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Design Suite Overview
Our Design Suite, which includes the Summer Design Program, Design Coaching to Implement, and Design Challenge, supports educator teams in creating innovative solutions to student-centered challenges. Teams can participate in any or all of our three design-thinking programs.
Summer Design Program
Summer Design Program is a one-day workshop, in partnership with Leadership+Design, that introduces school teams to design thinking and guides them through using empathy interviews and data to better serve a student group.
Design Coaching to Implement
Design Coaching to Implement partners with Leadership EDGE and EduSigner to provide a yearlong coaching opportunity for school teams to plan and implement initiatives. In 2024-25, school teams are developing new supports for newcomer students, building parent engagement initiatives, and creating targeted interventions for priority groups.
Design Challenge
The Design Challenge competition has school teams pitch solutions developed using design thinking. It was open to all CPS schools for the first time in 2024. In partnership with Leadership+Design, noncompeting educators, students, and CPS leaders judge these solutions, and winning schools receive up to $10,000 to implement their solutions.
Design Webinars
These webinars educate you and your team on a specific facet of the design thinking framework and how to use it to develop a solution to a pressing challenge your students are facing. They also prepare you to pitch your solution to the judges in the Design Challenge.
Webinars will cover:
- Empathy Interviewing and Data Analysis
- Ideation and Prototyping
- Testing and Iterating Solutions
Outcomes
- Summer Design Program: A prototype of an innovative solution to a specific challenge in your school that you can implement in the current school year.
- Design Coaching to Implement: Exposure to the full cycle of the design thinking process from identifying a design opportunity to full-scale piloting.
- Design Challenge: Funding for your innovative solution to a specific challenge in your school that you developed as part of SDP or with the assistance of our Design Webinars.
- Design Webinars: Deep knowledge of specific tenants of the design thinking framework and readiness to design and implement a solution to a pressing challenge in your school.
Who Should Apply?
Principals, assistant principals, or teacher leaders in Chicago’s public schools who want to address pressing issues affecting their students, and who want to develop their leadership capacity through innovation.
