Education leaders, students share their ideas for change

Last fall ASU launched the 10,000 Solutions Project, a problem-solving platform anyone, anywhere, can use to confront local and global challenges. In the last few months, the collaborative online community has submitted more than 1,200 solutions. One of the most popular topics for users to consider is education.  

Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, recently submitted a solution to the 10,000 Solutions Project. “Education inequity is a pervasive problem all over the world,” Kopp states in her solution. Kopp’s idea about how to solve this global issue is Teach For All.

“What Teach For All is doing is working to build a global movement to ensure educational excellence and equity by accelerating the impact of organizations all over the world that are enlisting their nations’ most promising future leaders ... in addressing education inequity,” she says.

Many prominent ASU advocates for education have shared their solutions. ASU President Michael Crow and Mari Koerner, dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, both shared their ideas about how to improve the teaching profession.

“We need to find ways to produce new teachers,” Crow says. “A new teacher needs to be a person that is carefully selected, carefully advanced, moved forward in a new kind of way with an entirely different focus.”

10,000 Solutions also provides a venue for students to be more creative when thinking about how to solve education challenges. Instructor Stephanie Garcia embedded 10,000 Solutions within a course she teaches called “Entrepreneurial Educators.” She asked students to design a short “fast pitch” of their idea. Students then provided feedback to one another about their ideas.

Garcia finds the online platform useful and engaging. “I think the 10,000 Solutions platform is a great tool for collaboration within and beyond the university, and creating a space where these tools can be blended within a curriculum allows our students to experience this new collaborative space first hand.”

10,000 Solutions provides the engaged community necessary to support students in confronting real-world issues.

“I feel that the more we can model real-world experiences and challenges within the university, the better prepared our students will be when they leave the university setting,” Garcia says. “10,000 Solutions is taking online communication and collaboration to the next level by creating a space for social innovation to take place and grow.”

ASU students, staff, faculty and external community members can share their ideas about education or other topics by visiting 10000solutions.org.  

Written by Paul Henne