After writing eloquently about what she had observed while visiting Design-Based Learning classrooms as an undergraduate, a teacher just starting her career dropped out of the two-year Design-Based Learning master's degree program, saying, “Design-Based Learning is for every kid, but not for every teacher.”

When I asked the other teachers in her group what they thought she meant, opinions varied:

“Some long-time teachers settle into a classroom practice and aren't comfortable with change.”

“Some feel that it will be too difficult for students to understand.”

“Some teachers assume it is about art-making or project-based learning and they already do that.”

“Or,” said one of the most seasoned teachers in the group, “they are skeptical, as I was before coming into the Design-Based Learning MA program. Because by the time I learn what new teaching practice is in the current vogue, something else replaces it. And if you don't like teaching a program that one administrator pushes you to teach, you wait it out until either that principal leaves or the program itself goes out of style. It's no wonder students suffer and learning doesn't stick.

“But Design-Based Learning,” he observed, “is a methodology, not ‘projects.' That is making all the difference for me and for my students—and learning a flexible teaching methodology makes me feel like a creative professional.”

Teachers returning to learning-by-doing say that they are attracted to my methodology because they feel that something is missing from their teaching practice. They are tired of hearing their students ask, “What will I ever use this for?” They are aching for solutions to the boredom they feel and want to find ways to engage themselves and their equally bored students to ensure learning success in all subjects. The same is true for teachers trying to engage nonverbal students and others with severe learning disabilities.

Universities, book companies, and people in power, who give money and start schools, claim to know how to “fix” education. Their solutions for professional teacher trainings and staff developments lean heavily toward spoon-fed, pre-digested experiences.

It troubles me that teaching is not thought of as an art and that teachers are not thought of as educator-artists. I want teachers to feel comfortable, energized, and focused as they learn something new, and to know that they can make mistakes as they learn. Mistakes and revisions are part of the creative process and everyday life.

In the early to mid-twentieth century, education was a hot topic in the United States, due to John Dewey, a towering figure in American education. In 1897, with the transformative effect of the Industrial Age on jobs and careers in full sway, Dewey famously said, “Education is a process of living, not preparation for future living.” For him, school needed to mirror an evolving society. For decades, Dewey's principles of education reigned across the nation.

Dewey's “learning by doing” philosophy was embraced by teacher training institutions and was a guiding force in public education until 1957. His philosophy fueled the creation of such landmark institutions as the experimental and interdisciplinary Black Mountain College in North Carolina (1933–1957), which drew iconoclastic artists Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph and Anni Albers, Robert Motherwell, Jasper Johns, and Walter Gropius among many others.

Then what happened? In 1957, Sputnik went up. The history-making launch of the Russian spacecraft sparked America's determination to compete with the then-U.S.S.R. and suddenly science and math took a dominant role in teacher education. Teaching students the scientific method was vital, assessing student learning consumed the nation's schools, and the social sciences and the arts became an afterthought.

This section describes ways that teachers have applied my Design-Based Learning, Backwards Thinking™ methodology to break out of formulaic teaching. As they left their comfort zone to express their own creative thinking in the delivery of the curriculum, their classrooms became places where learning jumped off the page.