Matiq Labs | Year 1 Impact Report | RUSD Learning & Design Lab

Dear Friends, Partners, and Champions for Educators,

When we launched Matiq Labs in 2025, we made a bet: that the people closest to students — teachers, coaches, and site leaders — hold the knowledge and wisdom needed to redesign their own schools. Our first year of partnership with Rialto Unified School District tested that bet. What we found confirmed what we'd always believed.

Educators showed up. They named inequities they'd long sensed but rarely had space to examine. They designed solutions rooted in their students' realities. They built community across schools and disciplines. And they did it all in the middle of full teaching loads, family responsibilities, and the everyday weight of working in under-resourced systems.

Year 1 was not a pilot. It was proof.

Proof that when educators are given the conditions, the space, and the trust to lead — they don't just improve their practice. They begin to transform the systems that surround them.

Across five school sites and three convenings, we witnessed something rare: adults in schools remembering what it feels like to be fully seen. And using that feeling to reimagine how they show up for students. The data tells a compelling story of momentum, trust, and growing collective agency. But behind every data point is an educator who raised their hand, spoke an uncomfortable truth, or simply stayed in the room when it got hard.

This report is their story — told in data, in their own words, and in the designs they're already putting into practice. It is for the funders who believe this work is worth investing in. For RUSD leaders who created the conditions for it to exist. For the educators who showed up — and kept showing up. And for the students whose futures depend on adults willing to do this work.

We are proud of what Year 1 produced. And we are even more excited about what Year 2 will build.

With gratitude and conviction,

Darius Fequiere

Founder & Executive Director, Matiq Labs

Who We Are

Our Mission & Approach

Our Mission

Matiq Labs partners with K–12 public schools and districts to build educator capacity, examine inequity, and co-design systemic transformation through Learning & Design Labs.

Our Vision

A public education system where every educator is equipped, empowered, and supported to lead meaningful change for the students and communities they serve.

Core Commitments

Educator Agency

We believe teachers and school staff are knowledge-holders and designers, not just recipients of top-down directives.

Liberatory Design

We root our work in the traditions of participatory action research and justice-centered design.

Community Accountability

We co-create every Lab with our school partners, not for them.

Data as Tool

We use data to surface inequity, not to rank or sort people.

Systemic Lens

We examine root causes, not just symptoms.

Compassionate Witnessing

We create space for educators to name difficulty, sit with complexity, and move toward action with care.

Year 1 Partnership

Our Schools & Partners

In Year 1, Matiq Labs operated Learning & Design Labs across five Rialto Unified School District campuses. Each site identified a Problem of Praxis — a locally-rooted question about teaching, learning, and equity that educators explored throughout the year.

School	Level	Problem of Praxis
Carter High School	High School	How might we create more culturally affirming learning experiences for Black and Latino students?
Eisenhower High School	High School	How might we redesign our advisory program to build belonging and trust?
Jehue Middle School	Middle School	How might we use student data to drive teacher-led instructional change?
Frisbie Middle School	Middle School	How might we address chronic absenteeism through stronger family-school partnerships?
Kucera Middle School	Middle School	How might we build a more inclusive culture for students with disabilities?

Partner Organizations

Matiq Labs

Program Design & Facilitation

The Liberatory Classroom

Equity Coaching & Facilitation

Design With Joy

Design Thinking Integration

The Framework

The Learning & Design Lab Model

Each Learning & Design Lab follows a four-phase process grounded in participatory action research and liberatory design. Educators move through each phase collaboratively, building shared language, inquiry skills, and design capacity.

01 SEE

Examine current data and surface the inequities educators witness every day.

02 NAME

Build shared language for root causes, systemic barriers, and educator posture.

03 DESIGN

Use liberatory design tools to prototype educator-led solutions.

04 ACT

Implement, document, and reflect on emerging practice changes.

Data

Quantitative Findings

Impact data strengthened across all three sessions. Session 3 produced the highest relevance and application scores of the entire cycle — confirming that momentum in liberatory work deepens with time, not urgency.

Metric	Sessions 1 → 3
Session Relevance (avg. rating out of 5)	4.45 → 4.53
Likelihood to Apply Learning (avg. rating out of 5)	4.55 → 4.84
Overall Positive Satisfaction Rate	85% → 90%
Collective Agency — Jehue site	>4.5 across all sessions

These scores reflect more than satisfaction — they represent rising trust, stronger cross-role collaboration, increased clarity about liberatory design practices, and growing educator readiness for implementation.

Consistently Top-Rated

Relevance of content to daily work and student-facing practice
Increased confidence in applying liberatory design frameworks
Value of cross-role collaboration structures and shared reflection
Quality and intentionality of facilitation and session design

Systemic Barriers Named by Educators

Limited time for implementation between sessions
Competing district and school-level initiatives
Inconsistencies in schoolwide support and follow-through

"It's easy to feel inspired in the room, but once you're back in the day-to-day, the space to implement is tight."

— Teacher, Spring 2025

Qualitative Analysis

Four Themes That Deepened All Year

Analysis of open-ended responses across Kickoff, Session 2, and Session 3 surfaced four reinforced themes that grew in clarity and depth as the year progressed.

Theme 01

Trust & Belonging as Preconditions for Change

By Session 3, educators consistently described the Lab as one of the only spaces in their professional lives where honesty, emotional connection, and non-evaluative reflection were genuinely welcomed.

"I forgot what it feels like to be asked how I'm doing and actually mean it."

— Middle School Educator

Theme 02

Shifting Data Mindsets

Session 3 brought strong new evidence that educators are beginning to see data not as a compliance tool, but as storytelling — a collective invitation to meaning-making and problem-solving rooted in lived experience. Rather than treating discipline referrals, student engagement patterns, and survey feedback as metrics to report upward, educators began asking what that data was actually saying about students' experiences.

"Seeing the data through a liberatory lens changes how I think about what's possible."

— Administrator

Theme 03

Building Collective Agency

Across all three sessions, educators described growing confidence in their role as designers — not just recipients — of change. This shift from compliance to agency may be the most important finding of Year 1.

"I don't have to wait for permission to start small changes that center students."

— Teacher, Session 1

"We can actually do this."

— Teacher, Session 3

Theme 04

Systemic Constraints & Structural Tension

Educators did not shy away from naming the gaps. By Session 3, they named structural barriers more clearly and constructively — a sign of growing psychological safety and systems literacy.

"We are disconnected, and that makes planning hard. But the Lab helps us talk across roles."

— Session 3 Participant

In Their Words

Educator Voices

We asked educators: What was most meaningful about participating in the Learning & Design Lab this year?

This was the first time in my career that someone asked me what I thought was wrong — and then gave me the tools to try to fix it.

— Teacher, Jehue Middle School

I came in skeptical. I've been through so many professional development experiences that didn't change anything. This one was different.

— Teacher, Carter High School

The data work cracked something open for me. I realized I had been protecting my students from hard truths instead of preparing them for hard truths.

— Instructional Coach, Frisbie Middle School

For the first time in years, I felt like a professional. Not just a worker — a designer. Someone whose knowledge actually matters.

— Teacher, Eisenhower High School

We've tried to fix attendance before but we were guessing. The Lab helped us see the actual pattern — and it was not what we expected.

— Administrator, Kucera Middle School

Every session, I left with something new to try. And someone else in the room who was trying it too. That accountability changed everything.

— Teacher, Jehue Middle School

Facilitator Spotlight

Nicodemus Ford

Founder · Design with Joy

Nicodemus brought deep grounding in Black liberation pedagogy and community organizing to every Lab session. His approach — what educators described as compassionate witnessing — created space for honest naming of inequity without defensiveness. Educators who worked with Nicodemus consistently reported the highest engagement scores and the deepest reflective writing in their session journals.

Facilitator Spotlight

Dr. Kai Mathews

Founder · The Liberatory Classroom

Dr. Mathews introduced the systems-thinking lens that became central to Year 1 Lab design. Her ability to hold complexity — helping educators see both structural root causes and their own agency within those structures — was repeatedly named by participants as a turning point.

Site Spotlight

Jehue Middle School

Highest Engagement Site · 54 Educator Survey Responses

Jehue Middle School emerged as the Year 1 anchor site, generating the highest educator participation and the most robust qualitative data of any RUSD campus. The school's Problem of Praxis — How might we use student data to drive teacher-led instructional change? — created natural alignment between the Lab model and school priorities already in motion.

What made Jehue distinctive wasn't just participation numbers. It was depth. Educators came back session after session. They pushed the facilitation team to go further. Several teachers independently identified the Lab as the most impactful professional learning they'd experienced in their careers.

54 Survey Responses Highest across all sites

>4.5 Relevance + Application All three sessions

100% Admin Participation Consistent across sessions

Enabling Conditions

Consistent administrator presence and participation
Cross-role dialogue breaking down silos
Growing demand for student co-design
High collective agency scores across all sessions

What Educators Asked For Next

Cross-grade learning communities
Restorative advisory redesign
Student voice + storytelling as feedback data
More space to co-design alongside students

"Liberatory design isn't about adding new tasks — it's a different way of seeing."

— Jehue Teacher

"The sessions helped us talk across roles. We've never had that before."

— Administrator Interview

Organizational Learning

What We're Taking Into Year 2

Year 1 was as much about building Matiq Labs' organizational learning as it was about delivering programs.

Trust Takes Time — And It's Worth It

Sites that invested heavily in early relationship-building saw dramatically deeper engagement in later Lab phases. We cannot rush the conditions for honest inquiry.

Principal Engagement Is a Multiplier

Where school leaders participated actively in the Lab, educator follow-through on design actions was significantly higher. Year 2 will formalize administrator pathways.

Data Is Emotional

Our data work consistently surfaced grief, anger, and shame in educators — not just insight. Facilitators need strong skills in emotional facilitation, not just analytical facilitation.

Cross-Site Learning Is Underutilized

The four district-wide Lab convenings were among the highest-rated experiences of the year. Educators are hungry to learn from each other across schools. We will expand this in Year 2.

Student Voice Is Missing

The most consistent feedback from educators: they wanted their students in the room. Year 2 will pilot youth co-design processes in partnership with new school partners who are ready to go there.

Our Metrics Must Deepen

Survey satisfaction scores are useful but insufficient. Year 2 will add longitudinal outcome tracking and classroom observation protocols to capture practice change over time.

Implications

Next Steps & Year 2 Priorities

For Matiq Labs

Extend session structures with more built-in reflection and prototyping time
Pilot a coach-in-residence model for deeper site-level continuity
Codify Year 1 findings into a Liberatory Practice Framework for District Change
Develop cross-site data storytelling artifacts for community use

For the Broader Field

Partner with university researchers to build a learning community around educator-centered redesign
Publish Year 1 practitioner findings to advance the field's understanding of liberatory PD
Develop replicable frameworks that other districts and researchers can build on
Create public accountability artifacts that document cultural shift at the school level

Building on Year 1, Matiq Labs is expanding and deepening its work in 2026–2027:

LPS Richmond Partnership	Continuing our partnership with Leadership Public Schools in Richmond, CA — deepening the Lab model in its second year and building on momentum from Year 1 co-facilitation work.
New District Partnerships	Actively seeking school and district partners ready to embed educator-led redesign as a core strategy — particularly those committed to MTSS, restorative culture, and equity-centered PD.
Student Co-Design Pilots	Piloting youth co-design processes with new school partners using Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methods — integrating student voice directly into Lab design.
University Research Partnerships	Building relationships with university researchers to establish a learning community around educator-centered redesign, strengthening the evidence base and expanding Matiq Labs' reach into the broader field.
Educator Micro-Grant Fund	Launching a small fund to support educators in implementing the designs they develop in Labs — removing resource barriers between idea and action.
Year 1 Research Publication	Publishing a practitioner-facing summary of Year 1 learnings to share with the broader field.

Year 1 proved that this work is real, it is ready, and it is growing.

Year 2 is where proof becomes practice — and practice becomes transformation.

The educators are ready. The schools are ready. The students are waiting.

We invite district partners, school leaders, university researchers, and funders to join us in deepening this investment — not because the data says it's working, but because the people inside these schools say they finally feel seen. That is the foundation every system-level transformation requires.

With Gratitude

Acknowledgements & Special Thanks

Year 1 would not have been possible without the commitment, courage, and generosity of the people and organizations named below.

Matiq Labs Board of Directors

We thank our board members for their guidance, accountability, and belief in this work during our founding year.

Rialto Unified School District

Thank you to RUSD leadership, site principals, department heads, and every educator who showed up to the Lab with openness and honesty. You are the reason this work matters.

Partner Organizations

Deep gratitude to The Liberatory Classroom and Design With Joy for co-designing and co-facilitating the Lab experience. Your expertise, care, and commitment to liberation elevated everything we did together.

Funders & Supporters

We are grateful to all who invested in Year 1 — financially, intellectually, and relationally. Your belief in educator-led transformation is what makes this possible.

Methodology

Data Sources

This report synthesizes data and insights from the following primary sources:

RUSD Learning & Design Lab Kickoff Post-Survey

RUSD L&D Lab Session 2 Post-Survey

RUSD L&D Lab Session 3 Post-Survey (Spring 2025)

Jehue Teacher & Staff Survey (Spring 2025)

Site Visit Notes — 3 visits per site, 5 sites

Administrator Interviews — 2 per site, 5 sites

Matiq Labs Facilitation Log (Jan–Apr 2025)

RUSD L&D Lab Proposal (2025)

Updated Top/Bottom Item Charts (April 2025)

Prepared by Matiq Labs · Updated Internal Learning Document · April 2025

What happens when you

Trust Educators to Lead?