Consortium and LUMA Institute launch Expanding Innovation 2.0
The Consortium for Public Education and the LUMA Institute are partnering to launch the 2018-2019 version of Expanding Innovation, a professional development program aimed at helping leaders in K-12 education use the principles and practices of Human-Centered Design (HCD) to advance improvements in their districts and schools.
HCD is the discipline of developing solutions in service of people. Just as it has proven to be a tremendous aid for helping business leaders become hyper-attentive to the needs of their customers, it’s now gaining traction in education as a means of helping leaders put student needs at the heart of every decision. 
The partnership is being supported with a grant from The Grable Foundation in cooperation with Remake Learning. It builds on a pilot that Remake Learning ran in collaboration with LUMA during the 2016-2017 school year. As part of the pilot, 17 educational leaders received HCD training through a combination of workshops and coaching. Many districts, including those in the Consortium’s networks, have since expressed interest in advancing innovation through HCD.
Under the Consortium’s partnership with LUMA, two new cohorts of educational leaders will embark on HCD training, putting it into practice in improvement projects they choose for their schools. Seven districts will be represented in each cohort. At least half of the participants will be under-resourced districts with 50% or more of their student populations receiving federally subsidized lunch. Participants in the Fall cohort include: Allegheny Valley, Bethlehem Center, Brownsville Area, New Castle Area, Northgate and Shaler Area and South Allegheny school districts. Districts or schools that would like to participate in the second half of the school year should contact the Consortium as soon as possible because space is limited.
Two Consortium staffers will be certified to co-instruct the upcoming training sessions with LUMA. The onboarding workshop for the first cohort takes place September 18-19. At the two-day workshop, teams of three educators from each participating district or school will learn and apply HCD concepts through projects designed to create new and innovative learning opportunities for students in their schools. Staff from LUMA and the Consortium will support the teams with check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days following their training. Afterward, teams will convene to give presentations about their work.
