SITUATION

Facing budget cuts, educators at Culver City High School were seeking innovative ways to strengthen their Art and CTE (Career and Technical Education) programs. Additionally, they wanted the historically excluded students they serve to envision futures as creative professionals.

OUR WORK

Since Fall 2024, we’ve worked with educators from Culver City High School to bolster their career and technical education (CTE) programs by incorporating the design-thinking process into already existing curricula. As a foundation, we used the Design= Curriculum Kit, which we co-created with educators and designers. Since launch, we’ve developed, managed, and facilitated all aspects of the collaboration.

In addition to designing and conducting educator workshops, we brought professional designers from Amazon into classrooms to work directly with teachers and students. Designers were trained prior to their classroom visits on the expressed needs of the participating educators and best practices for mentoring high school students.

Designers visited the students at several points during the semesters to share their career paths, teach soft skills, and guide students on their projects.

Additionally, we organized a visit to Amazon’s Culver City Campus.

IMPACT

• Educators learned how to effectively teach design thinking, giving them the resources and confidence needed to incorporate into their existing curricula.

• The designers were able to grow the creative confidence of the students, with 70% of students saying they had more confidence after the designers’ intervention.

• Students were able to envision themselves as future creative professionals, with 73% saying they were more interested in a creative career after the experience.

• Due to the success of the collaboration and programming thus far, we’ll be working with Culver City again in Fall 2025, developing comprehensive experiences for additional educators and students across several different pathways.