Friends and colleagues -

What does it look like when learners are at the center of the design and delivery of their learning experience?

If you've participated in an HFLI workshop or series of sessions, you've felt a connection to the content within a culture of trust, collaboration, inclusion and play.

But we recently asked ourselves what actions are essential to ensure that we've centered on our learners to provide an experience that is 10x better, truly excellent, one that helps them build skills and gain confidence to solve challenges in their community. As you will see below, we are fortunate to have a pretty rigorous workshop calendar coming up, so this is top of mind for our team!

After lots of collaborative discussion, sticky notes, sharpies, and wall space, our team affirms that we center learners of all types (young people, nonprofit leaders, educators and more) when we:

• Attend to the whole person, by using culturally responsive principles, human-centered design, and whenever possible, accommodating personal preferences 
• Seek to understand the needs of the specific learner (group and individual) and desired outcomes to ensure thoughtful, customized design and adaptive delivery
• Provide content and materials that are "best in the business" and available for use after the end of the workshop (via HFLI Studio)
• Incorporate a social impact focus to create meaningful connections  
• Build towards increased individual capacity and commitments to take action 
• Support them developing an understanding of their power, role, responsibility and opportunity for collective impact 

While we are still working through how we describe and talk about our work, I hope we've shared the spirit, intent and actions with which we design and deliver every HFLI learning experience -- and that you will be able to join us for one of the workshops below, or reach out to us to create one specific to your organization.

And lastly, we are hiring for two positions in Detroit/Dearborn - a full-time Learning Experience Program Leader, and a part-time Accounting Assistant. We’d love it if you would share the job postings with your superstar friends and colleagues!

Michigan district/school leaders and educators - this one's for you!

Join HFLI and Education Elements

March 15-16 in Grand Rapids for the

MI Teacher Retention Design Challenge! It's our second two-day human-centered design challenge focused on developing targeted solution ideas that help schools and districts more effectively engage and activate their educators -- increasing the likelihood of retention, job satisfaction and positive impact.

Your team will leave with a tangible solution idea and actionable steps for feedback and further development.

Deeper Learning 2023 in San Diego

We LOVE this annual event and are excited to contribute to the community of learning later this month! Registered attendees, be sure to reserve your spot in our hands-on Deep Dive, "Inclusive Design for More Equitable Learning Communities," when scheduling opens on March 14. Spots often fill quickly so try not to wait.