In spring 2021, The Fund partnered with Leadership + Design to host design-thinking workshops for K-12 public schools in Chicago. These workshops helped school teams perform empathy-building interviews and observations with students or teachers, learn design-thinking as a problem-solving practice, and collaborate to design unique learning acceleration strategies. The Fund prioritized schools with historically underserved students for this opportunity and provided $1,000 stipends to every school team that participated in a studio to help enact their projects.

So far, 105 teams have participated in a design studio; 100% of these teams reported high satisfaction and that participation in the studio better prepared them for the school year. Survey findings showed us that principals benefit greatly from having set time and resources to react to their school’s unique situation.

For the 2024-25 school year, the Summer Design Program is returning with it’s one-day format, where participants will be guided through the design thinking process from focus group ideation, to prototype building and testing. All participants will have the opportunity to engage with year long coaching to guide their implementation following the summer experience.