Falling in Love with the Problem: Talking Education with ReinventED

To anyone who’s ever wondered how to start an interesting conversation with a high school or college student, I have a tip: bring up, no matter how casually or in passing, a problem in education. (Bonus points if you ask them about their own experience.) I’ve seen it happen time and time again: students get riled up about education, because it’s a live, sensitive area rife with problems at most every level.

Keaton Wadzinski and Jacob Hardin have found a pain point in education, and they’ve been using design thinking since day one to think into existence an organization dedicated to solving the problems that plague and frustrate today’s students.

“I had a case of ‘senioritis’ so bad I was considering dropping out of high school with a month left to go,” said Wadzinski, a former engineering student turned education major and founder of the venture. He says his initial exposure to design thinking in the engineering school just months after finishing high school made him realize he wanted to apply that kind of problem solving to education itself.

After getting involved in the education conversation as a first year at UVa, he took his ideas through the 4.0 Schools Community Catalyst Program and launched ReinventED Labs in 2015. 

Now heading into its second year of operation, ReinventED gathers and mobilizes those passionate about creating better ways to learn and teach, both at UVa and in Charlottesville at large. The venture has already launched a number of programs that are picking up speed in the community, including HackCville’s Rethink group and Co-Create UVa, a student consultancy group offering in-class observation and feedback for instructors.

“A lot of TAs really love this,” said Hardin, who became involved with the project in his first year and is now ReinventED’s Director of Communications. Though initially cynical about the possibility of change in education, his attention was captured by the Co-Create project after Wadzkinski (his Resident Advisor at the time) asked him if he’d be willing to help proofread a grant proposal for the project, which he himself in time would come to manage.

“There’s a big misunderstanding,” Hardin said, “where students just need to know that teachers want them to succeed. … It’s this myth that teachers are out there to fail you.” Consultancy, they say, opens opportunities for students and instructors to communicate about what’s working well. Far from encouraging a passive, consumerist mindset in students, they want to see students come to own a sense of “authentic, participatory agency” as learners, and aim to create communities where this is possible.

“We’re trying to create platforms where students are engaged members of the learning experience,” said Wadzinski of ReinventED’s larger purposes, which already exceed the boundaries of UVa’s Grounds. Recently, for example, they conducted focus groups with over two hundred Albemarle County students to help inform the district’s application to a ten million dollar grant, for which they were named finalists.

As a collective impact organization, they recognize a need to “fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” as the startup saying goes. “Education is a really tricky, systems-level, complex problem,” Wadzinski explained. “It’s a bunch of problems that are individually highlighted and solved entrepreneurially, but they’re connected to one another.”

As they envision a future for education, they say they’ve witnessed an urge to scale rapidly (à la charter school movement) that they want to resist, focusing on Charlottesville and education in the local context first before they move on to anything bigger.

Developing the venture as a business through the i.Lab has brought them opportunities to connect with community and mentors, as well as grow in skill and effectiveness as an organization.

“I hit a pivotal point where I realized I needed to better focus on my skills as a manager,” Wadzinski reflected, pointing out that their mentor Neeraj Bhagat had been particularly instrumental in helping him reshape his approach to managing the venture.

They’ve had the inspiration, the pain point, and the people to get things done—the trick is just putting it all together for maximal impact.

“I am actively working to improve this school that I have loved since I was eight years old,” Hardin said, trying to suppress a grin. And as they rally around this common problem to solve in this place they love, they really are finding people who want to jump in and co-create this better future.