Reboot Your Teaching Practice with Design Thinking: 5 Tips to Get Started

Here’s a sign of a powerful professional development experience: your laptop and cell phone never leave your bag.

Researchers have said for decades that a one-day workshop won’t “grow dendrites” for teachers. Professional learning, they argue, must be ongoing and sustained. And they’re right. But when a single day creates disequilibrium—when it shifts how you see teaching and learning—that spark can ignite immediate change. Sometimes a surge of inspiration disrupts your practice in all the right ways.

That was my experience at DesignCamp Monterey.

If you’re unfamiliar with #DesignCamp, it’s rooted in the philosophy of Design Thinking—a human-centered approach where learners tackle problems by reimagining them through empathy, creativity, and iteration. Through hands-on tasks with a low floor and high ceiling, all learners can engage while exploring multiple solutions. Design Thinking invites students to think like engineers. Learning becomes an ongoing, iterative process of sketching, prototyping, testing, revising, and trying again.

And yes—it shifts the role of the teacher.

In this model, the teacher moves from director of information to coach and facilitator. Students construct their own learning. They have a voice. They have a choice. The design process is authentic because it mirrors what children naturally do: explore, experiment, take risks, and remain flexible in their thinking. (Sound like preschool? Exactly.)

Ironically, it’s often adults who struggle most with flexibility. Teachers can become static in their approach, hesitant to take risks, or rigid in their thinking. So the real question isn’t whether your students will engage in Design Thinking. The question is: will you step outside your comfort zone?

The “sage on the stage” becomes the coach on the sideline. You still bring the expertise. You still design the plays. But your students make the moves.

So what might this look like in your classroom?

Let’s say you’re teaching Common Core Math 5.MD.C.3: Recognize volume as an attribute of solid figures and understand concepts of volume measurement.

Instead of assigning practice problems, you present a challenge:

"Design a model that can transport freshwater over long distances with no human contact. Create the model to scale. Test it. Refine it. Show how it works. Record data as you iterate and improve your design."

Now students are applying mathematics, engineering principles, data analysis, and communication skills—all within one authentic task.

Design Thinking is inherently interdisciplinary and connects seamlessly to the Four C’s: Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking.

At #DesignCamp, we experienced this firsthand. We designed winter Olympic Mardi Gras suits based on user needs, built rockets, and created water transportation systems. The tasks were playful, rigorous, and deeply engaging.

Children as young as Pre-K can engage in creative problem-solving. In fact, this is what children naturally do from birth—test their environment, experiment, revise, and try again.

Here are my Top 5 Tips for Implementing Design Thinking:

1. Begin with empathy. When tasks are rooted in empathy, classroom culture shifts. Students are recognized as individuals with identities, beliefs, and experiences that matter. Building on students’ funds of knowledge makes Design Thinking truly learner-centered. When a task has meaning, students go deeper—and passion follows.

2. Don’t Go It Alone. If you’re new to Design Thinking, collaborate. Reflect with colleagues. Invite teachers to observe your students in action. Build interdisciplinary connections across subjects. This is especially powerful at the secondary level, where integration across disciplines amplifies impact.

3. Start with a Plan—Connect the Standards. Design Thinking must be intentional. Fun alone is not enough. Identify your learning goals. Determine the standards. Plan materials and scaffolds. Without structure, it risks becoming playtime instead of purposeful learning. Strong planning ensures rigor and relevance.

4. Stay Connected and Keep Learning. Social media can connect you to educators doing incredible work in Design Thinking. Follow school leaders and teachers who are modeling this approach and share your own journey. Professional learning should continue long after the workshop ends.

5. Start Small and Stay Humble. Design Thinking is about process, not perfection. Projects will fail. That’s part of the learning. Be gentle with yourself. When things don’t go as planned, reflect and iterate—just like your students. Failure is feedback. Growth lives there.

If you have a growth mindset and a willingness to step outside the box, implementing Design Thinking may be your next powerful move.

Share what works. Share your challenges. Share where you need to grow. Humility fuels empathy—and if we can’t model growth, how can we teach it?

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