Can design thinking fix education? - Imagine a Place
Two years ago, North Rowan was falling behind other schools on test scores and student engagement. Today, they’re using place and human-centered design to change the conversation about how to engage students and inspire success.
When Meredith Williams became principal of North Rowan High School, it was a poetic homecoming. Meredith grew up across the street from the school, eventually attending and graduating in 2001. She then went on to attend the University of North Carolina, one of the very first students from North Rowan to receive the prestigious, full-ride Morehead-Cain scholarship. After her time in Chapel Hill, Meredith completed a masters degree at Wake Forest University. With her qualifications and talent, Meredith could have written her ticket to go anywhere in the educational world, but she chose to stay in North Carolina. After a stint in Charlotte schools, she became an assistant principal at a middle school in her home district. When the opportunity came to become principal of her old high school, there was no hesitation.
“I set up my office right by the cafeteria. Looking out my office window I could see the house I grew up in, where my parents still lived—and I knew I had come home. I knew my job, here at home, was to improve the system for everyone,”
North Rowan High School was an underperforming school in an underprivileged area. Today, with visionary leadership and a new way of thinking about learning spaces and curriculum, they’re changing the conversation about how we can inspire kids to success.
“Everybody deserves the opportunity to break out of the current mold of education and explore what interests them. So many people don’t know what they’re capable of because they’ve never been given a chance. I feel like if we’ve not done anything else, we’ve given these students an opportunity to find out what they’re capable of."
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