ReSchool Colorado

A Brief History ReSchool began in 2013 as an initiative of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, which aims to improve public education in Colorado through research, policy, creative dialogue, and critical thinking. DK invest in projects, programs, and people who seek systemic solutions to strengthening the experience of learning for kids from birth to career. ReSchool was by far the largest initiative in DK’s history and has dramatically shifted how the foundation approaches its work. In particular, we have seen the tremendous value of and innovations that stem from co-designing new solutions with the end-users of the system: youth, parents, learning providers, and community members. In 2018, ReSchool became its own independent non-profit organization. How We Operate ReSchool does not seek to operate like a conventional organization. We believe that new models of human collaboration are emerging that express the unique needs and opportunities of our time, and we see ourselves as part of this emergence. By taking this path, we are knowingly embracing uncertainty, experimentation, and the challenge of trying to do things in a new way. We are influenced by the “Teal” approach described in Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. Our core practices - self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose - reflect the three breakthroughs of the Teal paradigm and define how we approach our work. Just as we seek to help create an education system that is creative, adaptive, self-correcting, and decentralized, we seek to do the same as an organization. It is important to us to align how ReSchool operates internally with the world we hope to see externally. Our vision for both systems is inspired more by natural, living systems than by industrial, mechanistic models. User-Centered Design Our goal is to seed ReSchool’s design with openness and humility by truly understanding the people the system will serve. By engaging in user-centered design with learners, families, educators and communities, we acknowledge they are the ones most suited to design the system that will best serve them. We utilize strategies such as observations, simulations and shadowing to identify gaps and unmet needs. When we engage in thoughtful prototypes with users, we can get to the heart of their needs and incorporate concepts into a new system that bring value to their lives.​ LEARN MORE (PDF) "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." Rabindranath Tagore