Chapter 1: Innovation Essentials
Strategies to Spark Innovation in Education
By Lindsey Sanborn, September 8th, 2025
What makes us repeat the same strategies in schools and expect different results? By running the same old playbook, we are preparing our students for a reality that no longer exists. In a climate that is being reshaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI), now more than ever students need to develop future-proof skills that encourage resiliency and adaptability in the face of a lot of unknowns. If I had to pick one future-proof skill to start with, it would definitely be innovation. In a world defined by rapid change, innovation is the engine of progress, allowing us to adapt, solve complex problems, and create new opportunities. So, how might we empower students as innovators?
While school districts across the country invest significant resources in technology hardware and software, innovation in schools must ignite first through mindset shifts. This starts with educators who empower and trust students to drive their own learning. This requires educators and administrators to relinquish traditional teaching methods that rely on passively transferring knowledge from adults to students. Educators must buckle up and embrace the discomfort of putting students in the driver’s seat, even if it feels like a very bumpy ride.
Innovators are not just problem solvers, but problem finders, who unearth challenges, empathize with those most impacted and develop aligned solutions. Through this process, innovators create new methods, products and solutions to drive progress. This may seem like a tall order when we consider the pressure in schools to keep up with state standards and deliver impressive test scores. As an antidote to this urgency, I actually believe that small steps are the best way to test out new strategies, learn and iterate. In order to cultivate students as innovators, I think every educator can start with these three hacks in their classrooms:
Encourage boundless thinking: There’s a tendency to impose constraints and limits on students, perhaps as a way to encourage them to think realistically. One small step to encourage students to develop as innovators is to challenge students to generate ideas as if there were no limits or constraints. When students have the space to come up with wild ideas that may not be feasible, they are more likely to test the boundaries of what they think is possible. This type of creative thinking is like a muscle; you need to intentionally work on it to strengthen it. Start small by prompting students to consider what they would create/develop/make happen if they had the power of a magic wand and unlimited resources.
Normalize and Reframe failure: Students face mounting pressure to be perfect. Rather than chasing perfection, innovators use failure as a learning tool. They take time to dissect the root cause of their failures and then iterate on new solutions. Educators have an opportunity to flip the pursuit of perfectionism on its head by encouraging students to make sense of what failure means to them and work to flip the script on seeing failure as a learning tool. Try this out by having students keep a failure log where they document things they’ve tried that didn’t work, why they didn’t work and what their next steps were to iterate. This reframes failure as a dialogue, where students become curious about learning and iterating to make improvements.
Bad ideas: Are your students struggling to brainstorm innovative solutions? While it may seem counterintuitive, I’ve seen a lot of success in encouraging students to start with brainstorming bad ideas only. This helps students to generate wild ideas without placing judgment on how good they might be. Sometimes those bad ideas can even be reframed as good ideas. Turn it into a fun competition: who can come up with the absolute worst idea possible? This will encourage students to generate as many ideas as possible without the constraint of what’s feasible.
With these small steps, students have the opportunity to think more expansively, moving beyond the status quo. Do you have a practice or strategy that cultivates your students as innovators? Join our community, IYC Inside, and share with us!
Lindsey Sanborn is the Education Partnerships and Program Coordinator at the Iovine and Young Education Group, where she leads programs to empower high school students through challenge-based learning. Her career, which began as a 4th and 5th-grade inclusion teacher, includes roles as a User Experience Researcher for Atlanta Public Schools and a Data and Analytics Associate for Springboard Collaborative. She holds master's degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
What the Heck is Challenge-Based Learning: An Internal Dialogue with An Educator
By Sophia Baez
When I first heard the term Challenge-Based Learning (CBL), I honestly thought, “here we go, yet another flashy pedagogical approach in education that is going to inject rigor in classrooms. To have students and educators work, ‘harder, better, faster, stronger’ in the words of Daft Punk. Is there going to be another wave of rigor crashing down on classrooms all over the country, especially in this ‘Post-Pandemic World’...whatever that means…”
Well, I know what it means. It means chronic absenteeism on the rise(1), teachers leaving the classroom at alarming rates(2), and of course students with tremendous learning loss(3). So when it came to my initial impulse on the term CBL I [internally] screamed, “isn’t learning challenging enough?”
Well, luckily, after some reading, listening, and understanding it was made clear the CBL is not centered around arbitrarily infusing challenging materials into an existing curriculum. In fact, the core of CBL has students addressing issues within their community with a design thinking approach. “Oh no, not another concept. These concepts were thrown around in the ivory towers of my graduate school, but can they really work in classrooms?” The reality is, for many educators and students, the schools have changed—I mean for goodnesssakes when I first started teaching Airpods did not exist. And for many in the classroom, social media was an idea fit for the sci-fi section of Blockbuster.
“Fair point,” I countered to myself. So here is what I discovered:
The process of CBL is as follows:
Community, Empathy, and Student Voice: The heart of CBL. “Wow, student voice at the center?” During my decade in classrooms, I found student voices were stifled, silenced, and separated from their own experiences. Because the reality is while some of the challenges have stayed the same [“Yes, high school students still have test anxiety”], many have changed. So we need to hear from students the challenges that they see and face.
Challenge Prompt: Think of this as the quest, students are about to embark on. But unlike in the Hero’s Journey where a wise mage bestows the challenge from some prophecy, in Challenge-Based learning, the students are listening to key stake-holders to co-create the prompt, which is key in the design thinking process. Prompts are derived from industry, non-profit, and content standards, rooted in student interest. Having student involvement in this process grants them agency and self-confidence to tackle the world. We know students are facing challenges, why not start with those in their own backyards? “Now I want to have a Lord of the Rings Marathon.”
Ideation: The brainstorm session, assuming resources and time are unlimited. “Unlimited?” Now, I was getting excited. I found that the limitations have taken up real estate in my classroom–not enough time, family buy-in, money, or whatever it is. But even if the final product was not limitless, why does that have to stop the brainstorming process? It’s like cancelling the soccer game at the sight of a rain cloud. “Let the kids play!”
Prototype: Begins with low-fidelity solutions while also assessing feasibility, viability, and desirability. “It feels like I am in Spy Kids or something!” Wrong demographic? My apologies. Having students not only have to think and reflect if their concept would actually address their needs and the needs of their community are questions engineers, politicians, consultants chew on in offices and universities across the world. Students are having multiple rounds of this way of thinking even a semester.
Iteration: Where students engage with stakeholders and users to gather insight. Does the solution work or not? A key aspect of CBL is having students speak to industry leaders. “Students talking to industry leaders. That is pretty cool.” I thought so too.
While my first thoughts about CBL were suspicious…and maybe a little bit snarky. “Hey!” I really started to see the vision and the value of this learning model. The names and faces of dozens of students flashed that would have benefited from learning with a CBL lens–asking questions upon questions without thinking of the exam, addressing challenges that hit close to home, and dreaming without limitation. Imagine, even if for a moment, that classrooms were hubs of students' creation and discovery instead of filling stations of teacher knowledge. What would that look like? Sound like? Feel like? “Seems, sounds, and feels pretty incredible to me.” I agree, internal dialogue, I agree.
Sophia Baez M.Ed, is the Innovation Coach for the Iovine Young Center in Miami Dade County, where she draws on her experience as a teacher, Associate Dean of Students, and Associate Director of Multicultural Affairs. She is passionate about collaborating with educators to foster supportive and data-driven educational environments, recognizing that a positive teacher experience is crucial for student success. Sophia received her Bachelors degree from Brandeis University and her Masters degree in Educational Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.