I believe all students should have access to quality education through rigorous lessons that allow students to own their learning. I can only do this by making connections with my students through my teaching as well as through their learning. I am creating leaders for tomorrow.

 

A lot of planning must take place when incorporating a new teaching method across an entire department. The burden of the implementation typically falls on the person who initiated the idea. However, with careful, meticulous planning, the feat can take place. Here is my lofty goal - I want to implement project-based learning with a design thinking approach into the CTE department at my school.

 

When I first began planning for this project implementation, I wasn’t certain how I would go about executing my plan. As with many of my creative ideas, I start off with an idea and it will ultimately fall apart because I don’t quite understand how to carry out the plan logistically. This has been extremely frustrating since most of my ideas get implemented by someone else who did not quite have the same vision and passion as I.

 

While reading Joseph Grenny’s book, Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, I was introduced to concepts like vital behaviors and the six sources of influences. Honestly, I was overwhelmed when I first began reading about the theories.  Dr. D. Harapnuik provides this simple explanation about vital behaviors., “Vital behaviors are repeatable high-leverage actions performed crucial moments that will lead to the results you want” (Harapnuik, D., 2016). Six Sources of Influence are defined as “The six major categories of influences that drive people to do the things they do are Personal Motivation, Personal Ability, Social Motivation, Social Ability, Structural Motivation, and Structural Ability” (VitalSmarts, 2021). When marrying the two together, a person can dramatically increase their success.

 

“Motivation and ability are the foundation of the six-source model” (Grenny et al., 2013). When you think about it, these two words pretty much sum up how we respond to most change. In order for us to truly fulfill those New Year’s resolutions, we must have both the motivation and ability to get the desired results we want to achieve. However, oftentimes, we don’t build from that foundation. We tend to embrace the motivation and ability, yet never connect it to other aspects of our lives. With my change initiative, to bring PBL with Design Thinking into my classroom and ultimately into the CTE department, I will need more than simple motivation and the ability to get others to come on board with me. This powerful model of change will help to achieve our goal. The key is to use all of these tools to have complete leverage on our goal.

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Please take a look at my change initiative below: