 Students are motivated when they can relate what they learn to their personal interests.

#4 Students' latent talents are overlooked because they are not measured in schools.

While we're doing the interviews with teacher and student, we iterated our Hypothesis and hunt Statement several times. Now we got our first finalized version of research plan and we also reframe questions we want to ask for teachers and students in order to get better insights.

Hypothesis School materials often lack context for how they are applicable in solving problems outside of the school. This need may be especially acute as high school students approach college. Hunt Statement We want to explore how connecting classrooms to industry experts and work environments can give students a better understanding of how to apply the subjects they are learning. Assumptions

Few students truly understand the potential applications of subjects they are learning

Teachers are often too far removed from the applications of subject they teach

Individually, teachers have a limited professional network and often cannot make the most relevant connections to professionals

Teachers have fairly high level of control of what to do in class

Teachers are motivated to improve their teaching and use outside resources

Students are curious about perspectives outside the classroom

Some industry experts and organizations are interested in helping schools, teachers and students

Research Plan Through our research we want to get a better understanding of what type of environments and industry insights that would be beneficial to high school students. We think that getting students’ perspectives on things they would like to know more about, along with parents and teachers who have the students best interest in mind would give a holistic understanding of how we can bridge outside expertise and classrooms. We want to see if there are existing collaborations between teachers and industry experts and see how these work. Research activity plan

ActivityWhat we hope to learnParticipantsTimeLocationInterview with Teachers at H.S. levelUnderstand how they augment their curriculum3-4 teachers from different disciplines (eg. science, art, social science etc)Interview with teacher’s support networkUnderstand how school organizations currently help teachers with sourcing resourcesStaff from Teach for America School board staffInterview with students and parents (separately)Understand what type of contexts are more valuable for students2 students 2 parents Homes?Observe activities outside of the classroomUnderstand how teachers approach using outside resources as a supplement to the curriculum1-2 teachersFieldShadowing a teacher before, during and after a classUnderstand the context of classroom education and how teachers augment the curriculum1-2 teachersSchool

Secondary research We will dig deeper into how teachers structure their classes at high school level in New York City by looking at curriculums. Analogous research We want to look at services covering needs that might be similar from other industries. How do collaborations between other experts - non-experts work? What are the motivations for each part and the different ways of facilitating such exchanges? High Level Research questions

What kind of expertise & exposure helps students better understand individual subjects/topics? Do these need change from subject to subject?

What's the motivation behind teachers & schools going out of their way to enrich course curriculum?

What are the goals of teachers when they reach out to experts or professionals in particular subjects or disciplines.

How do teachers find experts and contacts in the industry? What goes into planning, scheduling and preparing?

How are such sessions facilitated? What is working well and not?

What kind of networks are teachers a part of? Do they have contacts with people working in the industry related to the subjects they are teaching? Do they have a broad sense of the professions related to the subjects they are teaching?

What are the different constraints - time, money, network/access

What are the incentives for experts/industries to help enrich students' learning

Inspired by Phi and Maggie, our service designer teachers, we decided to bring more people to engage the conversation of high school education. We believe college students could bring our valuable insights, since they're young, still keep simliar features with high school kids, and most important, they're not far from high school period and have relatively fresh memory of the experience.  So we framed a four questions for them and spread it through our social network.

The four questions are as following,

1. What was your favorite subject in high school?

2.Can you tell us about a memorable lesson or experience in school?

3. What do you wish you had been taught in school that you were not?

4. Please fill in what school you attended and where?

We finally got 28 quality answers within four days. We also highlighted the most interesting quotes.

We interviewed a humanities teacher at a high school in New Jersey. Some of the insights.

Goals

"I am teaching subjects like reading, writing, thinking ... and to some extent speaking and listening too."

The teacher had two stated goals. The overarching one was to enhance students' confidence in their capability to "possibly" write well. A secondary goal was to structure his lessons to get the students to teach themselves.

Philosophy

The teacher sees himself as a coach (like a football coach), who strives to get students to take on more responsibility.

Process

The teacher's personality is evident in the methods and processes he chose.

The teacher designs his own classes, and methodologically constructs a process of writing for his students. While he encourages students to read on computers and tablets, he insists that early drafts be handwritten, for two reasons: one, it reduces plagiarism, and two, he believes in the connection between thinking and writing by hand.

He also in corporates a lot of cross subject collaboration. e.g. looking at architecture to illustrate symbolism, or examining narratives in science.

The teacher is also very focused in picking the right readings for students, he cites this as a large part of what he does, and where technology has become very useful. (Classics are easy to find online.)

Feedback

The teacher is very feedback oriented.

The teacher looks at a couple metrics to gauge his teaching performance. At a high level, he looks at how quickly his class fills up, and the emails he receives from parents, students and alumni. On a day-to-day basis, he looks at the level of intelligent discussion in his class, and the level of enthusiasm in the class.

Most positive piece of feedback: a student wrote, "I felt so smart in your class."

Most negative feedback: a class discussion on Plato's Republic that is clearly not working, and from discussion its evident no one read the material. In this instance, he immediate threw out his lesson plan and changed course.

School Environment

The school gives the teacher reasonable amount of leeway in structuring his classes and picking his own materials. The teacher did reference the school administration becoming increasing top-down in its function over the last decade. Teachers used to hire their own colleagues, but no longer do.

The teacher also noted issues with logistics in planning field trips, and uses a workaround where he ask his students to visit museums to look at art on their own.

Tools

The teacher noted his recent purchase of a Macbook significantly enhanced his ability to teach and put materials together. He uses Google and J-Store extensively to find primary source material for his students to read. He also uses Google to check the originality of his students' writings.

He stated he does not like Blackboard because he's concerned with data ownership. Instead he uses a wikispace to share materials with his students. He regularly puts together powerpoints for teaching in class, and pdf files to distribute readings.

Tech Policy

The teacher has an encouraging stance towards the use of devices in the classroom. Recently the school has installed better wifi access, and some students are using it to reference readings in class. He mentioned he is surprised that not more students are using phones and tablets in class for school work.

Student use of Technology

His students regularly uses Facebook groups to coordinate studying and conduct peer-review assignments.

Inspiration Sources

The teacher gets a lot of inspiration from his colleagues, his daughter's school, as well as students and alumni who email him interesting articles. 

Challenges

The teacher noted that he does not deal with the most difficult challenge in the education system, which is dealing with unmotivated students. Since he teaches mostly honors students, his challenge is mostly dealing with helicopter parents.