We are learning every day about the power of students, families, and communities to lead change. Learn with us through the resources on this page.

Publications

Empathy Interviews
Empathy Interviews

This article from The Learning Professional (vol. 41, no. 5) provides an overview of the what, why, and how of conducting empathy interviews.

Case Studies: 6 Principles for Using Student-Powered Improvement in Your School
Case Studies: 6 Principles for Using Student-Powered Improvement in Your School

This article from the74million shares examples of student-powered improvement, an approach where adults in schools redesign school systems with, rather than for, students.

What If School Looked Like This?
What If School Looked Like This?

This publication highlights the voices of students and teachers who participated in a Design Camp to tackle the question: How might teachers and students build stronger relationships and more engagement in virtual classrooms?

Beyond High School
Beyond High School

This publication explores the experience and resulting prototypes from a Design Camp with students and counselors who explored the question: How might we personalize postsecondary advising in the current context of COVID?

Student + Teacher Design Collaborative On Race & Racism
Student + Teacher Design Collaborative On Race & Racism

This publication highlights the voices of middle and high school students and teachers who participated in a three-month collaborative to explore experiences of race and racism and build more affirming classrooms together.

Upcoming Events

Please check back for upcoming events or reach out to connect or schedule an event for your team.

Past Events

Empathy Interviews: How to prepare for, conduct, analyze and act

Empathy Interviews: How to prepare for, conduct, analyze and act

Empathy interviews are a human-centered method to hear stories and experiences from the people most impacted by systems in order to better solve problems. It is critical that team members embody the values and mindsets that are foundational to the practice as well as understand the logistics to carry them out.

Reach out to connect or to schedule.

Student-Powered Improvement: Building Trust

Student-Powered Improvement: Building Trust

This webinar, access slides here, sought to deepen participants understanding of what it really means to build trust between and among youth and adults.

Participants explored:

  • Three ideas to help build trust: care, truth, and hope
  • Case studies of how teams of youth and adults built trust while working together on system change
  • Specific practices and protocols to create these spaces

Learn more about CDP’s in-person and virtual design sprints for groups of 6-100 people here.

Reach out to connect or to schedule.

Design Sprints

Design Sprints

Have a problem to solve? Want to engage your team in working together to find a solution? Consider a Design Sprint! Grounded in the stories and experiences of those closest to the problem, Design Sprints offer the opportunity to truly understand a problem and co-create solutions.

Here are just a few ways our team can help yours:

  • Curate a well-facilitated, collaborative time to explore, design, build, and test solutions to real problems
  • Improve systems in your organization
  • Solve problems with – rather than for – the community
  • Increase equity of voice, attend to power dynamics, and think outside the box

Reach out to connect or to schedule.

Other Past Events

Deeper Learning Conference, Student Voices 2024
Carnegie Summit, Empathy Interviews 2024
Introduction to Human-centered Continuous Improvement
Coaching PDSAs
Network Health

Interested in a customized workshop for your team or context? We’d love to connect. Reach out for more information or to schedule.

Tools

Self-Guided Courses
Self-Guided Courses

We have several online learning resources available on our site, Student-Powered Improvement by Community Design Partners.

Community Engagement Strategies
Community Engagement Strategies

We designed this toolkit to illustrate three ways to expand how to engage communities in designing change.

Be Human-Centered: A Guide
Be Human-Centered: A Guide

This improvement guide includes strategies and protocols to be human-centered such as building an inclusive table and collecting empathy data.

Be Problem Specific: A Guide
Be Problem Specific: A Guide

This improvement guide includes strategies and protocols to see the system and be problem-specific including starting with strengths, identifying a problem, conducting a root cause analysis, and mapping systems.

Participating in this training series allowed me to gain skills to effectively listen to students, parents, caregivers, and community member voices and make systemic changes to how we serve students and families.

Director of District Equity