Summer Design Sprint 2026

Student Perspectives in the Design Process

Including young people was one of the most deliberate design choices. CANDLE wanted students at the Design Sprint as a real check on adult design, not as a token presence. A cohort of junior interns served as student advisors throughout the event. They reviewed proposed designs and talked with educators about how they learn and how they build relationships with teachers. Mia M., an incoming senior and CANDLE junior intern, described educators seeking students’ feedback while their plans were still taking shape. Students’ perspectives should influence what happens next.

From Science to Classroom Practice

Participants engaged closely with research on Transcendent Thinking: how adolescents move beyond the immediate experience to consider broader meanings, values, and possible futures. They questioned the ideas and discussed them with colleagues. As the week progressed, those conversations began to inform decisions about curriculum and instruction.

Kelly Marie Shepherd, science lead at Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools in Chicago, described a project on water. Studying the Flint water crisis would give students a way to consider what water means to people’s lives and investigate it scientifically. She hoped that inquiry could lead students toward advocacy, volunteering, or other ways of engaging with water issues beyond school.

For a team of theater educators from Salt Lake City, the connection between emotion and academic learning began with inviting students to enter a character’s world through their own experiences. The teachers planned to have students use those experiences to connect with a character’s motivations, choices, and perspective to deepen their interpretations of the play. They emphasized keeping standards high while providing students with the support they need to achieve them. Their approach showed how personal meaning and academic rigor can reinforce one another: when students find meaning in a character’s story, they have a foundation for more thoughtful analysis and stronger academic work.

Metabolizing Developmental Science

Experienced COLAB alumni also shared what they had learned from applying developmental science and revising their teaching. During one interactive Design Sprint session, a COLAB alum described a year of experimentation, including ideas that had not worked as expected. The educator drew on those experiences to help Design Sprint participants make sense of the science in their content area, sharing what it looked like to apply the research and adjust along the way.

These accounts illustrate how educators metabolize developmental science, taking it in and making it part of how they think and teach. Understanding a concept is only a beginning. Putting it to work takes interpretation, chances to try something with real students, and colleagues to make sense of what happens, including when it doesn’t go as planned.

The Design Sprint brought educators into conversation with researchers and colleagues whose experiences challenged or extended their own. It also gave CANDLE questions to carry forward.