I have a confession to make. I've become obsessed with Design Thinking. It's gotten to the point where I "Design Thinking" everything. How do I Design Thinking my lunch? How do I Design Thinking my classroom phone policy? How do I Design Thinking teaching?

Teaching? Yep. Let's do that.

What I love about Design Thinking is that it's flexible. There are teaching approaches out there that tell us what to do, but it makes more sense for every teacher to teach differently every year, because we each get different students.

Think about it. We don't treat all our friends and family the same. Our interactions with them are largely based on our experience of who they are and what makes them tick. Teaching is the same way. One size fits all approaches do not work.

The challenge is that, in the grand scheme of things, we only know our students for a short time. However, personalization of education is not a fad; it's a thing. So. let's use the Design Thinking Cycle (Empathy, Definition, Ideation, Prototyping, Testing) to improve Teaching, shall we?

It's important to note that when designing and implementing the new lesson etc., you can go back and forth and jump around any and all of the 5 design thinking spaces as needed. And, the product is never truly finished. It can always be improved. Kind of like teaching.

Here are two books I found and you might find useful to learn more about design thinking:

Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown is a good resource to learn more about the design thinking and how to implement it.

Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani is meant to help teachers implement design thinking in their classrooms.

You have the power to change the world. Use it often.