Gifford Asimos is a 12th grade teacher at Helix Charter School in La Mesa, CA. Giff set out this school year with a vision to bring Design Thinking to his school-he had big dreams to bridge a community issue, social justice and entrepreneurism, and he thought Design Thinking could be a perfect framework. After working together at CraftED’s summer event at FabLab, it seemed to be a great fit to dive into this adventure together!

After an initial meeting Jenny set out to craft a project that originated with a community issue.  Topics such as homelessness, graffiti, and walkability immediately surfaced after interviewing community members and reading through local news. After further discussion and learning about local concerns related to pedestrian safety, Jenny and Giff landed on creating a more walkable La Mesa as the goal for student projects. And so the project was born…img_9459

After an engaging launch out in the community, students were presented with the following task:

‘Treps Care Too

Entrepreneurialism today is mostly associated with innovation and financial gain; however, the mindset of an entrepreneur can just as easily be applied to social justice and leveraged for local community improvement.  This project will ask you to embody an entrepreneurial mindset and apply Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle to address one of two local community issues: homelessness or pedestrian safety. You will engage in data collection in the real-world, utilize problem-solving, critical and creative thinking skills, and ultimately apply all that you learn through this process in a final product and presentation.

Driving Question:

  • How can we leverage an entrepreneurial mindset to take action on a local community issue?
  • How can we create a pedestrian and bike-friendly city of La Mesa? Specifically, how do we best address the student safety concerns on Highlander Way?

After seven weeks of expert interviews, field work, building of prototypes, formal writing and additional research, students ultimately presented their proposals to an expert panel as their mid-term exams and documented their learning through a digital portfolio. Of this process, Giff reflects:


img_9463This entire experience reinforced my belief that students can achieve amazing things if we just get out of the way.  I really enjoyed taking off my teacher hat and moving into the role of facilitator.  Jenny helped me create benchmarks and deliverables, but the process was unpredictable, which made the project exciting.  The project started with the students just walking around the community asking questions of random citizens and finished with an audience of the Mayor, Chief of Police and our local school board interacting with the students and sharing ideas.