Increasing the Impact of Fund for Teachers
Fund for Teachers Fellows completing a "future-casting" activity during an orientation session
Image credit: Louie Montoya 2016
Client: Fund for teachers
role: Lead Experience Designer
Design Challenge
To design and launch fellowship orientation and documentation experiences that foster belonging and excitement for 100+ newly selected recipients of a teaching fellowship, and to create ways to extend the impacts Fellows can have beyond their individual endeavors
Overview
My team at the Business Innovation Factory partnered with Fund for Teachers, a national not-for-profit teaching fellowship organization, to broaden the impacts of the professional development fellowships they grant to K-12 teachers. I designed and facilitated a cohort-based orientation experience for 118 new Fellows in Connecticut, and produced visually appealing documentation tools and materials for Fellows to capture, process, and share their fellowship experiences. The goal of the orientation and documentation tools was to deepen the impacts of the awarded fellowships – whether the Fellows were studying marine biology in Bora Bora, learning new instructional techniques at a conference in Las Vegas, or traveling to the hometowns of students who had immigrated from Haiti to meet their families and learn about their cultures.
Process
Drawing on previous participatory design activities my team had conducted with past Fellows, I endeavored to create experiences that would respond to Fellows’ needs and enable them to better meet their goals, while also aligning with the internal strategies of Fund for Teachers. Knowing that past Fellows craved collaboration with other Fellows and opportunities to catalyze greater impacts from their experiences, I created an orientation session and tools for Fellows to use in their travels. Both the session and the tools were intended to spark connections between Fellows, get Fellows thinking about how they might work together, and enable Fellows to easily share their learning and growth in ways that could affect others beyond their immediate students and colleagues.
Outcomes
The one-hour orientation session and fellowship toolkit I created and facilitated prepared Fellows for future impacts and collaboration, positioning them to meet new people, and to process and share their fellowship experiences. During the orientation, Fellows rapidly connected with each other via a question-based “speed dating” activity, “future-casted” around their individual visions of success and ways their cohort could have larger collective impacts, and learned how to effectively use the toolkit we presented to them. The toolkits I designed, inspired by thinking about Fellows’ experiences as “heroes’ journeys” or epic poems, included three interlocking elements, and will enable Fellows to reflect on their learning, grow as teachers, translate their experiences into meaningful impacts for their students, colleagues, and a broader audience, and pursue goals and connections beyond their individual projects:
An “Odyssey Map” webpage for Fellows to capture and share overarching narratives of growth and transformation, and to track and publicize how their thinking and practice have changed
A 40-page “Food for Thought” booklet with generative prompts for Fellows to respond to before, during, and after their fellowships, and to stimulate their thinking about the people they encounter, the places they go, and how their practice changes as a result of their experiences. The booklet is intended to complement additional written and photo journaling Fellows might do, and enable them to easily complete their Odyssey Map
A set of stickers Fellows can use to tag their notes, photos, and mementos, and keep track of new ideas they want to bring back to their classrooms and teaching
Additional photos of Created assets:
