Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies, Detroit

Sir Ken Robinson has said “Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” (link to TED talk) We believe this as well, and believe that all our students not only can be creative, but deserve to be provided opportunitites to develop and deepen their creative confidence. We teach them to use the design process to confront challenges they face – to learn about issues, to understand and have empathy for how they impact different people, and to work collaboratively to develop and test new ideas for solving these problems. As with other Henry Ford Academies, all of our teachers are trained in Design Thinking, and facilitate quarterly grade level design challenges with their students. We also work with teachers to infuse Design Thinking into their content teaching as well. To support this focus on Design Thinking, we’ve developed a series of curricular materials and professional development: Foundations of Innovation is a semester-long course modeled after the d.school’s “Bootcamp” introduction to Design Thinking; Assessment rubrics help teachers to assess and provide feedback to students on their work in design challenges; Ongoing professional development provides teachers with opportunities to deepen their understanding and facilitation skills, and to collaboratively plan, carry out and reflect on design challenges with students.