Mission Possible: Design Your Perfect School

Expand Your Design Thinking Skills

Mission Possible: Design Your Perfect School is an interactive experience that brings teens and university faculty alongside each other in a process of creative problem-solving. Using design thinking processes and mindsets just like the most innovative organizations, we’ll unleash creativity to design our perfect school.  

Design thinking supports outside– and even beyond–the box thinking so we can imagine new possibilities for positive change.  Working in teams, we’ll identify a challenge, brainstorm potential solutions, and actually create prototypes to try out in the real world.

Curriculum

Students will learn and apply the various phases of design thinking and cultivate mindsets for innovation as they design their perfect school. Learning how to interact with others to gather empathy data, use strategies to identify problems, actively brainstorm or ideate potential solutions and rapidly create prototypes will help students reimagine their ideal learning environment. The two-week session will culminate with student design presentations to stakeholders such as school leaders and peers.

We’ll jump into design thinking, have fun engaging in “stokes” and other improvisational activities to inspire creativity and actually use prototyping tools and materials to put our ideas into others' hands to try.  More than just a two-week summer experience, design thinking will become a way for students to make the world a better place.

 

 

board with papers detailing topics
Planned Topics

Course topics and hands-on learning activities will include:

  • The Why, What, and How of Design Thinking
  • Equity-Centered Design Mindsets
  • Team Formation Activities
  • Empathizing with Users
  • Defining the Challenge
  • Ideating for all the Possibilities
  • Rapid Prototyping
  • Concept-Pitching and Testing
  • Stakeholder Presentations
  • Noticing, Reflecting, and Ongoing Iteration
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Laura Hallberg
Faculty Co-Lead
Laura Hallberg

Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs | Benerd College

BA, French and German, Humboldt State University, 1993
MS Ed, Educational Leadership, University of New England, 2009
EdD, Educational Leadership, University of New England, 2015

Co-lead Laura Hallberg was a high school teacher for almost 20 years, teaching classes for students exploring the teaching profession and other careers in education. Since coming to Pacific, she's taught a variety of classes focused on diversity and leadership, and has incorporated design thinking in a variety of ways in her instruction, facilitation and leadership of projects.

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Faculty Co-Lead
Karen Sarafian

Assistant Professor and Program Lead | Learning, Leadership and Change Program | Benerd College

EdD, Organizational and Educational Leadership, University of the Pacific, 2020

Co-lead Karen Sarafian has worked with K-12 students for over 25 years and currently teaches in the Learning, Leadership and Change programs at Pacific’s Benerd College. She has a passion for working with learners to innovate, design and imagine possibilities for change in our schools, communities and the world.

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Karen Sarafian