I'm Okay - Design Thinking classes

One Thursday in December 2018, my wife and I were invited to visited another private bilingual school in Hangzhou. This invitation came through our connections through the educational company we founded in Seattle and had presence in China for over two years. This school was built in 2003, priding themselves with their “western-style” campus (“It looks just like Stanford!” one guide exclaimed) and teaching philosophy. The school had just built a Design Thinking lab and wanted to show it off to various educators and companies from around the city. We entered the lab, which was quite large, and sat down on the benches that were set up in one half of the long, rectangular room to observe the classroom-side of the room for two different demonstration classes. The classroom side looked so nice. The tables and chairs for the students had bright colors and wheels, so they could be arranged in different ways depending on the needs of the lesson or activity. The class also had a projector and the teacher was wearing a Bluetooth microphone (which by the way, is a rule in all the schools I had previously visited in Beijing, but this was the first time seeing it in Hangzhou). There were display boards of students’ work on the sides of the room and many big letters on the walls and the floors that spelled “Design Thinking.” There were also two big TVs on both sides of the room perfectly located for the people who were observing to better see the students’ work and the lesson projection. Everything looked too good to be true.

The first class was a math class for students in second grade. The students were learning about Chinese ID cards and how to decipher the different components. The teacher talked about how important is to go to the police station every time you move. My wife and I already knew about this because we expats have to do this the first time we visited China with a temporary visa, and again when we established residency. When we stayed in a hotel, we were unaware of this because the hotel staff automatically register you with the police. Ok, back to the lesson. The students also learned about the numbers that are located on the bottom of the ID. They mostly focused on how to determine the sex of the ID holder by deciphering the numbers. The students then had to work with their table groups to complete a set of questions given to them in a plastic bag, along with huge fake ID cards as the activity resource. All of the students knew exactly what they had to do. They got up quietly to go collect the materials without asking any questions to the teacher. They opened the bag and all began working on the tasks – again, without asking any questions to the teacher. The teacher in charge of the activity looked so natural; she was walking around the classroom talking to the students and observing their collaborative work. None of the students got up to go ask her questions. Nor did they start having side conversations during the lesson or once they finished the task at hand. They just sat there quietly and waited. And even more alarming was that not one student even looked back at the 30+ adults that were all seated and watching them. This class was well prepared, the materials were amazing, and the students participated perfectly throughout the entire session. I looked at my wife and I whispered to her, “how is this possible?” “This is too perfect,” she replied.

Now, maybe it is because my wife and I have been in education for over 12 years and been in hundreds of classrooms around the world, but it was more than obvious just how staged this lesson was. Maybe it is because we have been immersed in systems that use hands-on learning as an expectation, not as a novel, foreign concept. However, if the others in the audience didn’t suspect anything, then I would question their involvement in education (very doubtful they were ever teachers).

The first lesson ended and the students filed out. The second group of students then filed in and sat down quietly. Nobody explained to them about the group of adults there watching them, nor did they look our way. This was a group of 5th graders, completing a literature lesson about Chinese fables. In the middle of the second lesson, the students were asked to stand up and show others their machine design prototypes to help the characters in the fable solve their problems. Their class was in Chinese and many of the students didn’t feel confident enough go come over to two foreigners in the front of the audience, but there were a couple confident and excited kids that wanted to practice their English (who have probably traveled to English-speaking countries for summer camps and vacations). The dilemma in this situation was trying to give these students our full attention while they explained their thought process and asked for our feedback, all the while being surrounded by more than six people taking photographs of our whole interaction. Even though my wife and I were quite familiar with this phenomenon, (even more so for my blond-haired, tall, fair-skinned wife), it made the students uncomfortable as they struggled to communicate in a different language. 

At the end of the lesson, the students cleaned the tables and put all materials in containers and they left, in the same silent and automatic way they filed in. One of the women in charge of the lab asked the observers to come to the tables were the students were before. I thought, “Oh great, now we are going to participate in a hands-on project as if we are the students.” I couldn’t have been further from the truth. What proceeded was the most boring, buzz-word filled (DT, PBL, the new SEL – without explaining such acronyms, by the way) sales pitch about hiring them to come and implement Design Thinking labs in your schools. It was a long and utter waste of our time.

It was almost 3pm when we had the chance to talk to the women in charge of the lab, along with the man who invited us (who has his own educational company). We learned that there are two full-time lab teachers in charge of the Design Thinking program. Both are in charge of providing 13 lessons per week to students throughout the entire school.

We were asked what we thought about the classes. We courteously provided some positive feedback of how nice the room is set up, the materials, etc. We then asked them, “How many times have the students practiced this class before?” Their jaws dropped to the table. They did not expect us to pick up on this “minute” detail of perfect performance acting. Then, to our surprise, they didn’t deny it. They told us that the students had, in fact, rehearsed the class two times prior to having the adult audience.

Now, I know education in most schools is just a business, trying to sell ideas and get more profit. I hadn’t expected anything different from this school, but I was taken aback by the blatant lie they were selling that this is how Design Thinking classes look – perfect students, amazing resources, little robots.

Our discussion went on and we received another hit to the chest – only the students whose parents pay and additional fee could attend the DT classes once a week. Their school is promoting this program as a school-wide program, all the while they are discriminating and isolating their own students. What a shame!

We were asked if we want to help with this lab, creating curriculum for the entire school’s grade levels, which they wanted us to complete in about 3 weeks. Any curriculum development is a huge endeavor, let alone a Design Thinking methodology in a country where students have never been allowed to participate in lessons before. We kindly declined the offer, (not directly of course, as we learned very soon in China that saying ‘no’ is not well-received and we had to save face), as we have learned to trust our instinct on working with untrustworthy or money-blinded people. My wife and I started our company in order to provide support and resources to educators, not to rob them. In 2016, I was collaborating with a Beijing “educational” company and they also asked me to collaborate with them on a similar project – to create STEM projects with prefabricated kits to sell to schools. I told them no because their main idea was to sell the program to schools with no intention of providing professional development to the teachers. Well, I am a teacher first and foremost and I will never do anything that goes against my philosophy of providing the “best education for everyone” – especially for teachers.