Written by Trusting the Process: A Cohort 21 Reflection on Design Thinking, Feedback Culture, and the Power of Patience.
The Question That Started It All
When I joined Cohort 21, I came with a question that had been quietly nagging at me: “How might we help high school students see themselves as lifelong creators and contributors, valuing their whole growth as people beyond academic achievement for grades and university admission?”
It’s easy to get caught in the metrics trap. Students chase high Level Grades and impressive university applications. We measure achievement with summative evaluations and level to percent conversions. But something felt missing—the sense that learning itself is an act of creation, that growth extends far beyond what we can quantify on a transcript. I wanted my students to internalize the idea that they are makers, thinkers, and contributors to their communities. Not because it looks good on an application, but because it’s true.
This question sits right at the heart of 21st-century learning. Our students will graduate into a world that demands creativity, resilience, collaboration, and the ability to tackle problems they haven’t even encountered yet. How do we prepare them not just with knowledge, but with a sense of themselves as capable, resourceful people?
What I Did—And What It Revealed
Real change doesn’t happen through grand gestures. It happens through intentional, incremental shifts in how we talk about learning and celebrate growth.
First, I changed the language. I took my design project rubrics—the guides that students use to understand expectations—and rewrote them with clarity and warmth. With help from ChatGPT, I found language that felt less like a checklist of technical requirements and more like an invitation to do meaningful work. The rubrics still held students to high standards, but they named what mattered: “How did you listen to your users?” instead of “Did you conduct user research?” This shift sounds small, but it changes the conversation entirely.
Next, I invested in feedback conferencing. I sit with students one-on-one to talk about their work. These conferences became sacred time—a space where I could ask questions, listen to their thinking, and help them see what they’d already accomplished before we looked at where they could push further. Students who came in defensive left feeling understood. Students who thought they’d failed left with a sense of possibility.
But the most powerful shift was building a peer feedback culture. I created structures where students regularly shared their work with each other and learned to cite specific moments of growth. “I noticed that you went back and redesigned your solution after talking to a user—that shows real responsiveness to feedback.” This kind of specific, growth-focused acknowledgment rippled through our classroom. Students started internalizing what growth actually looks like. They began to see themselves through the eyes of peers who were celebrating their learning process, not just their final product.
These practices unfolded over two major design projects. The impact was quiet at first, then unmistakable. By the second project, students came in with different energy. They asked different questions. They were braver and willing to take risks with challenging ideas.
What This Work Really Taught Me
Here’s the truth I would tell any educator pursuing culture change: Real shifts take time, and patience is not optional.
I couldn’t expect students to transform their relationship with learning overnight. The culture I was trying to build—where growth matters as much as grades, where creative thinking is valued, where students see themselves as capable contributors—this required repetition, trust-building, and consistent messaging across multiple projects.
The first design project was about establishing new norms. Students were testing whether I really meant what I said about valuing their growth process. They were learning the language of design thinking. They were getting used to feedback conferences and peer sharing.
By the second project, something shifted. Students had experienced what it felt like to be heard, to iterate based on feedback, to see growth in themselves and their peers. They came in knowing the process. They trusted it—and they trusted me.
This is the essential lesson: you can’t force a culture shift. You can create the conditions—the rubrics, the conferences, the peer feedback structures—and then you have to be patient enough to let it develop. Mastery doesn’t come from one exposure. It comes from repetition, from doing the work again, from seeing how the process gets easier and richer the second time around.
Resources to Share
Design Process Slide Deck: I’m sharing the slide deck I created to introduce the IDEO Design Thinking framework to my students. It walks through each phase—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test—and includes a circular Design Process graphic that shows students how the work isn’t linear; it’s iterative. The deck includes a concrete project example: students design artifacts to improve their school community. Seeing a real project from ideation through prototyping helps students visualize what the process actually looks like. [Link to resource]
The Big Takeaway
If I could crystallize this experience into one piece of advice, it would be this: Trust in the process. Trust in time. Trust in relationships.
Trust that the design thinking framework works—but not because it’s magic. It works because it teaches students to listen, to iterate, to see problems from multiple angles. It works because it positions failure as information, not judgment.
Trust that mastery takes repetition. A design studio culture doesn’t emerge from one unit. It emerges from doing the work across multiple projects, where students internalize the process so deeply that it becomes how they approach problems in every context.
Trust that relationships matter more than we sometimes admit. The feedback conferences, the peer celebrations, the conversations about growth—these weren’t extras. They were the heart of the work. Students took risks because they believed I saw their effort. They gave each other specific feedback because they’d experienced how it felt to be seen and celebrated.
I’m walking into next year with so much more confidence in year-long learning. I’m more patient with the timeline of change. I understand deeply now that understanding mastery takes time—and that time is an investment, not a luxury.
A Question Still Sitting With Me
As I reflect on this work, one question lingers: “How do we balance deepening mastery through repetition with the energy and growth that comes from new challenges?”
I don’t have the answer yet. But I’m excited to keep exploring it.
In Gratitude
None of this reflection would have happened without Cohort 21. Without dedicated time to step back and think deeply about my practice, I would have stumbled through the year—implementing strategies, seeing results, but missing the deeper patterns and insights. Cohort 21 created space for that kind of thinking. It held me accountable to my question. It reminded me why this work matters.
To anyone reading this who’s thinking about joining a Cohort 21 or taking time to reflect on their practice: do it. The insights you gain aren’t just for you. They ripple through your classroom and into your students’ sense of themselves as learners and creators.
—Robin