A Seat at the Table: When Learner Voice Leads to Real Change at Lunch!

Last spring, eight Galion City High School students signed up to be part of a design thinking team with Mr. Sean Maguire, a teacher who was learning how to design and facilitate authentic learning experiences.

The students' enthusiasm quickly won Mr. Maguire over. Sean recalled, “After the initial Cohort meeting, I was thinking to myself, ‘What did I get myself into?'" But at lunch duty that day, he described the idea of design thinking to the students, and without hesitation, they said, “We’re in!’”  Two of those students went on to become president and vice president of the design team, which they self-organized.

Their design interest? Getting more students and staff to eat school lunches. So they used design thinking, an approach to authentic learning, that examines a problem from the perspective of, in this case, the student body. Empathy abounds! They made surveys, interviewed students, gathered feedback from peers and teachers, interviewed the district’s Food Service Director, and explored the federal guidelines governing school lunches. In the end, they developed a process that gave the entire high school student body a voice in shaping the daily lunch menus. Their first lunch menu? Fresh blueberries, homemade macaroni and cheese, and hamburgers!

For two weeks, students shaped the high school lunch menu, and the cafeteria fed a lot more happy students and teachers at Galion High School. Great work, Mr. Maguire and Design Team!

We love this example of authentic learning because an ordinary school question had become an authentic learning experience. Eight students became experts and changemakers in their own school through their problem-posing and solving process.

When I, Kristin Bourdage, the facilitator at Galion Schools, asked the student team what they took away from their design activity, one student said, “I didn’t know I could do anything like this.”  In that statement, it became clear to me that there may be an urgency to ensure all learners have an opportunity to engage in the ways described here, and to see themselves as problem-solvers and changemakers. And one more detail from this story stands out to me. Four of the eight design team members enrolled in the culinary program at the local Career Center in August. Could this be connected to the lunch design process? The principal who told me this thinks it does.

Authentic learning, whether through design thinking, service-learning, or another approach, isn’t the only way we need to teach, but it belongs in every educator’s repertoire because it gives students opportunities to discover what they can do, what they care about, and where those interests might take them while also sharpening those durable skills that matter for their futures just as much.