Learnings from the Design to Heal: Virtual Conference
Four weeks ago, we launched a new experience to see what would happen when we intentionally integrated an equity and healing discourse with education and emerging technology. Unfortunately, the habit of segregation that has created boundaries to restrict the movement of our bodies can also creep into our minds, first separating ideas and concepts, then creating identity around them. I did not know what would happen, and more importantly, what could happen in this new triangular plane. In the spirit of equitable innovation, we built something not to solve a problem, but to learn more about the problem itself. We inverted the conventional cycle of learning and then doing. We built to learn.
What We Learned in the Design to Heal: Virtual Conference
Teachers matter: When we think about learning new things that have been historically bounded by the oppressive lines of race, class, and gender, transcending those bounds creates more space for belonging and openness. Dominant discourses around technology and finance typically exclude women and people of color. When traditionally bounded discourses are unleashed by different bodies, we all can see ourselves unbounded. Not only do teachers matter, the bodies of teachers matter, and the ideas and words that come from those bodies matter. In the same way, there is power in a Black woman learning about crypto and practicing that learning in public; it is the same power that sources a white woman learning to talk about white supremacy, race, racism, and practicing that learning in public. Too often, we use our bodies to recreate the expected. How can we use our bodies to create the unexpected?
Community matters: When we are learning new things in a field that is dynamic, ever-changing, and ever-moving, identifying the constant is critical to any learning experience. We can learn hard things when we are in community. We can do hard things when we are together. Too often, we teach content in ways that do not require other humans for mastery. But what if we actually designed learning experiences that required working across identity differences and zip codes, to achieve mastery? Could that help us get closer to the world that we know is possible? When the privilege of expertise is destabilized by expanding the boundaries of comfort and knowledge, the power of community becomes a beautiful stabilizing agent that brings us together.
Intention matters: The conference opened with the intention to create a more equitable and healed world. Beyond initial thoughts, participants were encouraged to think about how they want people to interact, how to incentivize those interactions, and how new technologies can enable those interactions. Without an active intention for a new world with new relationships, the technology becomes reproductive. The intention and the vision for a new world places the technology in service of something more beautiful. The intention contextualizes learning, helping participants see the barriers and problems—reducing technology’s abstraction and creating a strong lens of utility to assess and understand different tools.
Imagining An Equitable Future
We still imagine a world where all people—especially people of color, queer folk, and first generation immigrants—have the chance to connect and share their wealth, resources, and gifts across time and space effortlessly in ways that enable them to spend time on what makes them come alive. Imagine a world where everyone in America learns and works in a place that acknowledges their racial identity, prepares them to lead and participate in our economy and democracy, and repairs and restores relationships that keep us divided. Imagine a world where leaders in America co-design and co-create bespoke and equitable learning experiences with their communities. Imagine an ecosystem where networks of leaders support each other in designing innovative and equitable learning cultures and schools that enable every child to develop and share their gifts. Imagine a constellation of learning centers, established and emerging, traditional and transformational, and lifelong learners who are able to lead across lines of difference and develop the skills to heal themselves and others. Let’s hold an intention of a new world, the salience of community, and the courage to use our bodies to tell the stories we need to tell.
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