“If you want to teach someone well, you have to know who you’re teaching.” One of the six core principles of improvement says make the work problem-specific and user-centered. As improvers, we know that practicing empathy is a critical approach to understanding the “users” of our education system, our students. In Tennessee, a networked improvement community found that when classroom teachers created journey maps of their students’ experiences, previously unknown challenges in the children’s lives came to light. In turn, the entire improvement network was better able to see the system that produces the current outcomes, another of the six core principles of improvement. Read more here.