I first met Doreen Nelson in the early 1970s. She had made an appointment to tell me about what was then called City Building Education (now called the Doreen Nelson Method of Design-Based Learning). She asked for my support in introducing her methodology in the small elementary school district in north Los Angeles County where I was the new superintendent of schools. Like Ms. Nelson, my beliefs about teaching and learning were influenced by the teachings of John Dewey and the Progressive Education movement, and the education that my three children received at the University Elementary School at UCLA (now called the UCLA Lab School). I was pleased with the notion of bringing her work to my middle-class, blue-collar community, where I thought the children would benefit from a cross-curricular methodology rooted in the teaching of creative thinking skills.

I told Ms. Nelson that if one of my school principals and one or more teachers at that school were willing to try out her methodology, she would have my support. After listening to Ms. Nelson's presentation, one principal brought the methodology to her school where two teachers agreed to learn to apply it in their combined upper-grade classrooms. Although I didn't pay much attention to what was transpiring, I did visit the classroom several times. The principal and the teachers appeared to be satisfied with the response of the children.

When I accepted a superintendent position in a considerably larger school district several years later, Ms. Nelson contacted me about implementing Design-Based Learning in my new district. Two principals agreed to try the methodology in several classes. Satisfaction appeared to be high until I received a call from one of the principals. She said, “We love the program, everything is wonderful, but get Doreen out of my hair.” Like an overanxious mother, Ms. Nelson was much too intense as she worked to assure fidelity in her methodology's implementation. She later told me that the incident led her to better teach and support teachers.

Although I believed that Design-Based Learning had great potential for improving student learning outcomes, educators were under pressure to improve achievement test results and were loath to risk trying new pedagogies, especially those that were unfamiliar. Making changes in the way teachers teach, even in the most favorable conditions, is difficult. After all, the grammar of schooling has not changed significantly since the mid-nineteenth century. Doreen Nelson was not deterred—discouraged perhaps, from time to time, but never one to give up on her vision of finding a more effective way to teach creative and critical thinking skills that will last a lifetime.

After a 40-year career as a K–12 educator, 23 as a superintendent of four California school districts, I accepted a full-time position as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I kept in touch with Ms. Nelson. I watched how the presentation of her pedagogy, first introduced 50 years earlier, matured and how successful her approach to training teachers became. Doreen has taught her methodology to cadres of teacher leaders in a master's degree program at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, and in summer institutes at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. I am delighted that Design-Based Learning has been adopted as an instructional method by several school districts. I am especially pleased to have introduced her Design-Based Learning methodology to Center X, the teacher education program that I was part of at UCLA.

There is now an Endowed Design-Based Learning Directorship in Doreen's name at Center X, a position currently held by one of Doreen's former master's degree students.

I am now retired from my second career as an adjunct professor and I am confident that the responsibility for carrying on Doreen's lifetime work is in good hands at UCLA, where it will grow the Design-Based Learning pedagogy to benefit future generations of learners.