Giving Compass' Take:

· Getting Smart discusses design-focused schools and the positive effects they have on student success and recruiting exceptional teachers.

· How does design help students develop life skills? How does this show the creative side of both teachers and students?

· Read about a design-focused school in Indiana building tech talent for the future.

Design–it’s what’s new. It’s the haute denim, the macrome, the mixed print of 2018 edu-fashion.

We’ve visited a lot of schools lately and design is a common theme. Kids everywhere are sketching, sewing, and solving big problems.

Take SAMI, a high school at the zoo in Tacoma for example. The building looks like a big makerspace with labs and garage doors everywhere. Students conduct hands-on projects with community connections.

So is the focus on design a fad, a trend, or something important? We think it’s a big deal–an important mindset and a priority skill.

Why Design?

In the old days, most of the problems professionals addressed (from engineering to public policy) where technical. Many of us were trained in pattern recognition and solution application. Each profession had a cannon of best practices. What’s different now is that we’re all facing more new and complex problems, what 10 years ago Ron Heifetz called adaptive problems.

To address new and complex problems, we all need a flexible growth mindset and a structured problem-solving methodology. It’s what Google’s Jonathan Rochelle called “confidence in the face of complexity.”

Read the full article about design-focused schools by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.