Designing the Future of School: Ideas and Examples from the Education Reinvention Network
Is today’s education system optimally designed for today’s student?
This is the question driving the Reinvention Lab at Teach For America.
Through observation, research, site visits, and public engagements, the Reinvention Lab seeks to “fuel the future of learning.” Their goal is to advance evidence-based educational methods designed to prepare 21st-century students for the challenges, opportunities, economies, and jobs of the future.
While much attention is rightfully being given to recent national test scores and ongoing teacher shortages, the Reinvention Lab’s Founder, Michelle Culver (Los Angeles ’99), hopes that we don’t miss this moment to think about the deeper issues within our system.
“The majority of students today,” writes the Reinvention Lab, “are going to schools that were designed for yesterday. That system—built for the assembly-line era—prioritizes rote memorization, affirms a narrow set of identities, and assumes a one-size-fits-all solution.”
“How do we as educators meet the needs of young people today, while simultaneously designing an entirely new system?”
Achieving such a goal calls for some completely new approaches to education, explains Culver in this video. Such approaches can include: moving away from Eurocentric to culturally responsive pedagogy; away from pursuing test scores to nurturing engaged citizenship; away from acquisition of information to application of knowledge.
"The question," Culver says, "is how do we as educators meet the needs of young people today, while simultaneously designing an entirely new system?"
To answer this question, Culver looks to an unexpected example, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, to see what we might learn from engineers who were also faced with the task of redesigning a critical system, which experienced a massive disruption of service due to the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
Watch as Culver presents examples of innovative approaches to education from within the Teach For America network. Her conclusion: the blueprint to reinventing education is already being drafted in classrooms, schools, and communities across the country.
Featuring:
- Noah Fortson (San Antonio '20) media arts educator at Brackenridge High School
- Ebony Payne Brown (Metro Atlanta '06), founder and Executive Director of Peace Academy Charter
- Erin Whalen (Miami-Dade '12), Executive Director of Da Vinci Rise High School