My mother was a strong and demanding force in our family. She always said that I did things backwards, calling me Moishe Kapoyr. That wasn't a compliment. In Yiddish, a Moishe Kapoyr always did everything the other way around: backwards.

Could that be why I developed a methodology that I call Backwards Thinking™?

She and my father, who had the spirit of an artist but was an unsuccessful entrepreneur with only a 4^th-grade education, together raised two children who wanted to make a difference in the world.

Since the initial development of my methodology some 50 years ago at Westminster Elementary School in Venice, California, the Doreen Nelson Method of Design-Based Learning continues to be widely practiced in public and private schools at all grade levels and in all academic subjects.

Activating the spatial domain by having students roughly build and run a tabletop City, paired with my Backwards Thinking™ process for igniting creative thinking and integrating the curriculum, is proven to make learning stick. Even in the early development of my methodology, my students got better test scores when they no longer had to adhere to a rigid “frontward” learning process. Instead of feeling intimidated by test questions, they came to see themselves as courageous thinkers who could figure out answers.

The teachers I've been privileged to see embrace my methodology relate how students of all ages take ownership of everything that happens in “their” City as they shape it with their own hands, govern it through collaboration and decision-making, justify their inventions, delve into textbook studies, and revise their initial designs. It isn't surprising that students “get” how a City in the physical or virtual classroom promotes equity and social responsibility, and reflects their opinions, wishes, and dreams for a just future, giving purpose to their learning. It is teachers who make this possible. To me, they are society's true warriors.