21st Century Schools and Professional Learning Communities as Problem-Solving Places with Prototyping Mindsets
The Piasa Bluffs Writing Project, other NWP sites, school districts and museums draw on the CoLab’s inquiry-based ResponsiveDesign™ model to collaborate and creatively solve problems and develop programs grounded in a design-thinking mindset. We harness ResponsiveDesign™ to unleash powerful and transformative practices of Exploring as we develop empathy, Envisioning as we defer judgment, and, Enacting as we build to learn; all mutually supporting practices orbiting around a Prototyping growth mindset.
We draw on our ResponsiveDesign™ model to develop your tailor-made professional development plan. Our recursive model guides the phases of our work with teachers, schools and districts by:
- Exploring & identifying existing literate cultural practices within the school;
- Envisioning, trying on and developing a set of classroom-tested and research-documented humanizing literate practices; and
- Enacting those practices within their classroom settings. We reconvene to report findings from the prototype, student work, and insights, and begin revising & refining the approaches, thus teachers learn to ‘own’ them. Then we celebrate as schools become communities of inquirers and learners, embracing spaces where teachers and students play, learn and grow.
ResponsiveDesign™ in Action across a 4th Grade Teacher’s School Year: “Whose Knowledge Counts?”