6 Things I’m Taking from the Classroom to designRoom

Last fall, I began my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. As part of this degree, I’m also required to teach English classes. (One secret of higher education: freshman English courses are nearly all taught by grad students or adjuncts.) I was incredibly nervous to take on these new challenges – I’m not sure I could’ve defined rhetoric before I prepared to teach a class on it. The classes I taught were the introductory college composition courses that every student has to take, and the class sizes were only about 23. It’s a great opportunity for students to build their skills in writing and thinking, too. 

As I prepare for the next semester and really reflect on the year I’ve had, I realized just how well-suited I am to teaching. I relished the challenge of working with students and I really connected with the theory of education and teaching. It helped that the class I taught was skills-based, much like my design education. Designing activities to develop skills in students is something I especially took to; I ended up sharing my activity designs with other teachers who were interested. In fact, I found myself overflowing with ideas for how I can take what I’ve learned and bring it to design and brand strategy work as well.

Here are six things from the classroom that I’m intentionally bringing back to designRoom with me.

Goals are the best place to start.

The first thing I learned about lesson planning was to begin the plan with the objectives. I was taught ask to myself a few key questions:

• What are the one or two things I want learners to leave this semester knowing?
• What’s the next bite-sized piece that this time can tackle?
• What activities can teach that skill through doing/writing/thinking?

Designing a day of instruction with these questions in mind ensured that all parts of the class contributed to my goals. In education, this is referred to as ‘backwards design’ because you start your planning with the end objectives.

‘Backwards design’ is a great way to approach branding and design, too. The process of branding or re-branding is often an educational one – our clients are usually engaging with their visual brand deeply for the first time. designRoom starts each project by making sure all parties agree on objectives at the beginning. Along the way we explain how each step will contribute to the final identity, and why we do it this way. That’s been our process since I began here. What might it look like if we apply ‘backwards design’ principles on purpose? I can’t wait to find out.

I do, we do, you do.

There is a phrase that is supposed to help teachers remember how students learn best: I do, we do, you do. That means that first the instructor should demonstrate the skill, then practice it with students, then allow the students to do it on their own. On a basic level, this is a framework for any individual activity in the classroom.

This strategy worked on larger scales, too. For example, I wanted them to write their own essays without the assistance of AI. Rather than simply banning it, I tried this I do, we do, you do approach. On the first day of class I committed to reading every homework myself and not using AI to review papers or write my comments. Together we spent time on the value of doing the assignment yourself as well as generating ideas and getting started on them. I emphasized how much I looked forward to hearing their ideas and thinking about them, and when it came time for them to write their projects, most chose to write it themselves.

My experience got me thinking about how a re-brand is an educational process that follows this flow, too. The “I do” is our experience we carry with us into the room. The “we do” can last for more than a year, and in my mind is most of the branding process. When we’re conducting an assessment and interviewing or surveying people, that’s a step we make to collaborate with the internal team and make it clear that this new brand is being built with and by them. We never talk about it this way, but the whole time we’re working on a brand together, we’re setting clients up for how to work without us —the “you do” phase, I might call it now. When set up properly, a healthy brand is ready to grow on its own.

Genre-Based Pedagogy

Another thing I learned in preparation to teach is the idea of different pedagogies, or approaches to teaching. Each pedagogy has a strength. I was drawn to genre-based pedagogy, which revolves around the idea of teaching students that language should be chosen based on a good understanding of the genre they’re writing in. Practically, this meant:

• Analyzing forms of writing that students already know very well, like texting and email, to understand how writing works there
• Applying that same analysis process to each new major assignment
• Communicating clearly the requirements vs. conventions and let students explicitly know what rules they’re allowed to break
• Fostering a meta-awareness within students of how genre informs language choices

The concept of genre is extremely helpful to me as a creative person. Thinking in a genre-informed way has led to me asking different, deeper questions about projects I’m assigned. It’s allowed me to develop my own writing skills to address different audiences, and it’s a key concept that I think a lot of design education misses.

A social media post will sound – and look – different than a press release. A photograph is sometimes better than an illustration, but not always. Icons can help understanding or get in the way. Genre is everything.

I am a translator – and that’s special! 

One thing I brought with me from designRoom was this idea of being a concept translator. An inherent part of design is interpreting words and making them visual. At designRoom, we take it to another level. Translation happens first when we assess our clients; we explain back to them things that they know but may not have interpreted correctly. Then we translate all this information into a brand with a clear identity and differentiator.

As an instructor, my instinct to re-word and re-explain kicked in all the time. I taught the freshman composition class that’s mandatory for every major. While the topic wasn’t too complex, it was also something I hadn’t thought about since my own college days, and just rattling off a textbook definition was enough for some students, but not all. Through making sure I could translate the information into words they’d understand, my own comprehension of the subject matter deepened.

Since translation already came naturally to me, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was focused on the day-to-day of assignments and setting my students up for success. It wasn’t until I got student feedback at the end of the semester that I realized I could attribute these successes in part to translation.

When I’m back at designRoom, I’m going to bring my new awareness of translating with me. It takes time, energy, and inclination to do that conceptual translating work. It’s an investment in the person you’re talking to, and it’s difficult sometimes – and I still love doing it!

Every question is a gift. 

Here are just a few of the questions I got from students in my first semester teaching:

• Why can’t an essay be one long paragraph?
• How do I write more words?
• How do I end this? (referring to an essay)
• How do I know the idea is the right idea?
• When you say we need to use the vocabulary words in the essay, do you mean we should use the actual word?

Some of these do sound like dumb questions, I have to admit, but I loved them all. How DO you write more words? It’s an especially fair question when you’re 18 and have never tried to write anything longer than a page before. I think my passion for questions was obvious to my students. They kept asking. One turned in every major project late because they wanted to talk to me one last time about their questions, which were exclusively questions they’d asked me before.

Teaching, and answering a ton of questions all the time, showed me something that isn’t as obvious otherwise: every question is an opportunity for me to show I take the asker’s concerns seriously. If I’m repeating myself, then they didn’t hear it before. If it sounds obvious, that means I need to re-examine “obvious” until I know where they got tripped up.

I’m bringing this energy back with me. There are no dumb questions. Not knowing something is just a chance to learn it. 

There is no substitute for caring. 

From watching my own students and observing my fellow grad student teachers, one thing became absolutely clear: caring about the people in the room with me is something I’ve taken for granted in the past. It’s easy for some to become jaded or overloaded and phone it in. I understand those who feel that way, but I’ve learned that’s just not who I am. I care—hard—and my students felt it.

Early on, one of my classes noticed that I remembered what they wrote about. After that, I overheard students in that class holding each other accountable for not putting the work in. Me caring gave them permission to. When one student who was not usually “good at English” (their words) got a perfect grade on their first major assignment, they moved from the back row to the front of the classroom and stayed there the rest of the semester. I’m emotional just thinking about it. Huge gesture of trust!

I don’t want to pretend I’m inventing something here. Caring, meeting people where they are, is a central tenet of designRoom’s values. It’s also central to the life-saving work our behavioral health and addiction clients do every day. What teaching showed me is the impact that I, myself, can have when I show up full of enthusiasm and sincerity every day – and, what happens when someone doesn’t. I have a new appreciation for how much the whole designRoom team cares about our clients, and I can say with confidence that nothing replaces sincere interest. People know when you’re faking it.

The semester was not perfect. I had days where the activities just didn’t work, or when half the class was sick and I had to replan on the fly. No matter how many extensions I granted, there were still students who simply didn’t do the work. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in the specifics of every minor thing that went wrong, and lose the big picture.

The big picture thought that ties this all together for me is how powerful living my values can be. By helping each of my students learn and understand what was special about them, I think I could finally do the same. The things I believe in—like curiosity and experimentation and personal expression—those aren’t universal values. They’re unique to me, and so is the amount of effort I put in to following through on them.

My values are also why I’ve been with designRoom for so long. I believe in the people I work with and for. Grad school never would have been possible without the support of the people I work with – Kelly, Chad, Matt, Shaun, and Cynthia. I’m so grateful to everyone at designRoom for cheering me on during this challenge. What I’ve learned won’t stay behind at school, it will come with me everywhere I go.