Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic 

Five secondary educators participating in state's first 'School Report' cohort through Stanford's d.school

Last year, Chehalem Valley Middle School assistant principal Casey Petrie and instructional facilitator Cassandra Thonstad participated in a training seminar at Stanford University's d.school K-12 Education Lab, which brings design thinking and methodology to improve education.

CVMS principal Karen Pugsley was so impressed with what they brought back with them that when the d.school opened an Oregon cohort for its School Retool leadership training module, she jumped at the opportunity to apply.

She also encouraged Mountain View Middle School and Newberg High School principals Michelle Paton and Kyle Laier, along with Petrie and Thonstad, to participate as well.

All five were accepted and now form nearly one-third of the 18-member cohort for the state, which has already begun learning techniques to "hack" new ideas and redesign their school cultures to foster innovation in teaching and learning. 

"In terms of leadership, that's really powerful when you can move an entire school forward with some of this design thinking," Pugsley said. "We really aren't asked to think outside of our box very much because we are mid-level managers. What this is doing is not only giving us permission but also a skill set to see something that is possible and then make it happen in a pretty quick turnaround time, which is pretty cool."

The cohort attended the first of four full-day workshops Feb. 10 at Portland Community College in Portland, identifying three main "hacking mindsets," all of which eventually foster deeper learning in schools.

First among those is to start small, in large part because little changes are easier to experiment with and implement than system-wide overhauls.

"You can't, say, create an advisory system in a day and all teachers are going to do it the next day after that," Pugsley said. "That's basically asking for it to fail. But if you start small, even with a single person or a single kid, you can actually learn a lot about your school and then that can actually move toward change."

The second mindset is to have a bias to action, which Pugsley said is contrary to the general tendency of administrators, who more often are biased toward thinking or planning. Small changes don't present big risks, so it's better see what can be learned from taking action.

Lastly, cohort members were extolled to fail forward, treating failures as opportunities to learn.

"You learn through the process of failing sometimes," Pugsley said. "That's very similar to design thinking. If you get a group of engineers and design professionals together, that's what they do."

In between training sessions, participants are expected to implement small hacks and report back to the group.

For instance, Pugsley, Petrie, Thonstad and Paton have each shadowed a student for a full day. Pugsley found the experience so rewarding that she is having members of her school's site council shadow a student as well.

"Then we'll come together and that will be the topic of the next site council meeting," Pugsley said. "That's different data than just the test results."

Both Pugsley and Paton have also taken to moving their offices out into the hallway for an entire school day, where they asked students to provide some feedback about the school.

"What I've loved is that kids have just stopped and sat down and chatted," Paton said. "If I'm back in my office, they don't do that. So being out here, they just plopped down and talked to me about what they're putting up here, which is what I'm looking for. I'm looking to increase student voice and students feeling like somebody is hearing them."

Paton specifically asked her students to identify the best thing about Mountain View, as well as one thing they would change about it, then write their answers on a sticky note and post them on a board that everyone could view.

"It's been awesome, so it's something definitely that I will plan to continue," Paton said. "I'm leaving today feeling energized about my job and I don't always feel that way when I'm in my office all day."

Pugsley asked her students what they would change about the school and was a bit surprised that the No. 1 response was to start school an hour later. After asking several students to explain, they reported that with after-school activities, like sports or clubs, their days can get really long and they're simply tired in the morning.

"I had no idea that middle school students felt like that," Pugsley said. "I know that if we asked high school students they would tell you that in a heartbeat, but middle school kids are on the same page."

Paton said she may move her office into the hall as often as once a week, but had also planned to host "Café Paton," where she will set up couches and bean bag chairs during a lunch period this week. The office in the hall was a good start, as it really helped to break the ice with students, but Café Paton will allow her to have deeper conversations with her students about how they experience classroom instruction.

"We're working on, at the district level, beefing up our instruction to include more project-based things and those 21st century skills of collaborating and citizenship," she said. "I want to get that feedback from kids so I can then go to teachers."

Pugsley said that the cohort's second meeting, which was structured around a visit to Dayton High School, was inspiring and that with all three of the district's secondary principals participating, the program could pay substantial dividends as they work together to improve the district's graduation rate.

"We want to support the high school in its work and the high school wants to support us in the work that's going to create the career- and college-ready kiddos coming up," she said. "Deep thinking is what we need to make sure our students are ready for high school and ready for college."

Pugsley admits that while design thinking is completely up her alley, there is certainly an appreciation at the district level for the initiative she and the others have taken.

"We have a great group of administrators who want to do great work and are going outside of our district and looking at how other folks are doing things," Newberg assistant superintendent Dave Parker said. "That just brings in new ideas for us to try and capitalize on."