Transforming education for the next generation.
Project Date: 2016–2017
Team: Fivestone / Matchbook Learning
As strategic lead for the FiveStone team, I had the privilege to partner with Matchbook Learning, a nonprofit charter management organization that targets underperforming public schools with a competency-based, technology-enabled turnaround model.
Matchbook is turning around the bottom 5% of troubled schools in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the country, in locations over the years including Newark, Detroit, and Indianapolis.
This model blends together the best of traditional teaching and technology to create a personalized learning experience for each student. I used organizational storytelling, strategy, and design thinking to elevate and position a pioneering charter school framework as a strong contender in the future of education.
What is your dream?
The primary storytelling device for Matchbook is centered around a question to each student: “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Motivated by a deep hope for something greater, this question proclaims that all students can dream and create paths toward achievement, regardless of what zipcode you grow up in. And it's not just a tagline on stationery: nearly 100% of parents at Matchbook schools wanted their children to go to college.
This theme wove itself into every touchpoint of Matchbook that I helped guide as part of the Fivestone team: classroom design, professional development, marketing, social media, and the digital ecosystem.
I even had the opportunity to produce a series of annual photoshoots with students in each school to imagine their future careers: from doctors, engineers, and chefs to mayors, artists, and entrepreneurs.
“Armistead took the time to understand our academic model at a very deep level. He displays patience, a calm, confident and peaceful manner as he probes deeply the nuances of our vision, model and goals and then designs products and experiences that reflect who we are and who we aspire to be back to us.”
Learning how to fly.
I helped develop next generation classroom web apps — called Spark — that guide students through a personalized learning path to support their content mastery (building confidence and growing competence), give them more agency over their learning (short-term decision making and long-term planning), and strengthen accountability with their teachers.
Our Fivestone team conducted extensive user research, prototyped new classroom models, and designed interfaces to improve the classroom experience for everyone from non-readers in kindergarten through seniors in high school.
I collaborated with the Matchbook executive team rethink their approach to professional development and how to care for and grow their students — socially, emotionally, and academically — especially in the context of a disruptive methodology and new learning models.
Together, we created an innovative badging system for employees to earn “microcredentials,” complete with a graphic design taxonomy to clearly demonstrate growth in a variety of professional areas. These new toolkits gave employees and their coaches the same style of personalized learning experiences that were happening in their classrooms everyday.
1.5+ years
average grade-level growth of students using Matchbook Learning's digital platform, Spark.
Success beyond the classroom.
Not only did Matchbook ask students to dream about their future, I took the same question to heart and re-imagined a school of tomorrow that merged physical and digital interactions into the education experience. This led to the introduction of a new set of design principles mapping to existing goals of improved student success; ultimately elevating the entire education model for the Matchbook community.
This proposal included a digital ecosystem that felt like a surprising, effortless, and intuitive mirror of the classroom environment and would weave its way into every day behaviors, in and out of the classroom, filling the learning cycle with inspiration, curiosity, and joy. Because every child should have the freedom to dream!
