For the past couple of years I have been working with the Fa’avae Team at Bishop Viard College. Fa’avae (which means foundation in Samoan) is the Year 7/8 cohort at the College; the kids who have left primary school and are transitioning from children to young people, and all that entails.
Team: Fa’avae started with three driven, smart and thoughtful educators: Fuatino (Tino) Leaupepetele (Dean/Teacher) and teachers Tasi Tamamasui and Steve Fuiava. Full disclosure Tasi and I are long time buds and were in the foundation team back in 2004 that introduced the practice of service design to Inland Revenue NZ, and ultimately to NZ government.
They brought me in to “help bring our ideas into focus” because they wanted to do something with their kids whose confidence had taken a notable shift during the Covid lockdown era. This effects far more than their learning.
Over a period of 4 weeks or so at the end of 2021 we co-designed the Fa’avae Cultural Journey (One of the sessions with the student’s will be for them to name it something more meaningful to them – design is always happening/iterating/ evolving!). During the 4 weeks we explored what they knew, what examples of programs they liked, where they wanted the kids to get to, the engagement of community and family they had built. We also spent time examining what do we mean by ‘confidence’ and voice vs agency? How the critical importance of ‘culture’ was required throughout the journey and in practice. And how to align the approach to the NZ curriculum – particularly literacy, numeracy and science.
We applied and were successful in getting funding through the Pacific Education Innovation Fund and in 2023 we kicked off.
The intent of the program
For current students in enrolled (year 7/8 at BVC), explores cultural identity (both ethnic and Porirua/local-specific) as a means of focus. It culminates in an ‘event’ the students put on for family, fellow and potential students that shares/showcases what they ‘discovered’ (culture) and puts into practice what they learned (life skills).
The result of the Program, and the reflective Life Skills* journey (as aligned to the NZ Curriculum Five Key Competencies) that will characterise the program, is that the students build the foundations of:
- Understanding their cultural identity and how it evolves
- Building individual self confidence
- Self-belief in their own potential
- Feeling able to manifest a sense of agency within their life
- Attaining transferable life skills to make the most out life
It will run over the four terms of the year with specific stages to the journey:
Observations
I plan to capture the progress of my design mentor role and content guide for the year as observations, and also reflections on the service design process. Here’s what I’ve observed after the first two weeks:
- The challenge for specialist professionals working with the Government system
A program like this can’t happen without additional resourcing and its initial development was rapid due to funding deadlines. As I have found in working in the education sector, it was very much a process of drawing out and translating for professional specialists an achievable approach using language that a Government Department could make a decision on.
As a public sector service designer that’s my job and my own specialist skill set. Perhaps though, those who provide funds through an application process, could help the applicants with access to a skill set like mine? - The importance of collaborators
Disclaimer: I am biased because I have been fortunate enough to work almost exclusively with the most engaged, intelligent and innovative educators across all levels of education delivery for the last 8 years.
I read a quote recently “Be someone people aren’t scared to say ‘no’ to”. I believe that’s a good perspective for a design lead working with a team of non-designers. My job is to challenge perspectives and make suggestions about approaches, but my collaborators are the professionals in their field.
In only the two weeks we have been going the Team and I have been able to evolve the ‘program on paper’ as delivery in real life occurs. I might have experience about what will work best in building the components of the design process but the measure of this program (as with all design) will not be the design it will be the outcome:- The experience of the students throughout their journey’s.
- The academic results of the students at the end of their time in Fa’avae.
- The experience and capability development of the Team members, individually and as a Team.
- The ability to repeat and evolve the program.
- The young people’s confidence and their own fa’avae/foundation as they move through college life and beyond.
- Definitions are
notsemantics
Back in my DMA days, we’d always spend time defining the meaning of terms and words used with clients in the early stages of a project. Sometimes it was technical jargon, often it was a term people all regularly used but no one had stopped to reflect on what everyone thought it meant, like ‘customer’ vs ‘user’. We often got accused of ‘playing semantics’ but irony bomb, that exactly what it is. Because semantics is about understanding the meaning of words and their application. And how often do professionals get to examine and reflect on meaning of terms they use everyday? Also, I hope I used irony correctly 😬
This program has been no different. We explored confidence, self-identity, voice, agency. We’re using terms such as ‘culture’ ‘identity’ and ‘cultural identity’ and even we are still interpreting it.
Tino pointed out the kids need a diagram (my favourite thing as a designer is making ‘something to point at’) We did some sketching and we’re trialing this one, with the caveat for the kids ‘we’re learning too, so we can change this.’
The goal for the next weeks is to move into practical techniques of research, idea generation and iteration (so literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, using language, symbols, and texts, participation and contribution.
…Basically, I reckon I’m going to posit here at some stage in detail that service design practice applied in education(and yes, design thinking) is the professionalisation of the capabilities called Life Skills that enable humans to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life. There. I said it.