Patchwork
Designing Connection between Future Teachers and Impoverished Students
Patchwork is an educational experience for Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) student teachers designed to initiate conversations about struggles connecting with their impoverished students. The experience utilizes LEGO® bricks to help narrate real and individual stories. Throughout the playful activity, the student teachers are provided specific tools and resources that help them identify where gaps might still exist. The goal of this design is to encourage steps toward shifting the education system and bringing to light concrete steps for student teachers to discover their support systems.
SCOPE
Design Research & Stratgey
Branding & Identity
Packaging & Print
CONTRIBUTORS
Photography: Hadyn Burrell
The goals:
Expose realities
Create a sense of honest collaboration
Highlight unexpected existing support
Each session begins with eight IWU student teachers seated at individual tables with a Patchwork box and LEGO® baseplate. Once they open the box, they will be greeted with a question that expresses a sense of encouragement and hope. The box will include an instructions manual and a variety of LEGO® bricks.
The Context: designed to invite student teachers to think about their impoverished students’ struggles, as well as their own, in relation to teaching
The Activity: designed to help student teachers self-discover what they need as an educator to better serve their impoverished students
Each LEGO® brick represents a group in the story.
Blue - Impoverished students
Red - IWU student teachers
Cream/Multicolored - Unexpected support systems
Once they begin the Activity portion of the experience, they will start building an unstable structure that expresses their chosen story that they’ve experienced with an impoverished student with only the blue LEGO® bricks. They are given a certain amount of time and afterwards they are prompted to reflect on their structure, walk around the room to observe others, and choose a different structure to build onto.
The second phase requires them to use only the red LEGO® bricks to support the current structure; however, they are given limited amounts/sizes. After time is up, they will repeat the same steps of reflection, observation, and selection.
And the final building phase asks them to use the rest of the LEGO® bricks to fill in the existing gaps. They will go through the same steps, however, return to their original structure.
The Next Steps: designed to provide a variety of resources and directions to help bridge connections and an awareness of what existing support is in their space
