During my first hour planning period, you can most likely find me, door closed, with a calm classroom playlist turned up, drowning out the sound of hallway chaos. Working in the public school system is exhausting. The demand to simultaneously act as an educator, therapist, nurse, and coach can often feel like navigating a toxic relationship. Yet, just as systemic burnout takes over, there will be a moment of connection with a student that reminds me why this work matters. My guide is the kids. I constantly ask myself how I can do my best by them, which currently leaves me at a professional crossroads: Do I stay in the classroom for the foreseeable future, or make a broader career change? While I have not quite figured out my career destination, I know that my evolution as a learning experience designer does not stop with the MALXD program.
To create sustainable, meaningful change, my future learning focus on three core areas: acquiring pedagogical frameworks to cultivate family literacy spaces, understanding the macro-level systems of AI integration in education, and studying the psychology required to design for cognitive well-being in a digital age.
Cultivating Decolonized Family Literacy Spaces
My first learning goal builds on this foundation: to cultivate decolonized family literacy spaces. I recently applied for the National Book Foundation Teacher Fellowship to build a multi-generational literacy circle from the ground up. Regardless of the fellowship’s outcome, pursuing this project has revealed community engagement and facilitation skills I still need to acquire. In practice, I must learn to build stronger partnerships with colleagues to effectively reach families. Pedagogically, I am working to unlearn my traditional role as the “expert” and act as a co-coordinator (Freire, 2018). I have to learn to navigate and dismantle the historical power dynamics that exist between schools and families (Reyes & Torres, 2007). This includes developing the specific, sometimes uncomfortable, skills required to mediate and participate in productive conflict, which means better understanding how theoretical frameworks support diverse voices and the struggle of ideological views. However, hosting a space for diverse voices is not enough. To reach this goal, I will use my network as a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) member and resources from the National Book Foundation, alongside core texts such as Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Scaling Impact Through Liberatory Design Thinking
My next goal is moving from using technology in my classroom to designing solutions that enable colleagues. Teachers need solutions, and the cognitive overload of this job has really motivated me to focus on building ones that protect their time. While I have started this through my Design Justice Prototype, I need to continue to learn more about how to use Design Thinking to scale ideas. I must learn to create accessible interventions for adult learners. To help teachers facing overload, I will refine complex AI tools and EdTech systems into clear guides and training. I want to strengthen skills in instructional design models, learner analysis, and digital learning evaluation methods. My task is to translate system changes into solutions that respect educators’ time. I will use IDEO’s Design Thinking for Educators and the National Equity Project’s Liberatory Design guides and plain language standards to remove barriers in my future prototypes.
Designing for Attention: Cognitive Well-being in a Digital Age
Finally, my third learning goal addresses the human cost of our educational system: teacher burnout and student digital apathy. To sustain my craft and reach students, I must increase my understanding of cognitive psychology, especially how the brain interacts with digital environments. I am witnessing a decline in reading scores, often driven by serious boredom; students passively consume digital content rather than engage with it. To counter this, I will study the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) to prompt “active processing” in adolescent brains and Cognitive Load Theory from an educator’s perspective. My resources include work from the Digitial Learning Institute on CTML and research from the Center for Humane Technology to guide ethical, human-centered design of future learning environments.
Conclusion
The profession’s systemic challenges remain, but my approach is changing. I do not need my exact career plans today; I commit to ongoing, intentional learning to bridge where I am and where I need to be, whether in the classroom or pivoting to systems-level design. I am working forward by creating literacy spaces, designing colleague solutions, and studying cognitive psychology to empower my community—and most importantly, do right by the kids.
I polished my writing with assistance from Grammarly AI.
References
Center for Humane Technology. (n.d.). AI in society.
Digital Learning Institute. (n.d.). Mayer’s 12 principles of multimedia learning.
Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 50th anniversary edition. Bloomsbury Academic.
IDEO. (2012). Design thinking for educators.
Liberatory Design. (n.d.). Liberatory design.
Reyes, L. V., & Torres, M. N. (2007). Decolonizing family literacy in a culture circle: Reinventing the family literacy educator’s role. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 7(1), 73-94.