Photo above: Students in the “TnT” class at Norfolk Collegiate School pose in the prototype escape room they designed and constructed.
Two years ago, I created a new class in the upper school at Norfolk Collegiate, an independent preK–12 school in Virginia. I named the course “Design Thinking: Technology and Tools” or “TnT” for short—appropriate for a class that has done such a fantastic job of exploding my previously held beliefs around student motivation. Having worked in arts and creative education for the past 20 years, I came to this course with a fair amount of experience with subjects that are often tied to the concept of “innovation”—namely, design thinking, computer science, and makerspaces. I planned for this course to be the ultimate embodiment of student agency, and as I witnessed students take ownership of their learning, their creativity and agency became a powerful source of joy—not just for them but for me as an educator. My experience creating this class and watching students take ownership of it highlights the transformative power of student agency in fostering a joyful learning environment. By prioritizing student choice and creativity, we, as classroom educators, can create learning environments where students feel empowered and motivated to engage deeply with their education.
As the director of arts and innovation at my school, I have the privilege of overseeing and supporting many students’ creative endeavors. I also work directly with students, teaching design thinking (in courses like TnT), engineering, theatrical production, and computer science.
We have numerous tools to help students discover the joy of using their creativity and imagination, including physical tools found in a woodworking or metalworking shop and digital tools such as 3D design software, digital illustration software, virtual and augmented reality, coding platforms, and, most recently, a lot of AI.
All my classes include student-driven creative projects, which usually have a prompt like “make something useful for a friend” or “build something that shows what you know about history.” I tell students at the beginning of the project that they already have a 100 percent on the assignment. Their goal isn’t to get the grade or make something good enough for me as the teacher; it’s to make themselves proud and create something that is good enough for them as students. My goal is for students to develop their own internal rubric and hold themselves accountable. This foundational approach emphasizes the importance of student agency, fostering an environment where learners take ownership of their education journey. By empowering students to engage creatively and collaboratively, we can nurture a dynamic learning atmosphere. The following methodology, particularly in the context of design thinking, illustrates how this philosophy is put into practice.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brendan Hoyle
TnT students shape recycled acrylic vacuum tubing for their Magnificent Magnetic Maze project, an interactive installation designed to draw students into the school’s library and spark their interest in design thinking.
Enter Design Thinking Methodology
Initially, my theatrical production classes included occasional student-driven “maker” projects, inspired by our new MakerLabs. As these projects evolved over time, I began emphasizing design thinking methodology, a hugely popular area in education right now. Design thinking naturally fosters student agency by encouraging learners to take ownership of the problem-solving process. By necessitating creative freedom in a real and authentic way, design thinking naturally sparks student joy in the act of discovery and creation. Design thinking is a five-step process used in human-centered design:
- Empathize: Deeply understand the person or community you are designing for.
- Define: Name the problem that your design is solving.
- Ideate: Throw all the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
- Prototype: Take your ideas and make something that will help solve the problem.
- Test: Use the prototype. Did it work? If not, edit your prototype or make a new one.
Typically, there is a fair amount of iteration between the prototyping and testing phases. These two steps loop as the prototype is continuously improved and refined. Traditional schooling often conditions students to focus on right or wrong answers, but iteration teaches them that learning is about progress and refinement, not perfection. Seeing my students joyfully engage in these design thinking projects motivated me to look for new ways to prioritize student agency even further.
I gave students their first assignment: Create the course. Make the syllabus, the student outcomes, the grading categories, the rules.
A New Course and a Leap of Faith
These foundational principles and methodologies bring us to the fall of 2022 and our newest class, “Design Thinking: TnT.” From day one, I prioritized students’ agency and decision-making over a teacher-driven agenda. On the first day, there was no syllabus. No student outcomes, grading categories, or class rules. Nothing that resembled a traditional map or plan. For the first week, we sat around big, blue worktables in the upper school MakerLab and just talked.
We started by talking about what students liked and didn’t like at school. When they uncovered a like or dislike, we dug deep, researching why that thing was that way. Our most stimulating conversations had to do with school policies on plagiarism and AI, cell phones, and dress code. These conversations took lots of detours, but I had no hidden agenda: We were an orchestra tuning up, and the students couldn’t harmonize until everyone was tuned to the same pitch.
After this week of conversation, I gave students their first assignment: Create the course. Make the syllabus, the student outcomes, the grading categories, the rules. They had the agency to decide what they wanted to learn and the responsibility to decide how they wanted to hold themselves accountable.
As they started to work on defining the class, the students could not stop checking in with me. For every sentence they wrote or rule they created, they asked me if it was right, if it was good enough. I tossed the question back to them: Was it good enough for them? Flipping the script initially made them unhappy. They were used to receiving information, processing and memorizing it, and then being assessed to make sure they had retained that information.
It was now the students’ role to decide what was important, how they would learn, and how (or if) they would be assessed. The course they built was ambitious and hands-on. They wanted to dive deep into the design thinking process, balancing functionality and creativity as they iterated through prototypes. The focus of the student outcomes was on gaining practical skills—identifying real-world problems, designing with software, using power tools—and learning to work as a team. They also set goals to teach others what they learned, ensuring everyone shared in the collective knowledge of the class. Their course rules? Simple, but serious: Communicate, participate, respect each other (and the machines!), and always practice safety. What they created wasn’t just a class—it was a community built around learning and collaboration.
After they completed the course outline, we talked about what was next. The year was wide open to them. What did they want to create?
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brendan Hoyle
A student draws detailed plans on a whiteboard, mapping out the dimensions of a specialty bracket to be 3D-printed for the Magnificent Magnetic Maze.
The Ups and Downs of Creative Collaboration
I could tell you that the class was an immediate success. I could say the students worked hard all year—that they were continually creative, motivated, and never used shortcuts. But that would be a total lie. The course was not easy. Not for me or the students.
There were days when all the students worked hard, and we had big, exciting victories. But there were also times when I had 15 sullen teenagers sitting around a worktable looking down at their phones. Creative work is hard work. When you give students the agency to set their own deadlines and to maintain their own motivation, there will be days when deadlines are missed and the motivation level is zero.
There were plenty of valleys for all the mountains we climbed—but climb them we did. On a quiet day in November, three students took on the challenge of building a better chair. They suggested the project as a goof after watching a fellow student trying to get comfortable in one of the seats in the school’s lobby. For two days, they went around the school and interviewed everyone about their chair preferences. They spoke with students, teachers, custodians, parents, volunteers, and anyone else they happened to run into. They took detailed notes. They sat in every chair they could find in every position they could think of and took innumerable measurements. When they had all the data they needed, they made some initial prototypes. These disastrous early chair monstrosities were not sit-friendly, and many fell apart just from the pressure of standing upright. But the students kept going. And their prototypes kept getting better.
My role throughout this iterative process involved providing essential tool training and resources, unlocking ideas through daily reflective conversations, and, most important, pushing students to always prioritize the “why” in their learning. Finally, they had a decent chair of their own design. They paid attention to every detail—the height, the seat angle, the seat width and depth. That’s when the real fun began. The students carried the chair to every corner of the school, asking people to try it out and give them feedback. Smiles beamed on their faces as they watched over 200 people sit on their chair. They made notes, they made changes, they made new prototypes, and they continued to test. The chair became more than a simple piece of furniture. It became a symbol for the class.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brendan Hoyle
The Magnificent Magnetic Maze goes on tour, spending several weeks at the Norfolk Collegiate Lower School where preK-5 students enjoy the finished product.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brendan Hoyle
Norfolk Collegiate students pose with a large sheet of acrylic, reclaimed as part of a recycling project and reused for a laser cutting project.
A Year of Student-Driven Creativity
It wasn’t until the final few weeks of class—as we gathered around the blue worktables once again to reflect on a year’s worth of heated conversations, frustrating failures, and seemingly random moments of brilliance—that the students and I could start to see the bigger picture. As we took stock of the year, we were gobsmacked by the number of projects that were completed. In addition to making the greatest chair in the world, the students had worked on coding projects, 3D printing, laser cutting, fashion design, puppet-making, public speaking, and lots more. They even built an escape room from scratch (an underwater lab used for seaweed experiments). The biggest project of the year was the Magnificent Magnetic Maze: Two 4-foot by 8-foot metal walls installed in our library and filled with movable and magnetic tunnels that were all designed and 3D-printed by the students. The maze was the result of a project aimed at increasing student traffic to the library and was a smashing success. In addition to driving greater numbers of students to the library, the maze has also more than doubled interest in the school’s design thinking program. Beyond its home in the library, the maze traveled to both the lower school and middle school, drawing so much enthusiasm that we ended up installing a second maze in the lower school.
The class that started with no syllabus and no rules had created outcomes that exceeded my wildest expectations. The students worked harder and had more fun than I thought possible. They had learned to build furniture, code, use power tools, sew, and design in 3D. After three years of pandemic restrictions and a lack of voice, they had created their own class. In the end, centering joy in the process wasn’t just an outcome—it was the lesson. They found joy in creating, learning, and shaping their own path. Each student threw their own North Star up into the sky and followed it.
Students found joy in creating, learning, and shaping their own path. Each student threw their own North Star up into the sky and followed it.
Taking Stock of Student Joy
I had thought that allowing students to follow their own joy would trick them into learning new things. But the experience of the course was so much more than that. The most important outcome was not learning to use a 3D printer, or how to sew, or how to utilize design thinking. The most important result was that the students discovered how to create their own joy in learning.
Every student will leave high school with different skills learned and knowledge gained. Some students will remember all the details of historical events. Others will be able to solve complex algebraic equations. There are students who will be able to write amazing essays deconstructing the books they read and students who deeply understand molecular biology.
These are important outcomes. As we use our voices as educators to impart critical skills, it’s crucial that we also prioritize teaching students to follow their own voice. By centering agency, we empower students to discover their passions and what truly drives them, ultimately enabling them to lead fulfilling professional lives—and move through the world with purpose and joy.
