Teachers needs time to be creative with their curriculum. Most of our curriculum resources assume high levels of learning engagement, but the reality is it's the talent of the teachers and creativity that engage students. That's why Partnerships is testing a new professional design experience premised on creativity and time; we call it an Innovation Design Incubator.
Our innovative design incubators are like “maker spaces” for teachers, providing input and experiences with authentic learning and a lot of time to create “authentic” innovations in the curriculum. We’re pleased to celebrate and showcase Kamal Vilkhu, a career tech. teacher of dental hygiene and participant in our first design incubator and her oral hygiene authentic learning project.
Kamal Vilkhu is a career tech. teacher in dental hygiene at the Delaware Area Career Center (Delaware, OH), and she reframed a senior-level oral hygiene project with the design thinking process, one of the authentic learning models that we think makes learning irresistible. Typically, her seniors learn about oral hygiene and plan a lesson for young children to reduce anxiety about going to the dentist. By itself, this is an authentic activity, but Kamal asked the “what if” questions and applied the slogan, “see a problem, solve a problem” to build the project into a more purposeful and irresistible learning experience for her students.
Kamal’s framing of the design problem was that knowing how to engage young children in a lesson is hard for many of her high school students, so she coordinated a collaboration between her class and the Career Tech. Early Childhood program just down the hallway. Her dental hygiene students spent a morning exploring the Pre-K classroom and observing young children during their typical day (play, read-alouds, other activities). They took notes about engagement, and they interviewed the career tech. instructor and her students, clarifying ideas and their questions about engaging young children.
Days later, Kamal’s students were ready to get feedback on their draft lessons. Kamal coordinated a panel of guest K-2 teachers and volunteer students from the early childhood career tech class to give feedback. The expert panel observed and gave feedback on engaging young children. Kamal was thrilled with the feedback process, saying, “I don’t always know the best feedback to give. This was great!” The laser-like focus on engaging young children led to a qualitatively different and more robust learning experience for the dental hygiene students. It was authentic because it solved a real problem (learning how to engage young children), included a real audience (expert K-2 teachers and early childhood students), and it emphasized building empathy for young children and their engagement before planning a lesson for them (critical thinking and research).
We celebrate Kamal’s efforts to participate in the design incubator and to create something that will have lasting impact for young children and high school seniors alike!