“I believe that Systems Thinking has the potential to truly revolutionize how students learn and teachers practice.”
Engage Students in Their Learning and
Foster Their Power to Change the World.
Systems Thinking enhances all students’ abilities to think deeply, create knowledge, master course content, and affect change in their communities and their world.
Systems Thinking makes everything you teach more relevant, joyful, and responsive. Our workshops transform your practice, benefitting students and teachers.
Systems Thinking spurs teacher collaboration, excites families, and engages all learners. It’s research-based and correlates with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
Systems Thinking thrives on the knowledge and experiences that parents provide as children’s first teachers. Classroom learning enhances lived experiences.
Systems are linked entities organized to serve a particular purpose. Every system is also part of other, larger systems.
Systems Thinking is a way of seeing concepts, objects, and subjects as interconnected, rather than isolated. Understanding systems deepens and enhances learning.
Systems Thinking Schools is a program of the Wildwood Outreach Center at Wildwood School in Los Angeles, a world-renowned incubator of effective approaches in education.
Since 2000 we’ve assisted over 1,000 public and private schools globally to implement Wildwood-inspired, research-based teaching and learning that benefits all students.
Listen to conversations with classroom teachers offering ideas and insights for making a systems learning approach work with your students… at any grade level..
What Teachers Say About
Our Workshops
“I believe that Systems Thinking has the potential to truly revolutionize how students learn and teachers practice.”
“The format of this workshop is unlike any others that are typically led by one facilitator—it’s collaborative and highlights authentic teacher and student work.”
“You leave with fresh ideas that you are able to implement immediately.”
“Mind-blowing! Systems Thinking brings hope and inspiration to teaching, learning, and the future of the world.”
Elementary Campus
Middle-Upper Campus
Systems Thinking Schools is a program of the Wildwood Outreach Center at Wildwood School
© 2024 Wildwood School
STUDENTS
Systems Thinking enhances students’ abilities to think deeply, create knowledge, master course content, and affect change in their communities and their world.
Students in a Systems Thinking School create knowledge, not just seek the ‘right’ answers. Systems Thinking provides students a common language and tools to ask questions and seek connections across subject-area boundaries, fostering the intellectual nimbleness they’ll need to master new topics and skills as they progress through school and adulthood.
TEACHERS
Systems Thinking Schools’ workshops and coaching assist educators everywhere to transform their practice to benefit student learning-- making teaching more relevant, joyful, and responsive to students’ needs while still adhering to required standards.
All Systems Thinking Schools workshops are designed to help participants shift their practice and how they view the world. Our facilitators and coaches are current and former teachers who continue to deepen their Systems Thinking skills by learning from their students, and each other. Come learn with us at one of our workshops or coaching sessions.
SCHOOLS
Systems Thinking spurs teacher collaboration, excites families, and engages all learners; it’s research-based and correlates with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
Systems Thinking has had a long history within the natural and organizational sciences (see Donella Meadows and Peter Senge) and, more recently, in schools (see Cabrera & Cabrera and Curwen et al). It is also integral to the emergent field of Systemic Sustainability Education (see Davis et al) that can positively affect our world’s future.
PARENTS
You are your child’s first teacher; Systems Thinking thrives on the prior knowledge and experiences that you provide. Partnering with your school to bring this approach to their classroom enhances your child’s strengths and creates opportunities for their success, now and in the future.
Your child’s success in school and in life requires the ability to think, not just memorize information; to make meaning, rather than fill in blanks. Learning at a Systems Thinking School engages students in creating knowledge and understanding not only what they are learning but why it’s important.
Systems Thinking works because it adapts to the way your child learns. Regardless of learning style or need, teachers at Systems Thinking Schools employ a menu practices—reading, writing, drawing, conversation, movement, and more to help students create knowledge and confidently demonstrate what they’ve learned.
Fourth graders at Palms Elementary School identify, analyze, and diagram the systems that influence a story’s protagonist in order to gain a deeper understanding of a character (e.g., their relationships to other characters, institutions, their motivations, backstory, etc.)
Common Core State Standard: ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3
Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
A Kindergarten teacher at Palms Elementary School uses the students’ interest in insects to launch a systems analysis of the interrelationship of butterflies with the plants they feed on. With their teacher’s assistance, they research and plant a garden to attract butterflies, observe and discuss anatomic systems, then craft diagrams that demonstrate how butterflies and plants relate with other systems (e.g., the water cycle, food chains, the solar system, etc.).
Next Generation Science Standard: K-LS1-1
Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.
Systems thinking encourages students (and their teachers) to uncover the interconnectedness of all knowledge and deeply analyze the systems that underlie everything from subject-matter learning, to interpersonal dynamics and cause-and-effect relationships. Systems Thinking illuminates how children view the world, encouraging their wonder, observation, analysis, and discovery of how everything works. Systems Thinking focuses attention on relationships–how our world’s natural and human-made systems are interdependent and interconnected. When fostered in schools, Systems Thinking transforms teaching and deepens student thinking as children make connections within and across disciplines. As students build their Systems Thinking skills, they more fully understand themselves and their relationships to their schools, their communities, and our world. This understanding drives students to ask new questions and seek new connections as they find deeper purpose in their learning. Systems Thinking empowers students as change-makers who know that they can affect positive change now and in the future, so that people and our planet can thrive.