Free Writers' Mindsets with Design Thinking

When I was a kid there was no bigger buzzkill to my writing joy...and ego than the red pen of one Mrs. Pamela Runner at Cottonwood Elementary School in Casa Grande, Arizona. This was before the days of "writers workshop" and having kids make multiple revisions. Nope, wrong was just wrong and I took her grading pretty hard. Despite all of that I still get enjoyment from putting words together, but it would take me 35 years to really find what works for me. 

 In the early 2000s, I wrote a novel. It was a long process and nobody wanted to publish it, but I still had fun accomplishing a goal I had set somewhere in junior high or high school. You can even read Potter's Wheel for free at Amazon. Starting in 2011, I would go on to write another book, this time a biography of NFL offensive tackle Jared Veldheer. Stay in the Game was a joint venture with Jared's parents. They wanted to share their son's journey from brainy and awkward middle schooler to a 3rd round draft pick of the Oakland Raiders. They also wanted to give other parents of potential draft picks a bit of a roadmap. As an elementary teacher, I wanted it accessible to kids as well as general sports fans. Combining all of these "wants" was no easy task. 

Right about the time we were trying to get Stay in the Game going, I began learning more and more about design thinking and looking at ways to teach it in the classroom. Instead of getting really caught up in the minutia of pure design thinking, I simplified it for my students. 

• Ask: What are we trying to solve or what are we trying to create? Who are we creating this solution or thing for? What already exists that is similar? 
• Imagine: What is possible? What's our dream result?
• Plan: What's it going to take to accomplish the goal? Create a road map and a to-do list.
• Create: Jump in and get putting together your best effort. Don't be afraid to guess at ways to do things. 
• Test: How does that first attempt's "prototype" perform? Look for little things to improve.
• Fix: Re-engineer the failure-points or make changes to the solution or project that you feel makes it better. 
• Repeat: Fix and test. Test and fix until each little imperfection is polished away. 

I can't tell you when it all "clicked" for me, but when I realized that if I approached this book project through a design thinking mindset, even the simplified version from the classroom, that I could write with a lot more clarity and a lot less self-imposed anxiousness over picking the write words on the first draft. Even though the book took way too long to complete, mainly because Jared kept achieving new things in his career, it really came together. Like EnVogue taught us back in the day, "Free your mind and the rest will follow".

This new approach to writing got me thinking about how we teach writing. Admittedly as a "specials teacher" I am pretty ill-informed when it comes to the specifics of how writing is being instructed in the classrooms around me. I hear things like "Lucy Calkins", "Teachers College", and "units of study" but I am not quite sure what any of those means. What I do know is that my colleagues teach their tails off and that our kids continue to improve, writing at impressive levels. I also know that regardless of the individual techniques, just about any writing instruction can benefit from a design thinking mindset. It just relieves so much pressure and it decreases the sensitivity to feedback. Kids will relate it to other fun activities that involve design thinking. 

If you have never done any "D-thinking" with your students, it's easy. Seriously, just run a piece of fishline across your classroom and declare it a zip line and give them some parameters of what materials they can use to create a vehicle for it. We use Technic Legos but you can get inventive with any loose parts in your classroom. On a piece of paper have students write out their thoughts for the ask and imagine steps. Have them sketch a plan and then turn them loose to create. On the back of the paper have them make a log of all of the improvements. Pretty soon you will see a constant cycle of fix and test, fix and test. All you have to do next is show them that revising their writing is no different than revising whatever creation they sent down the zip line. 

I just wish Mrs. Runner had known about design thinking back in 1981...or at least had strung a zip line across her classroom.