Design Educator
Teaching design as a discipline in Israel’s high-school Bagrut track — two years of studio classes and year-long final projects.
Education · Design Thinking
Two years, thirty-plus student projects carried from research to finished, defended work. The change I care about most: students stop asking what to make and start deciding for themselves.
- Type
- Ministry of Education · Teaching role
- Year
- 2024 — Present
- Role
- Design Educator & Mentor
- Sector
- Education
- Disciplines
- Education, Design Thinking
The Brief
In Israel’s design Bagrut track, a student spends an entire year on a single project — research, ideation, execution, defense. I taught the studio that gets them there: a fundamentals-of-design class, a mini-projects class that rehearses the full arc twice, and then the Bagrut year itself. The real brief was never the artifacts — it was turning teenagers into people who can think through design.
The Approach
The curriculum is three escalating loops — fundamentals, mini-projects, then the Bagrut year — each handing more of the process to the student. My rule is that the method stays visible: students should always know which step they’re in and why. By the final year my job is mostly critique; the design is theirs.
Process — 03
Vocabulary before voice
Composition, hierarchy, color, type — taught as tools for thinking, not decoration. A student who can name what isn’t working can fix it without me.
The full arc, twice, at small scale
Two complete projects in a year — research to final piece. Small enough that failing is cheap, complete enough that the process becomes muscle memory before the year that counts.
One project, one year, their problem
Students choose a problem they genuinely care about and carry it from research to finished work. I run the structured critique that keeps it honest — the studio rhythm, adapted for teenagers.
Design Decisions
Cognitive rationaleMeet the cause with a method
Students often arrive with a cause and no way in — an issue they care about deeply, and no idea how design answers it. One student wanted to move an audience numbed to facts on a divisive public issue. Instead of arguing, we designed an illustrated parable — a short story readers could love before learning its real subject. Empathy first, context after.
Room to make it personal
I write briefs general enough that students can steer them somewhere personal — and they do. Projects on childhood depression, on grief. I see making as a form of healing, and the studio is built so that can happen without ever being assigned.
The review is the lesson
Every project moves through structured critique — the same cadence studios use. Learning to receive, apply, and eventually give critique is the most durable design skill I can teach.
Outcome
Two years, thirty-plus student projects carried from research to finished, defended work. The change I care about most: students stop asking what to make and start deciding for themselves.
Reflection
Teaching is the most honest test of a design process I’ve found: if a method only works in my hands, it isn’t a method. Every year of students makes mine sharper.