Black Teacher Project: Design Lab 2025
Maya McDougall and I had the pleasure of working together on a project centered on belonging and healing. Through the BTP Design Lab (a six week Zoom course) we explored the question "What can we design to support our students to move from coping to thriving?"
This training built our leadership identity and toolkit to reimagine classrooms and schools as liberated learning environments. We used a Liberatory Design framework to identify an equity challenge in our fourth grade Makery classroom. We used the design process to test a few prototypes on engaging our students with practices and projects related to healing.
We were excited to incorporate affirmations into our pinball machine projects. Students record affirmations on Scratch, and players get to hear their words of encouragement and belonging while playing pinball.
This was an exciting learning opportunity that informed my practice all around engaging with students and hearing their voices in our work.
I second everything that Jimmy described above! I learned so much from the Black Teacher Project and from working with Jimmy. The 6-week zoom course exposed me to methods of Healing Centered Engagement and techniques for incorporating student voices into classroom projects and endeavors. I also got to connect with other Black teachers from all over the country. Especially as a new teacher, I gained a lot from this experience, and I would highly recommend this course or another Black Teacher Project PD.