Data and emotional connections can co-exist, although we don’t always see it that way. When we think of building connections in a school environment, we often focus on understanding the experiences of school leaders, teachers, staff, and, most importantly, students. Similarly, when we think of data in education, we often seek to analyze the data to understand what may be impacting students, our staff, the board or the community.
We can look at these two approaches together, rather than in silos, when used strategically and thoughtfully. We support our partners to do just that, and as a result, the Innovare community is seeing stronger, more authentic, emotional connections being built among all individuals within an education environment.
Removing the Roadblock
Collaborative Centered Change
- At Innovare, we leverage the Human-Centered Design (HCD) toolkit developed by IDEO that centers those impacted by innovative solutions in the problem-solving process. This approach, rooted in empathy, allows us to better understand the needs of our partners by listening to them and inviting them to co-design solutions that address their particular needs.
- IDEO’s design process is a 3-phase process: (1) inspiration, (2) ideation, and (3) implementation; although in practice the process is not always linear, it enables us to produce a final outcome that is completely adapted to your specific challenges. One of our partners, Daniel R. Cameron Elementary in Chicago, recently implemented the first phase of IDEO’s Design Thinking approach to better respond to the needs of remote students and their families in this new learning environment.
The Situation: Addressing Social and Emotional Learning Needs during Pandemic
The Solution: Understanding the Needs of Students in This Remote Environment
Together, we co-created and designed a survey. Our process is to meet with the customer and learn the uniqueness of that community. The survey’s questions provide key human-centered insights drawn from habits such as the amount of hours a student spends on schoolwork after classes, or from a comparison of different perspectives. For example, by asking the student how they are coping and then asking their parents the same question about their kids. We use this information to create the dashboard that will display the results.
The outcome: Building Emotional Connections With Students In This Remote Environment
Our mission at Innovare is to support leaders, like Stephen, to lead positive change within their communities. From learning to use Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking, to defining transformational goals, to applying these practices with your own students, to feeling empowered to do experiments and learning from them, and other behaviors that constitute up-to-date education management and leadership best practices.
We’re looking forward to seeing the positive impact this collaboration has for the students, families, and teachers from Daniel R. Cameron Elementary as we continue our partnership together.
0 Comments