I am someone who loves to use data to understand the problems that we are truly facing. If we say something is a problem, we should have data to support it. Schools have an abundance of data that they can use beyond just grades and attendance, which can often provide a wide view of the larger problems that we need to tackle as a system.

Where were often miss the chance to identify issues and areas of growth is when we overlook the student specific experience. Recently I was learning more about design practices and have learned a good amount around Agile practices previously. Both of these areas, because they are closely connected, focus on user stories and experiences. The different ways that people interact with a solution or a process can help you better design that solution or process to overcome any issues or barrier to success that might be overlooked. We need to walk in their shoes and see the situation as they see it in order to understand where our design or plan may not be meeting their specific needs. Because if they are having issues, others could be having these same issues.

For students, their daily experience in schools can provide a wealth of information that can help us better understand where our system could be improved. We need to see the school day as they see, experience the classroom as they experience it, and truly see where our instructional design is meeting their needs and where we are missing the mark. While we can ask students survey questions to better understand what they experience, I believe that is often not enough. We need to see and experience it ourselves in order to get the data that we need to make the changes that need to be made.

I created a Figjam that could be used to help collect this data. Simply by identifying a group of students, and you could just focus on 3-5 students, we could follow them throughout their day and experience the school day as they experience it. And we should be identifying at least one student that faces obstacles that other students may not, such as a hearing impairment, a form of dyslexia, their preferred language is not the dominant language of the classroom, …. But we should be picking students with a wide set of characteristics, not just the students who we assume will struggle because our schools can better help all students.

Teachers, Instructional Coaches, Admin can all be involved. Follow that student throughout the day, be in all their classes and see everything from their perspective, not our own. Do the work they are asked to do, take the assessments they have to take, take the homework they are assigned and use all of this to help better understand what they experience. View what engages them the most as a learner and where they face impediments to success. Do not view the student as the issue but view the system as where we can implement change to better support the student to find success. Use their words too as data, what are they asking, what are they saying, what do they enjoy, and what do they want improved.

We need to ensure that we view our school systems from all perspectives and while looking at larger scale data such as grades and attendance rates can help identify some problems, we miss a lot when we do not view the school from the most important perspective of the student. The students are the most important part of a school and we need to ensure that this data, their experiences, is a central piece of any plan to improve schools for all students.