An Audacious Experiment

As we seek to reimagine education, we must develop our creative courage. 

It's not enough that we have an audacious aspiration. We have to have the courage to continually walk into the unknown, seeking surprise, hoping for moments of magic – those brilliant, joyful experiences that we call eureka moments. 

Such was the motivation for an experiment that we did last month in Oregon City. 

This has been a hard year for students and teachers. A very hard year. 

The Oregon City School District has two middle schools that feed into a high school of 2,000 students. In a normal year, the transition for rising 9th graders is challenging. This year, however, was much more so as many of these students have not been in a classroom, instead, learning remotely, often with their cameras off. 

A team at the high school, led by Stacy Erickson, set about creating a summer program to allow these students to learn about their new school and develop a sense of belonging that would help them in this transition. 

Using the Designed InGenuity (DIG) framework, they challenged themselves to go into uncharted waters. In these two-week sessions, could they unleash the students' creative genius? Could this newly recognized potential be woven together in a way that empowered all of the students as change-makers? Could this process transform the student's narrative identities as learners? 

Well, it happened...