Getting Curious About the Future
Enjoy the following exchange between Carla Silver, Executive Director of Leadership+Design, and Lorna Torrado DEIB and SEL Director at the Girls’ School of Austin and one of our Leaders in Residence this year. They discuss their shared love for Futurist Thinking and how you might get curious about the future at your school.
CARLA: Hey there, Lorna! I’m excited to have his dialogue with you about your growing interest in futurist thinking. You have really embraced this work and brought it to your school and, more importantly, to the students at the Girls’ School of Austin. As most people know, I love to geek out about the future, and I’m so glad you do too.
Last year you were a L+D Fellow and started to play in the “Sandbox of the Future” (although due to the diminishing global supply of sand, in the future, you might actually be playing in a box of wood chips or mulch). You were hooked! I’d love to know why Futurist Thinking is so appealing to you? And why do you think it’s important for students to learn?
LORNA: Hi Carla! I’m really excited about this conversation—we’re definitely on the same page when it comes to geeking out about Futurist Thinking! As an L+D Fellow, we’re introduced to a variety of frameworks to build into our personal and professional toolkits, and while I found value in all of them, Futurist Thinking completely captivated me.
As an adult, it’s easy to forget to make space for creativity in the day-to-day, so discovering Futurist Thinking felt like a game-changer. As you know, it’s a tool that helps you channel your creativity toward imagining new possibilities—not about predicting the future like some crystal ball. By looking at the world through a more curious lens (or "strangesight"), you start noticing signals for things you wouldn’t have thought of before. For example, who would've imagined monk robots being used to engage younger generations with religion? If that can happen, what else is possible? The mind starts to race with ideas for creating a better world!
Currently, I’m the DEIB and SEL Director at the Girls’ School of Austin, a small K-8 independent school in Austin, Texas. Over the years, I’ve been developing and delivering lessons that focus on understanding diversity alongside the development of socio-emotional skills. For me, it’s simple: if we don’t practice self-awareness and emotional regulation, how can we ever build true empathy and social-awareness toward people who are different from us? Understanding our own identities and emotions is key to seeing how social systems are set up to provide unequal access, privileges, and resources to some groups over others.
When I first encountered Futurist Thinking, it clicked. I knew it was the missing piece I wanted to add to our DEIB and SEL curriculum. If we teach students how to regulate their emotions and develop diversity literacy—understanding social systems and the inequalities built into them—then Futurist Thinking becomes the perfect tool to help them imagine better, more equitable futures. It’s a way to give them a hopeful space to dream, create, and feel empowered about changing the world, instead of feeling stuck or pessimistic about it.
Have you had the opportunity to do some Futurist Thinking with different generations? Have you noticed any differences in how people approach this framework? (or maybe educators versus boards?)
CARLA: First of all, I am so excited about the possibility of getting futurist thinking into the hands of students. Our friend Lisa Kay Solomon at Stanford often poses the question: “If we teach history to students, why can’t we also teach the future?” If we value a robust history curriculum for students, why wouldn’t we offer a course in futurist thinking? It’s the yin and yang. After all, our students are going to spend 99% of the rest of their lives in the future, so we should provide some opportunities for thinking about it in school.
We have done some intergenerational futurist thinking with schools, and it is really important, because adults are planning for the future that our students are going to inherit, and younger people need to be involved in those conversations. We have had students join us in futurist thinking sessions as delegates from the future. They have arrived sharing what they imagine the future might look like. Students are so creative - way more imaginative than adults - and they bring with them all of the things they really care about, what they worry might change or not change in the future, and all of the possibilities for for future innovations - both technological and social. They are inherently optimistic too. We need to be Good Ancestors, not just for this current generation of students but for the many generations to come.
I really love how you have integrated DEIB and SEL with futurist thinking. Do you have some specific examples of things you have done with middle school students that get them thinking about the future? How have they received this work?
LORNA: I’m glad you brought up Lisa Kay Solomon’s quote. I believe history shows us how previous generations have used certain tools and played the game, but when we equip younger generations with futurist thinking skills, we give them the power to mix and match those pieces into endless possibilities. It’s a way to empower them and inspire hope for the future.
As adults and educators, one of our key roles is to bridge the gap between current systems and new ways of thinking about the future. That’s why I love how you involve student voices when working with adults—fresh perspectives are so valuable. A big challenge for adults is balancing the inherited ways of doing things with the need to make space for the new and unknown. As facilitators of change, it’s crucial to recognize when our own biases and fears might be blocking the path for the future to unfold in unexpected, surprising ways that might have nothing to do with us!
With all of these in mind, my DEIB+SEL+Futurist Thinking lessons at the Girls’ School of Austin are intentionally centered around students’ ideas. While I always over-prepare my lessons, I also try to stay flexible, allowing students to take their ideas wherever they need to go—even if, from my adult (and sometimes jaded) perspective, some ideas seem a little out there. For example, I once created a scenario where students woke up to find out they had to take a mandatory “gap year” after high school. Their reactions were all over the place—some were unsure of how to spend an entire year with complete freedom to decide what to do. One student even said, “How is this going to affect my already planned-out career? I’d probably just sleep!” On the other hand, some students were excited about the possibility of traveling, trying new hobbies, and learning new languages. We expanded on the idea by discussing how some families are able to provide this opportunity for their kids today and how that’s tied to privileges and social systems. Who gets to experience these things and who doesn’t? And what can we do to make life-changing experiences like this more accessible to more students?
I also have a fun story from a futurist thinking exercise with third graders. They were asked to imagine the future of public libraries, and their designs included trees, nature, and animals inside. When I asked them why, they explained that in their vision, they could read to the animals as a thank-you for all they do for us and as a peace offering for the way we’ve treated the environment. And of course, they could pet them too! I followed up by talking about what libraries provide beyond just books, highlighting how they already function as their own little ecosystem where people help take care of each other for free.
As the program expands, I hope to have students create “artifacts from the future,” so they can see that some of their ideas have the potential to become reality and help create a better world.
On that note, I’d love to hear—what’s one of the most interesting or insightful futurist thinking moments you’ve experienced, either as a facilitator or a participant?
CARLA: Lorna, your story about the third graders is just amazing. It’s easy for adults to say, “that could never happen” but there are already signals that exist for those imagined libraries out there in the form of cat cafes and neighborhood little free libraries. In an increasingly digital world, it is highly probable that we will see an increased value in analog experiences that are connecting humans with the natural world and that are multi-sensory. The idea of a library that intersects with nature and contains trees and animals and other very tactile elements feels not just possible but probable and definitely preferable, which is what futurists are trying to consider when they imagine what is yet to come.
I just had an amazing futurist thinking session with The Thacher school in Ojai, CA. In one of the opening activities a group of school leaders and board members were wrestling with the very real threat of wildfires to the school. It didn’t take them long to imagine a devastating wildfire destroying the classrooms and residence halls and making the campus unusable for the foreseeable future. It then took the group an equally short amount of time to begin to imagine how they could continue to serve the students, not with online solutions, but instead offer in-person classes as well as their signature horse and outdoor programs in regional micro-campuses until the school could be rebuilt. Would it be hard? Yes. Would it be possible? Absolutely. Would it be preferable to having students take on-line classes from their bedrooms at home? No doubt. You could hear a collective sigh of relief and even excitement in the room as this team shared some of their ideas. One person said, “I really underestimated how this kind of thinking could make me feel more optimistic - even about a truly devastating possibility.”
I think that is the power of futurist thinking. We think that imagining the future will be apocalyptic, but it's not. Participants often discover how much agency they have in solving big challenges or addressing troubling signals. But they also realize that there are many signals of hope that exist as well, from fringe medical innovations to inventions that have the promise to make a significant difference to environmental sustainability and climate change.
This conversation has made me more hopeful. Thank you Lorna. You have really inspired me.
LORNA: Thank you for sharing your experience with the futurist thinking session at The Thacher School. It's truly powerful to witness a room full of dedicated school leaders transform a perceived challenge into an exciting opportunity to enhance their students' educational journey. No matter our age, futurist thinking sparks those "aha" moments where obstacles turn into chances for creativity, growth, and innovation. As an educator, futurist, and lifelong learner, I’m confident that futurist thinking will become a key element of our personal and collective strength in this interconnected world. Integrating this "superpower" into our schools is one of the many ways we can give back as good ancestors for future generations.
If you are curious about the future and bringing this kind of thinking back to your school community, please join us for WTF: What’s the Future in Cambridge, MA, April 17 and 18. This program is most beneficial to school teams who want to build shared language and frameworks about the future. It is especially relevant for any school that is considering a strategic plan in the next 12-24 months. But we also have individual participants who just want to learn about futurist thinking and bring it back to their school. We have pricing for school teams of 3-6 and for individuals. This is a highly experiential, interactive program that includes time travel and imaginative thinking. You will return to your school - but your thinking about the future will never be the same again. We cannot take responsibility for any changes to your molecular structure. If you want to hear more about the work schools L+D Does around futurist thinking, have a listen to Carla on NewView Edu, the NAIS Podcast with Morva McDonald where she talks about designing for the future of schools.
