Healing Garden Trail Map

by Eric Gonzalez-Payne

Grade 4Ages 9 to 10·Design and geography·Worksheet
Healing Garden Trail Map

A route, six stops, a sign at each, designed so a stranger can walk it alone.

The alone part is the design constraint and it is a hard one. Instructions that make sense to the author and not to anyone else are the standard first draft, and the fix is testing it on someone who was not involved.

We test on a younger class. They get lost, which is useful.

The page has the map frame, the sign template, and a testing protocol. Building a trail people actually walk is unusual for a school project and the version that survives testing is genuinely usable.

Eric Gonzalez-Payne

Eric Gonzalez-Payne

Founder and curriculum author

Ed.M. in Educational Leadership, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Published by Empathy Global LLC

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For the full social and emotional learning programme, see the Empathy Curriculum at empathy.kids.