Design School

Sharing a document worked on today during our design school development meeting.  We used today to get some ideas on paper in regards to a core philosophy and driving principles behind a potential Design School.  Most of the ideas were internal but a few came from Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth and from the Thompson School District Innovation Lab. We view these bullets are core principles that would guide develop of the school.


Driving Principles

• process over product
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• action before analysis
• learn from doing
• value PLAY, live like a Kindergartner
• learning is natural if we give ourselves and each other permissions to:
• pay attention
• listen deeply
• listen differently
• notice the unlikely
• stakeholders embrace mistakes, experimentation and failure
• fail often
• cognition over content
• consciousness over conditioning
• mindfulness, stop and think, observe, analyze
• learner owns the learning, when respect for every voice is the soul of the learning community
• goal of instruction is to push and lift students
• no end in terms of growth
• Love your experiments
• Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
• Everyone is a leader
• Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
• Collaborate
• The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
• embrace conflict, paradox and ambiguity
• it’s about asking questions
• consider perspectives, lenses
• every movement leads to more questions
• learning occurs everywhere
• live the wide-awake life
• learning is a collaborative process
• we are all responsible for helping one another grow
• nothing is ever finished or permanent
• there are always questions to ask, improvements, places to go...
• Go deep
• The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
• Begin anywhere
• John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
• Work the metaphor
• Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for
• work is a naturally extension of your life
• blurring boundary between school and not school
• Do what matters most
• grit, curiosity, flow, eudaimonia
• pursuit of happiness