Bullis Charter School

Bullis Charter School is a elementary and middle school located in Los Altos, California. The design team at Bullis chose a design challenge around recruiting high quality faculty. Based on this challenge, the K12 Lab Network team arranged for the members of the design day to interview experts in recruitment in analogous circumstances.

First, the group traveled to Google to learn more about how that company recruits the world's top talent. Next, we returned to Bullis to interview the Varsity rowing coach for Stanford to learn how she recruits world class athletes.

With our analogous inspiration in hand, we turned to several brainstorming prompts that drew on large, viral campaigns in a variety of domains: American Idol, the Army, a new tech start-up. 

The team brainstormed new ideas, selected the most game-changing idea and prototyped. Here are some examples of the prototypes that were developed:

• Bullis Beers & Bots

  Monthly meet up, pop up sessions hosted in a variety of locations where educators in different areas learn how to make robots while drinking beers with like-minded educators.  The Bullis staff teaches these sessions and then reaches out personally to participants they would like to recruit to join their team.

• Meet & Greet Bullis website

  Potential candidates interested in teaching at Bullis will fill out a questionnaire online, which will direct them to specific Bullis staff members which share similar personal interests and hobbies in an effort to create personal relationships between staff and teacher recruits during the interviewing process.

• Hack-A-Thon Design Challenge

  The BCS team would run a day-long design challenge on a topic of local importance [e.g. How might we reduce water use during the drought at school, in our town, and in California?]. The event would allow them to invite students, parents, and community members, including potential teacher candidates to experience what learning looks like at BCS.

• Personal Invite Videos

  Students and staff send personal selfie-like videos to former educators and community members inviting them to specific events or to interview for positions that become available.

In the afternoon, several Stanford education students came to Bullis to give feedback on the prototypes. From there, the team reflected on their learnings from the day.