How Thinking in Systems Transformed My Classroom

I hit a wall in my teaching career when I realized my students were passive recipients of information. No matter how engaging my lectures were, they’d forget 80% of the material by the next test. That’s when I started experimenting with thinking in systems. Instead of delivering content in a linear fashion, I redesigned my lessons as interactive play frameworks. Each unit became a system with its own rules, feedback loops, and balance points. Students didn’t just listen—they interacted, made choices, and saw the consequences of those choices unfold in real time.

For example, in my history class, I turned the Industrial Revolution into a simulation. Students took on roles—factory owners, workers, politicians—and their decisions (like setting wages or passing laws) created feedback loops that affected the entire “economy” of the classroom. The rules were based on historical constraints, and the balance came from the tension between progress and equity. What happened? Students who’d previously zoned out during lectures were now debating policy, negotiating deals, and—most importantly—remembering the material because they’d experienced it. Test scores improved, but more importantly, so did their ability to think critically about cause and effect.

The real transformation, though, was in how my students saw themselves. They stopped asking, “What do I need to know for the test?” and started asking, “How does this system work, and how can I influence it?” They began designing their own play frameworks for group projects, using game systems thinking to structure their research and presentations. One group even created a board game to explain climate change, complete with rules, loops, and balance to model ecological systems. That’s when I knew this approach was more than a teaching tool—it was a way to empower students to become systems thinkers in their own lives.