The principal of a top Moscow school is seeking to reconcile the differing interests of stakeholders in education and career preparation. While schools aim to develop students' skills and interests, parents often dictate career choices, and students graduate without being able to choose their own path. Additionally, graduates struggle with the transition to work due to a lack of practical experience and socialization training. The principal believes students need more independence and opportunities to explore careers hands-on in order to find their best fit.

2. Renald Lachashvili
Exercise presentation for MOOC of
Design Thinking Action Lab
By Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, Stanford University
Empathy and Define

3. Empathy Map

4. SAY
1. There is a huge distance between a school and working place, where a person receives
the competence necessary for work, and a school works mainly to identify abilities and
interests of students.
2. Last years we stop asking our primary students WHO YOU WANT TO BE? Now it is
senseless, instead that we ask them about skills - WHAT YOU WISH TO LEARN? And
strangely, students of the first form, led by their parents, can answer this question: I
want to learn to read, to be a leader, to speak English...
3. …advanced parents choose the people who will teach their children.
4. This is very important - not only the skills but also the moral foundations, role models
they can follow...people who could train them to such an extent that they could
improve independently their skills in the field they choose.
5. …between school and work is a huge distance, however, the school must help kids to
try plenty of different activities, so that kids could get their own experience about
what is inside this world of the professions.
6. And it is very important to get away from parental ambitions - I don't know how in the
world, but here in Russia, parents play an important role determining the professional
direction of their children, if only it is not connected with some sport or art or
something else, what children get used to…such professional activities as ballet or
circus...what is the child engaged in from early childhood.
7. it is very important to give children to try themselves in a large variety of practices that
will determine what they will do...if it is a work with people - we need to practice
communication, for a work with information – to practice communications
technologies (ICT), for a work with nature - go to expeditions etc… to entering a work,
they already experience what it means to be a professional in that field.

5. 8. ...then they pass the socialization at the place of work, which forms the culture and will lead a
person to a particular occupation.
9.…it is important to show the kids that the skills they have acquired, could be useful to them in
the particular occupation. And they need to apply correctly their skills and to develop it
further in a particular direction.
10. During their first years at the University, they may often go to work as apprentices when
they feel that their actual learning is not the best choice for the beginning of their
professional activity. This means they will try as it looks from inside, and if they don't like it,
they will look for anything else. I think that it is not the desire to earn money, and not the
pursuit of excellence in the profession…
11. We did not conduct special studies, but from my conversations with the alumni I know that
most of students after school are not sure in their choice of future profession. And the
desire to justify their choice can push them to work...
12. I honestly don't know how they think. In my opinion, they do not think at all on this
choice…they have to pass their first stage - to finish school well, and parents think about
further stages, here in Russia or abroad - it depends on the capacities of parents, and
children already agree with it or not…I cannot say anything on this subject.
13.…overcoming the barrier of matriculation and the ability to move around the world, to any
University, where they want.

6. 14. …then they have to solve the issues connected with entering foreign colleges and
Universities. They need to finish a foreign College or the school of International
Baccalaureate, and then enter Universities all over the world.
15. As for adaptation to the first place of work, I think that school here can teach only some
communication, ability to integration in the team, understanding all that people around you,
what they are, how do you achieve your position in the team. This is the first that schools
can provide, and that it successfully does.
16. Second that the school can give, is student's confidence in his own strength, his talents,
determination of his abilities that he is capable to develop, and if he will develop these
abilities, he can achieve success in this field.
17. Third the school can show, are examples of how does it work in famous firms and
companies, we may invite and show people who walked the stairs and reached certain
heights, and if not heights, simply the confidence of their mental forces. Some kind of
success stories, the stories of leadership.
18. The school can show only possible directions, it could not take responsibility to give a clear
signal to teens - here you go to work and you shall prosper.
19. School can give several skills and reinforce the confidence of a young man or a young
woman in that they are in demand and they are talented. School can describe the broad
ways in front of them which they can pass over using their skills and talents.

7. 20. How could the school solve the psychological task of strengthening self-confidence? Most likely, by the
implementation of real projects that students can complete on their own or with the support of adult
mentors.
21. Considering the school as a place of work, I think that unfortunately, 80% of those who come to us after
receiving teacher education, are unable to teaching , and they have to get rid of, or it is
necessary to recommend them another way. And those 20% who remain, for which you can do
something: first of all, we need mentors, who are painstakingly interact with them every day and to lead
them all the way, because communication with a groups of 25 students of different ages not always lead
delight and pleasure. Yong teacher have to understand that there are a lot of technologies associated
with attracting and retaining attention, based on teacher’s own life baggage. So it is very important to
have the escort mentor...
22.…usually it takes about 3 years of additional internship until he or she will become an experienced
teacher, capable first of all, to interact with students who are uneasy.
23. I think it is the same in any work. A young man or woman comes, and if you look from the point of view
of an employer, it is always interesting, as a young man or a girl - how can they manifest themselves.
Therefore, there is so called rite of transition, something like a series of tests, challenges, in a good
sense, connected with struggle, which they must pass over.
24. At school they have to overcome all of that and have to want to continue the activities in the work
which they have chosen. And if in the early stages they demonstrate any doubt, then we must part, and
if the person shows hard work and patience, we have to do next, watching her, pushing and giving
opportunities. Well, then she can take care of someone who is under. I mean students.
25. The school can teach and train students on a special kind of responsibility for the fulfillment of learning
tasks, and the school evaluates how a student performs. The work teaches the different responsibility -
associated with self-contained setting real goals, real problems solving, expenditure of real resources
and obtaining real results. That is a difference.

8. DO
1. She organized two-year pedagogical internship at the school
2. She personally looks for and selects teachers
3. She turned project works in ubiquitous students activities and now
students' projects go beyond school
4. She develops the game-based learning at the school
5. She has organized children's summer programs and biological expeditions
to 4 national parks
6. She collects data of success of school alumni after the first year at
Universities
7. She invites alumni of past years to the school
8. She has transformed the school to the learning organization, she supervises
the training of teachers and she continuously learns herself
9. She won several grants to provide for each student more than 1 computer
in her school
10. She works not less than 60 hours a week
11. She is active Facebook user
12. During the interview she had used two smartphones a few times

9. FEEL
1. She perked up when talking about the school as an employer
2. She was shackled, when we talked about the school, which should prepare the
students for future work
3. She was strained, when we discussed the interaction between school and parents
4. She enthusiastically talked about the psychological methods for the development of
students' self-confidence
5. She felt discouraged when trying to understand why I interview her
6. She is clearly worried about students whose parents make decisions about the
choice of profession
7. She was sympathetic to children who from early age have to think about the skills
they need in life
8. She imagined herself on the place of young teachers and she was upset by their
problems of interaction with difficult students
9. It was evident how she is concerned about the thankless role of the school in the
formation of student’s personality: all the good in it is considered as a merit of
parents, nature and the student, and everything bad is to blame the school
10. She strain of trying to find a logical sequence in my questions, while I led the
conversation responding to her answers and changing the course of a pre-drawn plan
11. She is very worried when she said that students do not imagine their future
profession

10. THINK
1. She dove into heavy reflections on the role of parents in carrying out professional
selection of students
2. She strenuously thought how to convince me that students need more
independence
3. She freely considered socialization, values, rituals and other cultural concepts
4. She tried to think as a school and University graduates and to imagine the difficulties
they face
5. She tried to think as an employer in her own school and she remembered how she
had acted to help new teachers to go better through socialization and become a useful
part of the staff.
6. She thought about what is the job of a mentor, and realized anew its key role in the
development of new teachers
7. She began to think like an out-of-school employer, becoming aware that in any work
difficulties of socialization on the first place of work are similar
8. She suddenly understood why employers are looking for employees with work
experience: they don't want to be the first place of work and have problems of primary
socialization even with a brilliant University graduate
9. In her mind, she constantly came back to the same concepts: RESPONSIBILITY and
SELF-DETERMINATION.
10. She was thinking all the time how important it is to provide the student to make an
informed choice
11. Closer to the end of the interview, she began to realize that the current situation
with the transition from school to work contains a systemic problem, which is difficult
to solve by partial measures.

11. Description of the
stakeholder

12. I have interviewed the Principal of a state school, one of the
best in Moscow. She is a young woman firmly standing on her
feet, whose face expresses a strange mixture of fatigue,
determination and dreaminess. She holds office for 10 years
and she has PhD degree, she has no children of their own but
she has the school, where study more than 1,700 children from
3 to 18 years.
She employs more than 200 teachers, managers and
support staff, she spends at work 6 days a week, and her
working day usually lasts more than 10 hours. She has to
integrate all of school staff, students and their parents in the
educational process. She is fond of innovations and especially,
ICT and mobile network lifestyle.
She is a thoughtful and attentive interlocutor, quite open and
sincere.

13. Problem statement

14. STAKEHOLDER NEEDS A WAY TO
reconcile the interests of all stakeholders:
students and their parents, all the school staff,
Colleges, Universities, employers (at least - its
HR-managers)
BECAUSE…

15. Insight

16. …there is a substantial difference between the interests of the
most important stakeholders. Even the Principal of the school,
connecting in the one person both “school” and “work”, have
strikingly changed when I had asked her opinions from that two
positions.
In confirmation, I present my comments with links to the
statements in the sections SAY, DO, FEEL, THINK, labeling them
by number (according to their numbers in the sections, for
example S3, D2, F5, T8 and so on).

17. •School and work have different objectives (S1, T11).
•Ambitions of parents too much influence the professional
orientation of children (S6, T1, T2, F3, F6), who actually are not
able to consciously choose a direction of the further education
(S11, S12, F11).
•Young graduates from Universities could not immediately start
full-scale operation and are in need of socialization and additional
training (S8, S21, S22, S23, T4, T8, F8). Unfortunately, many of
them are forced to leave the profession (S21).
•Corporate training is forced to compensate for that was not
received by students at the University - mainly in the field of
practical activities (S21, D1).
•School, in turn, limits its role only to formation of common cultural
skills (S15, F2), while trying to provide for the students some
experience from communicating with people demonstrating
examples of professional success (S17, D6, D7).