The DKDK Project believes that deeper learning for students starts with transformational growth for adults. We create dynamic environments that support educational innovation.
Through our consulting work, we collaborate with districts, schools, organizational leaders, administrators and teachers to design and implement programs and initiatives that align strategy and culture with the principles of transformational learning. We are particularly adept at providing project management support as organizations launch innovative educational ventures. We are particularly interested in projects that rethinking high school.
In our events and customized workshops, educators become experiential learners, increasing their self-knowledge and their ability to design and facilitate deep learning opportunities for their students.
We also provide confidential one-on-one coaching and leadership development support to school leaders and organizational change agents.
What we believe…
About Students:
Adolescents are hard-wired to take risks, but struggle to identify risks that are developmentally sound. Our current students have come of age in a time of smart phones, social media and screen time. While students, particularly those in high-achieving schools and communities, have unprecedented access, they are characterized by:
An omnipresent pressure to gain admission to a highly selective college; high rates of anxiety, depression and suicide
An intense desire to have their learning have an immediate impact on the world
About Learning:
We have discovered more about how people learn and about adolescent psychology — confirmed by brain science research. These ideas inform our understanding of the conditions that lead to deeper learning. If we are listening, we will:
Design learning opportunities that increase students’ intrinsic motivation by identifying, targeting and practicing transformative skills
Create classrooms that are natural critical learning environments, rich with multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery
Re-think and update our feedback practices
About Schools:
What we know about students and about learning is an invitation to rethink the experience of school. Schools that become places of transformation will:
Build cultures that cultivate learning for students and faculty alike
Increase opportunities to transfer learning by inviting the outside world in and by encouraging students to actively use what they have learned beyond classroom walls
Embrace transdisciplinary and project-based learning