Educated by Design. Michael Cohen
I believe creativity is deeply rooted in kindness, goodness, strong moral character, and the desire to do good in the world.
Creativity is a social process.
So I ask you, how can we turn 20-percent time into 100-percent time?
Will you give your students the time and space to master a new skill?
Will you mentor them as they turn an idea to do good in the world into something actionable?
Will you give your students the confidence to share their gift and talent with the world because it brings value to others?
When failure is part of the journey and not a destination, it can bring about significant growth.
This is why I wrote this book. These students, the ones who have mastered the game of school but do not believe in themselves or have the confidence to take risks, will leave incredible ideas on the table for fear of failing, or even worse, of being a failure. This is why developing a creative mindset for a student is absolutely critical, and this is what our students need—to not just succeed in the world today but create a new reality for the world of tomorrow.
It might sound idealistic, but I see it as an opportunity to change what education looks like for our students. Beyond information and knowledge acquisition, beyond core literacy development, we can help our students develop creative confidence and the ability to experiment and accomplish incredible things in the world.
That’s the difference between being educated, a convergent learning experience, and being educated by design, a divergent thinking one.
How to Read This Book
My desire when writing this book was to write it in a way that required you to read it straight through to the end. Such a practice would go against most of the book’s content about how to design a meaningful, learner-centered experience.
I want you to live this book, not just read it. I use the derivative of the word creative 322 times in this book. That is because I want everyone who reads this book—and helps others because of it—to be able to look in the mirror and scream, “I AM CREATIVE!”
This book, without question, builds on itself, but each chapter also stands on its own, allowing readers to bolster specific skills or recap key concepts. The phases of each section focus on mindset, skillset, and implementation. In hopes of connecting implementation to mindset and skillset, I have given some general ideas about how each area can be successfully applied. Later in the book, you will find specific projects fully scoped out to see how each one of us can take our need mindset and skillset and apply those to our unique classroom situations and environment.
Note: The word God in Judaism is sacred, regardless of the language it is translated in. Throughout the text, you will see God spelled out as G-d.
Creativity is a Social Process.
Creativity Is Deeply Personal
Creativity is about problem solving and it is also about personal branding. In today’s world, it isn’t enough for you to just invent something; you have to have a brand that reflects the value that you are trying to bring to the world. For me, I am not just an educator, designer, and struggling creative thinker (If you aren’t struggling, you aren’t thinking creatively.), but I am also a Chassidic Jew and a Rabbi at that. The Tech Rabbi brand is about merging together two very different fields to provide goodness and kindness in the world. At the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in 2018, I had a Muslim woman approach me and ask me how I balanced technology and religious life. I shared with her the following excerpt from a book called Hayom Yom (Day By Day) an anthology of daily aphorisms. The excerpt reads as follows:
“The job of G-d is to turn the spiritual into physical, and it is the job of every person to turn the physical into something spiritual.”
This means that the purpose of all the tools in the world, including all technology, is to provide positive, good, and constructive value to us and those around us. As a Rabbi, I am committed to guiding those around me in succeeding in this mission. As an educator, I am committed to supporting students and teachers around me to independently succeed in this mission. The mission, simply put, is to leverage the skills and creative thinking of today to make the world a better place than it was yesterday.
I launched the Educated by Design project in 2017 with the realization of how much my experience as a designer influenced my teaching practice. That doesn’t mean educators need to quit their jobs and become designers and creative directors, but I believe my experiences can be a valuable lens to look through as we imagine ways to better engage and support students. I will say that I believe all teacher programs should require two to three exploratory courses required to help pre-service teachers develop self-awareness and tap into their passion. These two ingredients are really the flour and sugar of the Educated by Design recipe. Regardless, everyone is able to nurture and master these two areas to bolster their creative process and abilities.
Creativity is so much more than the talents you possess. It’s the way you think and see the world around you. Designers tackle problems head-on. Their livelihood relies on helping solve problems that others are not able to. Sound familiar? It should because outside of creative professionals, educators are one of the few professionals tasked with converting abstract potential into something tangible and measurable. Design has a similar launch point. You have a client who has an idea, maybe even a vision, and you are the one charged with concretizing that vision into something clear, concise, and continuous. For me as a designer, educator, and someone who strives to have a growth mindset, I see so many powerful correlations between the process of design, teaching, and learning.
I once had a client hire me to create a corporate identity for their company. This meant not just designing one of the products for them like a business card, letterhead, or signage, but all of the components had to connect together to communicate a message that represented the best in quality, success, and good character of the company. This process was long and arduous with many setbacks and failures, which I, of course, as the designer had to shoulder. The client simply didn’t get that I WAS THE EXPERT and that my advice was what was needed to succeed. My ears were closed, and as long as my guidance wasn’t final, the project was stalled, and I wasn’t budging. It was at that moment that I realized something. It was a powerful message that mixed in customer service, quality assurance, and a solid dose of humility. But how could I let the customer be right? How could I sacrifice what I knew to be good design principles to make the customer happy and get their way? What would that make me? A fraud? A novice? A second-rate designer? This micro view missed out on some macro opportunity. You see, good design is about people. Dieter Rams once said that “you cannot understand good design if you don’t understand people,” because each one relies on the other to establish value and meaning. In the end, I became committed to putting the client and their needs first. This would ensure that I would design the best products for them and not for myself.
Does this story sound familiar? While you might not consider yourself a designer, you in fact are, and I plan to show you through the following story.
I once had a student that I taught in an advanced writing course. My job was to teach them foundational literacies, such as reading, writing, and verbal communication, as well as how all of those components connect to communicate a message that represented the best in quality, success, and good character of the student. This process was long and arduous with many setbacks and failures, which I, of course, as the teacher had to shoulder. The student simply didn’t get that I WAS THE EXPERT, and that my advice was what was needed to succeed. My ears were closed, and as long as my guidance wasn’t final, the learning was stalled, and I wasn’t budging. It was at that moment that I realized something. It was a powerful message that mixed in customer service, quality assurance,