These summer institutes draw upon the work of the Family Leadership Design Collaborative which maintains a national network, releases briefs & research regularly, and provides monthly newsletters.
2023 and 2024
The 2023-2024 Codesign Fellowship was hosted in partnership with the Region 16 Comprehensive Center. Here are some resources from the Fellowship:
- A reading and discussion guide for Ann Ishimaru’s “Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities.” The Reading Guide is written by Dr. Melia LaCour and John Lenssen
- The River of Life research brief is a co-design activity plan rooted in family ecologies.
2022 Systems Codesigning Educational Summer Institute
June 30 & July 1, 2022
This institute is intended to support systems-focused organizations to foster more just futures for young people. We will focus on codesign at two levels: how systems might better support and enable local codesign efforts and how systems-focused organizations might integrate codesign into their work.
We are interested in supporting teams who are working at the systems-level and want to support on-the-ground codesigning work. This will be a hands-on learning opportunity to plan for codesigning transformative practices, learning spaces, tools, and relations.
Institute Resources:
- Summer Institute Agenda
- Facilitator Bios
- Family Leadership Design Collaborative Core Principles
- Family Leadership Design Collaborative Guide
- Getting Started with Solidarity-Driven Codesign
- Rapid Codesign Visual
- Learning Circle Protocol
2021 Codesigning Educational Justice Summer Institute
In the summer of 2021, we held the inaugural FLDC Codesigning Educational Justice Institute! We were joined by eight teams of parents, educators, and community leaders committed to racial justice and community well-being. FLDC members Dr. Ann Ishimaru, Dr. Megan Bang, and Dr. Anthony Craig facilitated this learning experience.
Drawing on the work of the Family Leadership Design Collaborative and decades of research and practice, the Institute engaged teams of leaders in active participation and learning together to humanize decision-making processes and build solidarities across differences of race, class, gender, education, language, and formal roles in codesigning particular aspects of schooling. This was not a sit-n-get webinar or a conference of lectures. We shared activities and supported team planning for a series of design circles that begin with family and community ecologies, disrupt and transform normative power, and build solidarities and transformative possibilities.
On day 1, teams shared stories, reflected on their current educational challenges and opportunities, and imagined future pathways for community and family well-being through the “river of life” exercise.
Systems-based codesign leaders Dr. Keisha Scarlett, Dr. Omar Escalera, and Dr. Eyal Bergman discussed their experiences of starting codesign, bringing their full selves to the work, radical imagining, leading with humility, and cultivating seeds.
On day 2, Dr. Muhammad Khalifa joined us to discuss ancestral knowledges, community leadership, and enacting solidarities in change-making. Parent leaders from Supporting Partnerships in Education and Beyond also joined teams in consultancies to support their work.
In our closing reflection, teams shared that the experience was “eye-opening”, “beautiful”, “nourishing” and they were “inspired and ready!”