January 27, 2025
By Jenna Fournel, Director of Teaching and Learning
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear from Sandra Vilevec, an artist and educator, about curiosity, AI, design thinking, and widening the aperture of our decisions.
My colleague Meag and I recently had the opportunity to reconnect with a long-time friend of Inspired Teaching: artist, scientist, educator, and innovator, Sandra Vilevec.
Sandra, whose many roles have included developing K-12 programming for NASA, shared with us her thoughts on and advice for implementing design thinking (“a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design”), what role AI should — and shouldn’t — play in the classroom, and her integrity-based approach to decision-making, centered on three questions: “Can I?” “May I?” “Should I?”
In addition to exploring that framework, some highlights from our conversation include:
What is design thinking? It’s empathy in action.
“Whoever we’re trying to create or design something for, [we’re] using empathy to understand what their core need is, and then providing a solution that directly matches that need.”
Student as Expert is one of Inspired Teaching’s 5 Core Elements and elevating student voice is a key focus of Speak Truth — and Sandra emphasizes the importance of design thinking in ensuring that everyone, especially students, plays a role in decision-making and problem-solving.
“…they want to feel that they matter, that they could be creative. We know that’s what lights students up, not testing!”
Curiosity — not surprisingly! — is at the heart of the mindset that Sandra employs in her role as a design thinker and in her work with students through NASA.
“…and when we have a curiosity mindset, it’s helping us to move in this world that we live in and feel connected to the world around us and connected to ourselves.”
As you’ll hear in the episode below, curiosity is more than just a rover NASA sent to Mars! I hope our conversation sparks new ideas for you in the week ahead.
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
