Destroy the Box Challenge: Classroom Challenges for Students to Empower and Engage

Purpose & objective

To develop a foundation for the ISTE standards to become reality in all students, both teachers and their students must have the capacity to "see the difference." By introducing a hands on approach to creative processes and design thinking, the facilitators will provide an action oriented way to engage, empower, and collaborate between student teams as teacher teams. The constructor lab will take participants through a series of twelve destroy the box challenges.
Why? The thing we have found about teaching in relation to a box is that oftentimes we find ourselves longing to be back inside of it. It’s not that we don’t enjoy the lack of restrictions and as we step outside the box’s confinement, but like a siren’s call, it beckons us back. The inside of the box is easy, comfortable, familiar, and safe. Because of the box’s appeal, thinking outside of it oftentimes is an isolated event that happens on Friday afternoon once the weekly assessments are finished. It may occur on a special school-wide celebration day or as a holiday approaches. Sometimes it happens when an evaluator is watching or a district administrator plans a visit. Once these events pass, the box’s call grows louder and louder and woos us back to its ease, comfort, familiar, safe space. If we want to really take our teaching to the next level, and consistently “wow” the students with unique, hands-on, engaging learning experiences we can no longer merely think outside the box. If we want to consistently develop students’ creativity, the box cannot keep calling us back. If we want students who think independently and work collaboratively to make the future better, the box must cease to exist. We must destroy the box. Traditional instruction and learning often starts with a didactic questioning where only a few students even choose to share their responses. A teacher who wants to destroy the box has Play-doh on hand and asks every to sculpt their answer rather than hear from only a few. Tanner Christensen’s work focuses on creativity challenges that helped educators move their instructional and learning experience design outside of our traditional box; his work has also created a theoretical foundation for our work in helping everyone "destroy the box." But just like students, teachers too need opportunities to practice the art of "destroying the box." This lab will walk participants through twelve destroy the box challenges that Jed has used throughout the country to ignite and inspire educators to think about teaching and learning differently. These challenges range from taking an every day object to rethink and reframe use and design, all the way to recycling materials in repurposed ways. At the end of the season everyone will have a solid set of "destroy the box" challenges they can use with students or educators to get them moving, thinking, and talking.

Outline

1. Creating a foundation for learning with the ISTE Standards: Can we destroy the box? - 10 minutes
2. What does it mean to destroy the box? (interactive brain storm - 5 minutes)
3. What holds us back from destroying the box? (interactive brain story - 5 minutes)
4. Destroy the box challenges - 12 challenges, 5 minutes each
5. Debrief and onward to destroy resources to take home (5 minutes)

Supporting research

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