Category: Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

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Last week, I sat through student interviews for our school scholarship program. Students could win scholarship awards for Learner Profile, the ATL’s, and Action. It was fascinating to hear young 6-8 year old children summarize what they believe were some of their best qualities and why they do what they do. But the learner profile award was the most telling. And learner profile trait that made me cringe the most when I heard a student talk about it was caring. Caring? I hear you say. I know. It’s a surprise. Let me explain.

First of all, whenever I hear the students talk about learner profiles, it reflects greatly on the teachers, aspects of the school culture, and family values. Children mirror the learning community.

I heard numerous students talk about how they do caring things because they hope others will appreciate them and extend care back to them. In fact, what they described was being generous in order to initiate reciprocity. I recognize that this concept of reciprocity is apparent in my host country’s culture. People often refer to this as Guanxi. Western cultures refer to it as Quid-Pro Quo. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

Several years ago, Adam Grant wrote a really interesting book called Give and Take. In the book, he makes a compelling argument for why doing good is not only smart, but should be our goal. Generous and caring people in studies demonstrate better life outcomes, such as greater career success, improved relationships, and health outcomes. Even though he may enumerate many ways doing good is beneficial, that should not be why we are caring and kind.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I don’t want to be a book spoiler, but Grant explains how people may look like “givers” but are actually “takers”. He uses the example of Kenneth Lay and his abuse of power that ultimately bankrupted the company and left his employees jobless and without pensions. But on the outside, he looked like a “good guy” because he was charitable. I think this is a prime example of using generosity for optics and is the danger of what can happen when “caring” is miscommunicated and reinforced in our society. Clearly, this man had an intellectual understanding of kindness and generosity but not the emotional intelligence to be able to demonstrate ethical behavior and true responsibility for his employees.

We need to do better at educating our children’s hearts, or this pattern repeats itself in our society.

IB is supposed to be the framework that can adapt to any context in which it finds itself, whether a public or private institution or the values within a nation or town. We are flexible and respectful in how we approach curriculum design. Although I think it’s important to navigate the curriculum through these complex lenses, I think the learner profile is where we might need to take a stand. What do I mean by that? I mean, that has a particular definition of what it means to be caring, and guess what?-It’s not a quid-pro-quo protocol. Take a look:

As you can see, we don’t do caring things because we expect good things to happen to us in return. It’s not about filling our spiritual coffer with good karma or our bank account with money. We do good things because we want a better and more peaceful world. Caring simply for the sake of being caring has no benefit other than knowing that we are helping the world be a better place. Money isn’t the goal. Service is. And we must do that in our schools by explicitly developing empathy-building skills. I recognize that we may be swimming against society’s current paradigm, but it matters. It’s worth the effort. Don’t you agree?

So, if you are an educator who has been promoting the status quo of a “taker” (ie: I give so I can get) in sheep’s clothing, take a moment to reflect on where that type of behavior leads to our society. Let’s go back to the definition of this Learner Profile and refocus CARING on using our empathy skills to inspire our young learners to create systems, products and services that make a difference in our future.

**If you have any great resources that help others to make the connection between our minds and hearts, please share them in the comments below. Sharing is Caring, right?!

Post Pandemic: “New Normals” Worth Developing

Post Pandemic: “New Normals” Worth Developing

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What is education?

Childcare?

Job Training?

Citizenship Development? 

It seems like so many countries are grappling with the purpose of education, trying to balance the risk of bringing kids back to school. It is a critical moment in time when we really can evaluate our guiding principles in our societies. In so many ways, globally we are undergoing a “dark night of the soul”, deep in introspection as we reflect on all the incongruent “normals” in our educational systems. 

I digress for a moment……

I like to explore the word education semantically for a moment. Its Latin origins, mean “to bring out; to lead forth”.  The root implies that our intelligence is innate and can be developed.

When I think of this definition, I wonder what this global crisis has revealed about our educational systems? 

Inequity between public and private education–YEP!

Teacher-Driven models of education are not sustainable or appropriate online–YEP!

Misguided or completely absent set of values in our systems?–YEP!

Inadequate training and professional development of our teachers, particularly in using technology in our instruction–YEP!

More care and concern are focused on our current-day economy than designing a more equitable future?–YEP!

But the most disturbing is the lack of organizational leadership and creative problem solving since the best we can do is hole ourselves up in our homes until this thing blows over. This fact right here is the absolute reason why we have to look carefully at our educational systems and make changes as we create more agile and dynamic schools. We can’t keep educating our future generations to look for answers outside of themselves–we need an “all hands on deck” approach that involves integrated and collaborative communities of problem-solvers. 

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you do not blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need more fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You look for reasons it is not doing well. You never blame the lettuce.

-Thich Nhat Hahn-

Now is the time to seize upon this opportunity to make constructive changes in our schools and educational systems. When we look at our current crop of “lettuce”, I feel a powerful and urgent need of changing minds and hearts when it comes to reconstructing education. 

Purpose: Develop our Humanity

The International Baccalaureate is one of the few frameworks that actually defines who we want our students to become as a result of their learning. In a nutshell, we want to make “good humans”.

This shouldn’t be an exception, but should be a rule in ALL of our schools.

Yet so many schools still reflect a factory-model, industrial age approach to learning. In which when the system “spits them out” at the end, they have a conforming pattern and standardized base of knowledge. This is in direct opposition to what we know about our human design. Every aspect of who we are is unique and essential.

As educators, we must question the directives of our national and local authorities in order to change these definitions. We must demand to infuse our policies to account for improvements in our humanity, rather than look at defining our systems by creating subordinate and compliant masses who keep our economies chugging along.

But even if we can’t get change within our higher authority, we must be willing to be way-showers and make changes in our schools that move away from these vestiges of this outdated paradigm.

This graphic is from Bold Moves for Schools, ASCD, 2017, H.H. Jacobs and M.H. Alcoc and provides consideration of the areas in which our schools can shift from the traditional factory-model paradigm to a more fluid and contemporary model of education.

Teachers shouldn’t be waiting for leadership to make these changes. The level of complexity that it takes to make this shift is almost prohibitive. Teachers must dream and co-design with school leadership so that this is a thoughtful and collaborative grass-roots effort. Schools can’t restructure without a teamwork and ingenuity.

These shifts are not minor, these are transformational. We are providing structures that empower learners and create real-world applications that act as “training wheels” for dealing with challenges.

I hear Gandhi in my head …

It might take time but with collective and persistent patience, we can create a new future for education.

Redefine: Indicators of “performance” for evidence of learning

I remember a time when the standardized testing craze was contagious. I can recall a day when one of my Kiwi friends was lamenting that New Zealand was embracing the American antidote for education with school grading based upon students’ achievement on the general skill-based tests.  As she was explaining the new direction that the NZ education system was going, her cheeks turned red with emotion. I had to sigh, remembering my own experience and stress of teaching to a test. 

However, many schools get “graded” on student performance. The word performance implies some action or behavior that demonstrates a specific ability.  Learning, on the other hand, is a process, an accumulation of knowledge gained through experience that changes behavior. Although there is a thread that links the two, we often confuse student data as an indicator of learning, when, in fact, it is really the other way around. Learning can only be demonstrated by actions taken by students of the skills they have acquired.  Because of this, learning describes this innate capacity to “bring forth” our intelligence and creativity.

After this COVID crisis dies down and we return to our school, we must broaden our definition of performance that goes beyond knowing the “answers” to knowing the “problems” so that students can predict potential threats to our societies and create proactive solutions that innovate and address these areas of concern. It’s less about demonstrating knowledge and more about awareness.

A colleague of mine recently pointed out that there is not one standard in their national curriculum around discrimination and oppression. This is an example of how we censor reality.

Our national standards are helpful in understanding the cognitive milestones that we expect for numeracy and literacy, but they do not really reflect the “standards” we want for our humanity: kindness, resilience, cooperation, generosity, appreciation, curiosity, and joy. Content knowledge no longer holds the capacity for future success. We need “heart-based” standards and, as educators, model and facilitate the growth of emotional and situational intelligence.

Our students’ performance may not be as measurable and easy to assess when we focus on this area but I believe that we can still observe “learning” when students can manage conflict, articulate concerns, and self-manage their learning, returning home inspired and energized. Instead of knowledge, HOPE can be an indicator of performance standards.

Imagining New Normals

These are the “new normals” that I believe is worth striving for in a post-pandemic era of education: Value-based Goals for Education, Restructuring Systems of Learning, and Creating New “Performance Standards”.

When I consider the root meaning of “education”, I can’t help but contemplate what I wish to “to bring out; to lead forth” as a result of this experience. As difficult as this time is, we must lean on potential and think of the possible good that can come out of this experience.

What do you believe should become “new normals”? What do you hope to dream and scheme about as we reconsider the purpose of education?

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

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Lately, I’ve been reading and reflecting a lot about Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Somehow when I feel stressed, I turn to science as my security blanket. I feel comfort in the tested theories and proofs as if all of life’s unsolved mysteries can be explained with science. Surely, during these uncertain times, trying to figure out how we got here and where we go next is on everyone’s mind. Mine too.

Darwin’s theory is one that is easily misunderstood. Most people don’t know the backstory of how his theory came about and whether he actually agreed with his conjectures but we accept his ideas as a fact, by and large, and teach it in our textbooks. But his ideas are why the whole world is upside down.

The problem, whether we are aware of it or not, is that his ideas of “selection of the fittest” have paved the way for our economic principles and so much of the discrimination and atrocities in our human world–from civil wars and genocides, to acceptance of violence as a norm–justifying it as our primal urge to compete for scare resources and force “natural selection”. We’ve accepted his ideas because it was the first attempt of describing the complex behaviors that we observe in nature, but collaborationdarwinI think this COVID crisis is helping us to examine these ideas and ask ourselves if this is how we want to continue living as a species. Because the truth is, if we really make a study of nature, there’s a helluva lot more evidence for cooperation rather than competitition in the endurance of living things. Darwin actually wrote about this but it often goes unnoted.

But whether you are taking about plants (The Hidden Life of Trees  )  or microscopic , single-celled organisms (I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life), there is a complicated web of life that is the operating system that runs in the background of all things, from the most mundane elements of Earth (How to Read Water) to the deepest understanding of intelligence (Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness). And the fact that our economies are coming to a grinding halt during this pandemic exposes this fault in our thinking of our origins and purpose in life. Economists may have taken Darwin’s principles too far.

However, to not seize this moment in Education would be a terrible blunder. Especially since we now have the world’s attention of how dang important educators are in our societies. We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Needless to say, this is bigger than technology. It’s not about the level of preparedness that educators had when walking into remote learning. We could focus on that but I think we should be looking at the glaring equity issues we have–survival of the fittest–if you had access to technology and wifi, you got to continue your education online. If you didn’t, schools either were temporarily canceled or teachers made packets of uninspiring worksheets that put your brain to sleep–and ultimately got burned in a trash heap since districts were too afraid to have teachers actually grade them for the fear of spreading the virus. All that “school work” went up in flames. Ironic and metaphorical at the same time.

There’s this part of Darwin’s theory of Evolution that we should focus on. Adaptation: a change in a behavior or physical feature that improves a living thing’s ability to survive.  If we superimpose this concept onto culture, we call it innovation.

Innovation is often considered to be a value. But I don’t think so. It’s a necessity in my mind, a conscious decision. Natural selection is only one form of evolution but change can be also be a choice. That is where innovation comes in.

In the course, New Learning: Principles and Patterns of Pedagogy , Dr. William Cope reminds us that “

I share these thoughts of Dr. Cope to demonstrate how important this time is to reflect and consider WHAT’S NEXT in our human paradigm and our role to consciously decide as educators how we can support this transition to new ways of thinking and living in our world. I believe that as we move through this pandemic, we will also have a crisis of the heart and mind as we grapple with how we might use this opportunity to innovate in Education and embrace new ways of doing “school”. We can use the power of formal education to steer humanity in a new direction.

An Einstein Approach

Just as we are awakening to the ridiculousness of “standardizing” our students with testing, let’s not make the shallow mistake to make this about apps and tech. It’s much more primal and significant than that.

Albert Einstein once said:

einstein problems.jpeg

So, if our thinking has gotten us into our mess, then we have to revise it.  Education plays a crucial role in this.

The truth is that living things are exposed to disease all the time. That’s not new.

But we deem this a crisis because it has changed our way of living. And that may not be a bad thing in the long game if we get to eradicate the wrongful premise that the only way to survive is at the expense of others.

Because what the scientific evidence is now demonstrating is that it’s our relationships that helps us to solve-problems (code word: adaptation). And doing this TOGETHER will be the only way through this situation. We can not simply survive but we can thrive if we stop doing the same things and thinking in the same ways that got us here.

And, if we don’t want to be “same-same, but different” (same content but with a splash more of technology in there for good measure), then we need to look critically at our curricular content and school structures, while asking if it is truly serving a higher purpose for living beings, big and small. We have the power to choose this.

So, it is in the spirit of Nature’s truth that begs us to rethink schools and rebuild our world.

So what if we got Darwin all wrong?

Here is some of my first thinking what should be the basis of new standards in Education.

  1. Empathy should become a part of our content because it helps us to understand the relationship we have to our world.  We don’t read and write to pass a test, we do it to connect with the world.
  2. As a skill, explicit teaching of cooperation and collaboration should become the new “norm” in our school.
  3. Grades are an artifact of “selection of the fittest” thinking in which we rank and value our students based upon their academic knowledge. It’s an artificial and inhumane way to evaluate students. We need to stop this practice.
  4. No more, dog eat dog: content should include a new paradigmn in which we highlight peace and inter-relationships. How to solve conflict is an essential skill.
  5. Moreover, social emotional learning isn’t fluff. It’s a vital for developing human competence.
  6. Sharing is not just caring, it is an essential component to life. All life. So, the circular economy and sharing economy shouldn’t be a fringe idea, it should be a guiding principle.
  7. Awareness and appreciation of intelligence is not just a human thing. It’s in ALL things and when we recognize it, we can transform our life experience.

So, I want to restate what I said earlier:

We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Let’s set the world rightside up. We have the power to do that in Education.

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Depression-Proof Kids: The Hope of Positive Education

Creating Depression-Proof Kids: The Hope of Positive Education

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I think it’s time for new “standards” in education.
I believe that education, as a whole, is undergoing a transformation as we speak. Now we are at a precipice, questioning if this industrial model of education is still serving our future needs. We KNOW it isn’t but what should be our next purpose in education?

What if it was happiness?

The Bearded Backyarder: Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of ...When I think of the founding of my country, America, the pursuit of happiness was what they called “an inalienable right” to its citizens.
Ask any parent what they really want for their kid and what do they say–Happiness.
So why is it that we are chasing Knowledge as the carrot on the stick when we know that it doesn’t bring true fulfillment and meaning to overall lives to our students? When are we going to consider alternatives to our current paradigm in education? Certainly, policymakers and educational leaders have seen the growing body of research that shows that happiness is not only linked to positive emotions but includes all sorts of benefits, from higher earnings and better immune-system functioning to enhancing creativity. Surely we need to go back to the drawing board and rethink some things.
In the latest World Happiness Report written by the United Nations, they are reporting:

Numerous indicators of low psychological well-being such as depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm increased sharply among adolescents since 2010, particularly among girls and young women (Mercado et al., 2017; Mojtabai et al., 2016; Plemmons et al., 2018; Twenge et al., 2018b, 2019a). Depression and self-harm also increased over this time period among children and adolescents in the UK (Morgan et al., 2017; NHS, 2018; Patalay & Gage, 2019). Thus, those in iGen (born after 1995) are markedly lower in psychological well-being than Millennials (born 1980-1994) were at the same age (Twenge, 2017).

This decline in happiness and mental health seems paradoxical. By most accounts, Americans should be happier now than ever. The violent crime rate is low, as is the unemployment rate. Income per capita has steadily grown over the last few decades. This is the Easterlin paradox: As the standard of living improves, so should happiness – but it has not.

Although it not a surprise that “money can’t buy happiness”, it is alarming to think that with each new generation of children, their mental health is declining. For a parent of a young girl, like myself, I need to be on the lookout for symptoms of depression in my child in which she is experiencing five or more of these symptoms during the same 2-week period:
  1. Sad mood.
  2. Loss of interest in life, loss of zest, loss of vitality.
  3. Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain, or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day.
  4. Sleep disturbance in which you can’t get back to sleep typically out of a helplessness dream.
  5. Psychomotor slowness, being slow of speech and slow of motion.
  6. Fatigue and Fatigability.
  7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day.
  8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day.
  9. Thoughts of suicide and thoughts of death.

(Learn more: Depression Definition and Diagnostic Criteria)

YIKES!!! Who wants to live devoid of joy and meaning for any extended period of time?

 

Well, the good news is that this trend is absolutely reversible. Although current research shows that our genes may predispose us to some mood disorders like depression, there are other factors that make up 50% of whether or not we will live in a pessimistic and depressed mindset. In fact, neurologists are now showing that we can create alternative thinking pathways in our brains that create more optimism and resilience towards life circumstances. According to Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, “Optimism is a skill that can be learned. Teaching people to realistically challenge their pessimistic explanatory style and to learn optimistic explanatory skills reduces anxiety and depression and increases resilience.”

So, with that in mind, some schools are taking mental health seriously. In places like Australia, India, and New Zealand, countries are starting to take notice of the impact mental health has on their citizens and starting to develop programs to address these concerns. It’s not that they are throwing academics out the window, but they are integrating a “happiness curriculum” into their schools and teaching academic content through this lens. So what are they teaching? The skills that develop well-being:

  • Awareness and Mindfulness
  • Resilience
  • Assertiveness
  • Creative brainstorming
  • Relaxation

Along with these and other coping and decision-making skills, taking a strengths-based approach to character development Screen Shot 2019-05-03 at 4.55.38 AMalso helps to promote a positive self-image of children and reduce episodes of anxiety. In a nutshell, it incorporates Dr. Martin Seligman’s theory of well-being using the PERMA model to help shape the curriculum and develop the culture of well-being in schools. According to this model, cultivating these areas will promote more resilient and optimistic people comes from students knowing their signature strengths and doing those things they don’t enjoy using their strengths. (The test they use to determine their strengths can be accessed here) . So, what can we do, even if we aren’t in schools that are integrating positive education into our schools?

In the book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear, he points out that habits that are 1% better (or 1% worse) may seem insignificant but have a compounding effect over time. So we can employ that knowledge into our classrooms and school routines. When I was in the classroom, I started our daily routine with mindfulness and an exercise in compassion. It took 15 minutes from our academics but it grounded our learning community and developed a culture around self-awareness. As a PYP coordinator, I begin every meeting also with a brief meditation and often bring in practices that encourage deeper and more meaningful work and relationships at our school.  Although it would be nice to have a “well-being centre” on our campus and do more large scale practices, starting small in whatever ways you can, is always the best approach.

That being said, as a Primary Years Programme (PYP) school, it is also possible to design units and make larger school efforts around well-being. In order to promote a more vibrant and connected school culture, we can look for ways to embed the principles that unite our Learning Profile with the strengths-based approach found in Positive Education. So how might we do this? Well, let’s filter this question through PERMA:

Positive Emotion

In my mind, developing units of inquiry that explore emotions head-on and cultivate awareness is one of the effective to develop the skills that can generate positive emotion.

The rise in teaching Growth Mindset has certainly helped to reframe failure in our learning situations, however, I wonder if the “power of yet” is enough. Considering this, I think to move into other areas in which we teach other coping skills, along with gratitude, is of great importance.

Central Idea example: (*Who We Are) Humans grow and change over time

*I would recommend this theme so that we can bring in mindset and emotion. So often we think of growth and change as a physical aspect of who we are, but we mature mentally and emotionally as well. Wouldn’t this be fun to teach into? I think so.

Central Idea example: (How We Express Ourselves) We can recognize and appreciate beauty. 

Teaching the skill of “awe” is something that we rarely do in the mainstream classroom–we leave that to “the Arts”. But why not help kids to zone on to the good in life and learn how to convert an annoyance into the realization of its blessing? I think a unit like this could not only hone into qualities of aesthetics but provide opportunities to become more mindful and grateful to the everyday wonder in our world.

Central Idea example: Our actions impact relationships.

This central idea could fit into multiple transdisciplinary themes, depending on the grade level, and what we want to spotlight, so I would likely put it under Who We Are or How We Express Ourselves, and even in How We Organize Ourselves for Early Years learners.

Most of the time, a unit like this is heavily focused on doing and not being. However, I could see a unit like this to be a perfect opportunity to develop the skill of forgiveness and compassion. When we teach mercy and perspective, it creates “heart muscles” which lead to reduced anxiety and anger. Furthermore, when we add in the spirit of generosity and altruism, the volume of positive emotion is amplified.

Central Idea example: (How the World Works) Curiosity leads to discoveries. 

Honestly, this could be placed into other transdisciplinary themes as well, but I think it would be fun to break with tradition to just thinking of How the World Works as just “the science unit” and expanding that definition to include social-emotional learning. The skill of curiosity is most highly correlated to life satisfaction, happiness, health, longevity, and positive social relationships (Park et al., 2014; Buschor et al., 2013), so I think teaching it as such, would have a ripple effect in multiple subject areas.

Engagement and Flow

Although directly teaching this as a topic is possible, I believe that it would be better to simply create the conditions that promote this aspect of well-being. I find the increasing popularity of project-based learning to be one of those conditions. Also, adding more student agency into our classrooms further encourages and supports student engagement in their learning. Looking for ways to add these kinds of elements into learning would be the best way to approach this area, in my opinion.

Relationships

In the factory model of education, dehumanization was commonplace, with forced submission and punishments. Now we talk about school culture as a transformative agent, with the importance of valuing the learning community. But has our school discipline policies changed much?

Not only in Positive Education schools but other more traditional schools are taking an alternative approach to student “offenses” and incorporating “restorative practices” that are based on the premise that when a child who acts out in some way, they have to face the people that they have harmed in order to develop self-responsibility and empathy. The techniques used are modeled after restorative justice models, in which the child discusses the incident with their peers in a way that feels welcoming and provides the motivation for compassionate action. Here is an example of this practice in action.

 

Although we may not have some “true believers” in this approach (even though it has remarkable results) and schools may be hesitant to adopt this model, we can still bring the “circle” into our classrooms. We can co-design essential agreements for talking circles with students, and use it to discuss and diffuse situations.

Moreover, I think it’s vital that we teach students “how to be” with one another and manage conflict in situations. So with that in mind, I think teaching the skills of collaboration is a vital aspect of well-being. We often group kids together and ask them to do work without really helping them to understand what it takes to truly cooperate and share responsibility for learning. Lest we forget, when collaboration goes well, it has a high emotional quotient and makes for a more dynamic learning environment. Collaboration is a skill worth teaching.

Consider this quote:

You know the saying, ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’? Well, it gets even better. Happiness shared is happiness squared. When we share our joy with those we love, we feel even more joy. And when we love, we become more loveable.

From: Relate, Wellbeing Theory

With this in mind, instead of saying “Gosh, these kids just don’t know how to get along!”, ask “How might I teach these kids to get along”? That is a more empowering question that can be shared with others, including our students. This is the very basis of developing long-lasting and significant relationships in our children’s lives.

Meaning and Purpose

I already suggested project-based learning but if we want to elevate projects, then we need to take it a step further with challenge-based learning. This approach involves moving beyond the 4 walls and looking for opportunities to solve issues in the larger community.

Let’s take for example a likely project that one might see in a Kindergarten classroom, in which kids must create a puppet show (either digitally or in-person) that tells a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Instead of it ending at the classroom or school level, kids design these presentations for populations of people who suffer from depression, like the elderly or people suffering from chronic illness. They present their puppet shows at a nursing home or go to the children’s cancer ward at a local hospital so their learning goes beyond “the standards”. If the challenge is to cheer up people who are going through a tough time, then this project suddenly takes on a new meaning and turns an ordinary learning event into an extraordinary experience.

I also find challenge-based learning a wonderful chance to bring in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in order to teach into the difficulties we face collectively, whether it’s local or global. When we expand our context for learning into the real world, then we create purpose and value in our lives. Instilling the confidence that they can make a difference in the hearts and minds of our young people is much more than academic achievement, it’s a true accomplishment that will leave an indelible mark. We should also inspire that level of action.

 

Achievement and Accomplishment

Speaking of achievement and accomplishment, although I would hardly call this era of standardized testing the hallmark of “achievement and accomplishment”, I think it’s been our first foray into trying to define student achievement. Under harsh scrutiny, many educators are now in the rebellion of creating “standard” students and questioning whether this cultivates mediocrity in our schools. I think challenging this testing culture and asking if this is really what matters in education is exactly why we should pivot towards Happiness-based education/Positive Education.

I know in many schools, teachers give a general comment that speaks to the character of a child. kipreportAlthough I find this “report card” designed by the Knowledge Is Power Program (or KIPP schools) an interesting artifact that seems to capture more than the “what” of education with subject grades and defines the “who” we want our students to become. It intentionally focuses on developing key character traits, and, although I don’t know how I feel about scoring these areas (for example, what REALLY is the difference between a 4.17 and a 4.33?),  I do see the value and impact it can have on student personal growth.

However, in our PYP schools “grading” the Learner Profile is something that would be taboo, but I don’t see why students couldn’t have a reflective tool likes this to assess themselves on a more consistent and continual basis. Furthermore, it could lead to goal setting and other activities that could help cultivate the type of students we wish to create as a result of the learning in our schools. I don’t think we should shy away from these sorts of things, but instead lean into them and co-design with our students. In this way, they understand the true meaning of “achievement and accomplishment”.

A final thought

As I consider the urgency to address the social-emotional issues that plague our world today, I know that our schools can be the best testing ground for this sort of work. It is my hope that we stop looking at trying to make kids the best in content knowledge and skills as the measuring stick of “performance” and start considering how we can teach strategies and mindsets that empower students to be successful in life, now and for the future.

I don’t know if we can necessarily eradicate depression, but I do think we can elevate community and joy in our world through education. In my mind, layering well-being into our curriculum is an easy tweak that everyone can do starting today. Positive education shouldn’t be for the few, but for the many. I hope you will consider what steps you can take today to create a future world that works for everyone.

 

What is an #IBEducation? Developing Moral Imagination in the #EnhancedPYP

What is an #IBEducation? Developing Moral Imagination in the #EnhancedPYP

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Recently an educator asked me what is the difference between the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and a “normal school”.  I really stumbled in describing the value of an IB education.

Yes, we do “transdisciplinary learning” with the use of our framework to develop conceptual understandings, but there’s plenty of international schools that attempt to mimic our integrated approach to the subject matter.  To me, that isn’t what makes us stand out.

Then I thought about how we are shifting our views to reflect the changing nature of the student-teacher relationship, with having “agency” as the center of learning. However, there are many great schools out there who are developing a more personalized approach to developing content knowledge and skills. I’m not sure if we really have “the corner office” on that one either.

After more reflection, I settled on moral imagination.

Morals?–that’s a word you don’t often hear these days, as it seems old fashioned, harkening back to a time of “purity and goodness”. Perhaps it conjures up some religious connotation that reeks of absolutes and “thou shall nots” as we try to discern “right” from “wrong”.  So it is no wonder why this word “moral” has gone by the wayside as something worth promoting in our secular education systems. With this in mind, just because morals aren’t taught in schools doesn’t mean that this black and white thinking doesn’t exist. In fact, probably because we don’t address it, it has become dangerously polarizing, particularly in our politics. Hence the reason why we need to add imagination to our morality.

When you think back to the inception of the International Baccalaureate (IB), its mission to develop “inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect”, came in response to atrocities witnessed around the world such as in World War II.  In the early days of crafting the PYP, the curriculum writers were heavily influenced by the progressive ideas of many educational philosophists. Consider the words of Earnest Boyer, whose ideas shaped the model behind our transdisciplinary themes:

Today, not only has this commitment to teach virtue before knowledge dramatically declined, but we now feel uncomfortable even talking about such matters. It’s all right these days to talk about academic standards, but it’s not all right, we’re told, to talk about ethical and moral standards.

And yet if history has taught us anything at all, it’s taught us that knowledge unguided by an ethical and moral compass is more dangerous than ignorance itself. The British philosopher George Steiner defined the challenge this way: “We now know,” Steiner said, “that a man can read Goethe in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert at sundown, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.

What grows up inside “literate civilization,” Steiner asks, that seems to prepare it for barbarism? What grows up, of course, is information without knowledge, knowledge without wisdom, and competence without conscience.

Excerpt from The Basic School, by Earnest Boyer, 1995

When you consider his words, you can appreciate the depth of thinking and intention that went into creating the PYP. To think that we just do “concept-based learning through an inquiry approach” is really missing the point and value an IB education.

Recently I listened to an interview with Kerry Kennedy in the audiobook Power Moves by Adam Grant. Technology can make report cards more personal, not less. (3)She talked about her work in teaching human rights and empowering students, not only with the skills to become advocates for social justice issues but the motivation to be agents of change. She understands how important it is for young people to develop empathy so that this next generation can transform how power is wielded and how problems can be solved using “moral imagination”.

So what does this term mean?-In the book, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics , Mark Johnson explains that “We human beings are imaginative creatures, from our most mundane acts of perception all the way up to our most abstract conceptualization and reasoning. Consequently, our moral understanding largely depends on our…metaphors and other imaginative structures…which give us alternative viewpoints and concepts from which to evaluate the merits of a particular moral position. They make it possible for us to envision the possible consequences of a proposed course of action, such as how other people are affected, how it might change our relationships, and what new possibilities it might open up (or close off) concerning how we may grow.” When I read this, I began to appreciate the Learner Profile and how it helps to shape our students into developing the skills necessary to examine issues through a variety of perceptual lens. It is the blend of our “essential elements” which craft the faculty of moral imagination.

Fun and EasySo how can we amplify this as we look to “enhance” our PYP programs? When I consider how we look at developing “agency”, it’s more than considering students’ ability to self-regulate their learning, it is the chance to develop their voice as a citizen and a contributor to our humanity. We need to provide opportunities to support this as we consider our students’ understanding of complex issues, encouraging the practice of courage so that they can “be the change that you want to see in the world”.   We need to show them examples of young people who are challenging the status quo, whether it is about gun violence, climate change or equity in education. In this way, they can perceive possibilities and really begin to embody the true sense “agency”.  And, in my heart, I hope it can transform our traditional views plagued by this dualistic thinking to create thinkers who can rumble in the grey-area of life to create new answers to old problems. In this way, our PYP curriculum will truly be “enhanced”.

 

 

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

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Not everyone wakes up on a Sunday morning and sketches out ideas for a Programme of Inquiry (POI), but I’ve been reflecting for a while on my experience from last spring when I went to the IB’s headquarters in the Hague to help design sample POIs for the Enhanced PYP initiative (see the Teacher Support Materials that can be accessed in the MyIB section of the main page for those samples in PYP resources). During that time, our teams sat down and began to create POIs that were structurally synergistic, organized so that there was more conceptual coherence and personalized to the uniqueness of that school reality and age group. In the blog post, #PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?, I articulated the intention that was foundational in creating those sample POIs, but I’m starting to consider this definition of “success” as my “first thinking” when I consider what it might mean to “enhance” something.

Probably all you English scholars know that the word “enhance” is a transitive verb, meaning that this verb is relational and influential. enhanced pypI find it an interesting word choice by the IB in its re-branding effort. So their call to “enhance” our Primary Years Programme has got me lingering on what it is that we want to elevate in the learning experience.  Visually, “Agency” has now become the symbolic heart of the PYP’s graphic. I think many educators are painting a picture of what that can look like in our classrooms; the blog called IB Educator Voices contains a multitude of examples of teachers pivoting towards an agentic pedagogical approach. Currently, I am enamored with Rick Hanson’s definition of agency from his book, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness , which I’d like to share with you:

Agency is the ability to look for ways to cause an effect. It’s a sense of internal freedom when you make something happen.

Hmm…..when I consider that interpretation, my eyes begin to widen its focus upon the outer ring’s message of this enhanced PYP graphic: “Building For the Future”.  Should we not, as PYP educators, be contemplating what sort of future we wish to build? We often undermine our influence of the big picture of how society and culture are developed over time through our educational paradigms. Educators have played a big role in creating the Millennial-generation, and we are helping to create the next generation of global citizens. We shouldn’t take these things lightly, and in fact, I think we should be much more intentional with our power and ability to transform our human experience and life on Earth. We should look for ways to cause an effect….because we have the freedom to make something happen. For example, it seems obvious to me that the intelligent and thoughtful people at the United Nation’s know this, which is why they have created a call to action with the #TeachSDGs movement. Our schools should be seriously considering how we might achieve those 17 goals by 2030, because this is certainly one way to shape our schools’ POIs which is in alignment with the PYP curricular framework and values of the IB.

A Second Thought

As I reflect back to that Hague experience, I feel that this initial approach to considering what it means to “enhance” the design of the POI is still ongoing. If you look carefully at those Sample POIs, you would notice that they don’t really deviate much from each other. Because at the end of the day, whether we were using national curricular standards or the IB’s Scope and Sequence, the challenges with using either the standards-based vs. concept-based curriculum results in more similarities than exceptions when creating the units of inquiries. I think this a testimony to the strength of the PYP framework and transdisciplinary learning with how translatable it is to a variety of educational settings.  However, when I read books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly and  How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil, I begin to wonder if our current POIs are teaching towards the past or preparing for the imminent reality of our students. Are we, as schools, engaged in future-building, with meaningful and forward-thinking POIs, or clinging onto industrial-age ideas.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with those books, so I’d like to share a quote that persistently plagues me from Homo Deus:

As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubject reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the 21st century, fiction might thereby become the most potent force on Earth…hence, if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that make meaning in our world……Fiction isn’t bad. It’s vital. Without commonly accepted stories about money, states or coorporations, no complex human society can function. We can’t play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy the benefits of the markets and courts without simliar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality.

Yuval Noah Harari, from Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

I’ve been marinating in those words for over a year. Curious about what could be the “story” we are telling ourselves now about our future and how we can use it as a “tool”. I know that some feel that the book Future Shock is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what if we could choose another direction, one in which we meet the disruption that advancing technology will bring with creativity, grace, and intention. I believe wholeheartedly in that possibility, which is why I’ve been working on developing online courses for well-being in the digital age. I feel strongly that we should not resist technology but instead embrace it and use it to promote greater health and improve our relationships. That is the empowering “story” I wish to tell.

And today, I woke up, feeling alive, wanting to create a POI that was bathed in an over-reaching goal of developing well-being because I think that is the “fiction” I’d like to cultivate in the intersubjective (socially agreed upon) future reality of students. Here are the main 6 concepts that I feel need to be unpacked and gone into depth over the course of a student’s PYP experience within our 6 transdisciplinary themes.

  1. Sustainability (Production and Consumption):  because we need to shift from scarcity to ingenuity.
  2. Entrepreneurship: because we need to shift from profit-orientated goals to positive contributions in society.
  3. Computational Thinking: because we have to understand the algorithms of life and how we can co-evolve with exponential machine learning.
  4. Digital Citizenship: because online relationships and media are influencing us and our society. We need to navigate this reality skillfully.
  5. Social Emotional Learning: because attention and emotional awareness is vital to our health and is the new currency in our economy.
  6. Imagination (and Poetry): because creativity is the by-product of imagination, and we need to find more beautiful ways to express it.

I’ve started to create potential POIs that take these main concepts and build them out so that the overall force of the programme is one that develops well-bing: resilience, awareness, positive outlook and generosity. It’s really hard to translate these ideas into words without a fully fleshed out sample POI to show as a model but hopefully, the spirit of this quest has been communicated and I will have something completed soon that I can show as an example.

An Invitation

Now, whether you agree with me or not about what concepts need to be on a future-orientated whole-school POI isn’t the point but I do hope to open up a debate. I know in schools that are moving towards personalized learning culture, very broad and general central ideas are highly valued so that there is a lot of flexibility in the direction of a student’s inquiry. In my own experience, I am grappling with casting such a wide net with central ideas in the curriculum, uncertain if the overall outcome behooves the students and is manageable for teachers. But the purpose of this post is not to incite discussion around central ideas, but instead to provoke a re-examination of “the big picture” of your current school’s POI and reflect upon the future that you want to create through the curriculum.  Especially in schools that have authorized programmes, we need to be really challenging ourselves, moving beyond horizontal and vertical articulation. Perhaps this is my new working definition of the Enhanced PYP. I’m calling it “trans-articulation”. It’s less about ticking boxes and more about growing the future today, evolving consciously and actively within our curriculum approach.

As always, I hope you share your reflections, wonderings and concerns in the comments below.

 

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

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As a Primary Years Programme educator, we often refer to ourselves as “practitioners” not teachers. That’s an interesting choice of words, isn’t it? Does it make you wonder what it is that we practice?

As it is the beginning of a new year, we have an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of last year and contemplate the goals of the 365 days that lay before us. Considering how I am fresh from a holiday mindfulness meditation retreat at Thai Plum Village, it’s easy for me to focus on who I want to become, not just what I want to do like “get in better shape” in the new year.  In fact, I have been contemplating what it means to be a practitioner and examining what I want to “practice” more in 2019, not just with the students, but with all the human beings that I am in contact with. There are 3 things that I’d like to become more proficient as a “practitioner”.

Practice #1: Patience

My daughter just turned 9 years old on December 27th. Future (6)During her celebration, I always remember how I actually went into labor on December 25th, Christmas Day, but it took her 2 more days to make her entrance. That pretty much sums up my daughter for you. She likes to take her time. She’s cautious. She saunters. She has a mind of her own. And at times I feel frustrated and eager to “get going”–a phrase I use with her often. Naturally, this sort of tug and pull with time can create tension and frustration between us. So it makes me wonder what other relationships do I need to practice more patience in and in what situations does the need for exercising patience arise?

I think of moments in which I lean into my students, stopping to listen to them fully. This is what often is the fodder for a “teachable moment”. But as I ponder these “Teachable Moments”, they don’t have to be miraculous events in a lesson. I think there are numerous opportunities to allow time for understanding to organically emerge through our interactions.  But I watch the clock, thinking about our schedules all the time. Of course, this is just one dimension of developing patience in daily school lives. What if I tried to do less to accomplish more in our inquiries, instead of trying to march through our “standards” and “learning objectives” so I can take a breath and provide more space for them to share and reflect. I know this will take more skillfulness in asking questions and planning provocations, but if I am patient, if I am deeply listening to students, I know that these skills can naturally develop. I don’t have to read the latest and greatest professional books, I can just pay better attention to my learners. They are my best teachers. They are my professional curriculum.

It also seems obvious, but a pregnant pause during a conversation with colleagues would also genuinely help me to be more attentive to the ideas and concerns of others. I don’t have to rush in and share a thought or opinion. I can be patient and listen. I can also be patient when it comes to email replies or tasks to be ticked off my to-do list. There is really no shortage of opportunities to practice patience in my work-life.

Practice #2: Joy

If you were to ever meet me in person, I often say “Happy Monday.”..or Tuesday…or whatever day it is when I am walking to my classroom in the morning. To me, it’s a pleasure and honor to get to do the work that I do; I don’t HAVE TO do it, I GET TO do it. I wasn’t always like this. I remember there was a time in which I taught High School that I dreaded Monday. I had to cultivate happiness and when you are a curmudgeon, it feels like an effort to see what is right in a situation. Sharing a smile is where I began. I would stand in the doorway, greeting my Integrated Science students, smiling and inviting them into class. If they smiled back at me–SCORE!!–I knew that they were ready to learn. It felt like a genuine accomplishment. It lifted my spirits and eventually transformed my experience of working with adolescents.

When I started working with younger students, especially the Early Years, it was really hard to be grumpy. If you come across grouchy, those kids lose interest in building a relationship with you. And I can’t say I blame them. So I learned quickly that I was better off singing a song powerplant.jpegor playing a game to get them to focus while I explained something. But those outward actions don’t hide the frustration and agitation going on inside. I had to learn how to calm down internally–still am, for that matter–so that I can bathe our classroom community in that calming presence.

A few years ago, I came across Brendon Burchard, a life coach who preaches that you have to “Bring the Joy” to wherever you go. I honestly hadn’t considered that phenomena, and developing that level of energy and enthusiasm is a life skill that I think all of us should master. It sure makes life more fun and interesting. Here is a quick video on this concept if you are keen to learn more:

Nevertheless, I have been working on “generating” joy on demand. If you go to a Zen retreat like I did, it becomes very easy to learn how returning to our breath is an opportunity to find happiness in the present moment. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to stop, breath, and tune into the present moment. I practiced it for a whole week, and I intend to continue practicing it. There is joy in simply being alive when you connect to the present moment, slow down and look deeply into the situation. It’s very hard to transcribe this experience to you so that you can see how beneficial this practice is for you. But any opportunity to learn mindfulness is advised and I would recommend You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh to be a lovely place to start.

Needless to say, becoming more mindful is an opportunity to practice joy in the classroom. Years ago, when I was forcing myself to smile, I had no idea how I was laying down neurological tracks in my brain for peace in my body.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Read more: Thich Nhat Hanh

Smiling literally changes us, sending off a cascade of chemical signals that tell our bodies that indeed there is something to be happy about. And I have noticed that my smile turns into laughter: quiet chuckles and boisterous guffaws. I wish to practice more of this joy-on-demand this year, and, more importantly, teach it to students. Who knows, maybe I will lucky enough to articulate well to adults, who have more fixed ideas and stories around joyfulness.

Practice #3: Understanding

This practice might be the hardest for me. I know in the PYP, we talk about developing empathy and perspective in our students, but as an adult, our judgment and self-righteousness are hard to shake off at times. At least for me, if I am being honest.

But I am beginning to appreciate that I often don’t have enough information in order to form an opinion about something or someone. I need to practice understanding, taking time to ask questions and observe a situation more closely before drawing a conclusion. It doesn’t happen in one conversation, in one meeting. It takes time, and, again, deep listening, in order to develop clarity.

Let me give you a current example. I have a student that I am pretty sure has dyslexia. The statistics are that 1 in 5 students have it. Seeing how I have 18 students in my class, there’s a high probability that at least 1 student in my class has it, so I am biased to be looking for this reading difficulty to start with. This student has many of the features of dyslexia, but I should not be quick to label him. I need more time to observe and reflect on how he sees words, writes letters and numbers, and hear sounds. We’ve already started interventions with him, so we have to continue reflecting on his response to these approaches. In other words, I need to truly understand him in order to teach him since he learns differently than average kids–which is really what this label of “dyslexia” really means. But he is not the only student that deserves this. All students do.

So for me, developing understanding goes beyond examining data, it is an appreciation for the motivations and emotions of each student–and for my colleagues for that matter. Understanding the “why” behind the behavior, including my own, is so important in cultivating enriching interactions. Approaching others with curiosity and a “beginner’s mind” can help renew my relationship with them and cultivate a fresh perspective of situations, providing me with greater awareness and opportunities to explore different approaches.

New Year or Same Year?

As I carefully consider how I might approach being a teacher and a PYP practitioner differently, I know that there will be moments of genuine effort involved in order to create a NEW YEAR. Because if I just continue repeating habits and behaviors of the past, the calendar may say that it’s a new year, but in truth, unless I change, it’s the same year all over again. It is my intention to develop myself emotionally, as well as intellectually, as I embark upon a new dimension of my professional practice.

Perhaps you have begun to consider who you want to be as an educator as well. What do you want to practice more of in the year to come–what emotions or attitudes do you want to cultivate? Feel free to share in the comments below so that others can be inspired by the energy of your commitment.

I wish you a genuinely Happy New Year.

May you be well.

May you be safe.

May you be peaceful.

May you be love.

May you be happy.

DigitalLunch: How to Bring an End to Poverty (#TeachSDGs) using Google’s Blogger App

DigitalLunch: How to Bring an End to Poverty (#TeachSDGs) using Google’s Blogger App

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To imagine this goal- ending poverty in all its forms everywhere- seems like humankind would need to make a mighty effort to bring this into reality. However, I felt inspired by the research presented by Peter Diamandis in his book, Abundance, the Future is Better Than You Think. Extreme-Poverty-OurWorldIn his book, he presents really interesting data that shows that current efforts are making an impact, helping people get out of “absolute poverty” or extreme poverty which are defined as income levels that are below the minimum amount to sustain people’s basic needs. Although this is a dreadful situation, I believe as educators, we should convey a sense of optimism to our students–that WE can be the Change, while bringing them into awareness of the issue and compel them to eradicate it.

If we are to take on the challenge of teaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), then we can look to the work done by UNESCO to find learning objectives that we may embed into our current curriculum. They suggest to create a conceptual understanding of extreme and relative poverty and to critically reflect on the underlying cultural and behavioral practices that create these conditions. Furthermore, it should be our intention to connect the head to the heart, adding social-emotional learning objectives so that students begin to show sensitivity to the issues of poverty as well as empathy and solidarity with poor people and those in vulnerable situations. (Education for Sustainable Goals). I believe wholeheartedly we can do this, and I’d like to suggest using the Google App Blogger to cultivate knowledge of the local, national and global distribution of extreme poverty and extreme wealth.  In my opinion, student blogs can be a great way to chronicle their learning journey because they combine both traditional writing skills with the new literacy skill of visual messages as students create reflections and powerful posts that respond to their deepening understanding. 

Here are some of the basic reasons why I would use Blogger:

  • Free and easy to set up–all you need is a Gmail account.
  • Simple and easy to use its features.
  • Autosaves their work as a draft, and they can go back in “history” to review changes.
  • Can be used as an individual or collaborative blog
  • Great context for important problem-solving, critical thinking and cultural awareness.
  • Has the opportunity for an authentic audience experience.
  • Transforms students of “consumers” into “creators” of media.

My Personal Recommendations….

  • When you have the students sign up Blogger, make sure they DO NOT sign up for the G+ platform or it will not allow the blog to get set up if they are under 13 years old.
  • Make sure you have Admin privileges on the students’ accounts, so you can have editing privileges and can moderate comments.

Click on the video below if you are ready to learn  How to Create a Blog for Student Learning Using Blogger.  (If you are already familiar with Blogger, then you can continue to read how we could use to blogging to journey students through an inquiry into poverty…… )

 

Okay, so now that you have a general sense of the power of blogging in learning and how you can get started using Blogger, I’d like to provide some ideas of how you use the blog to show growth in their understanding of issues surrounding poverty, in their local and community and globally.

Suggested Provocations:

  1. Watching the film Living On One Dollar . Also, there are a ton of resources on that website and additional work done by the filmmakers. By the way, not an easy documentary to watch–will evoke strong emotions.  (I’m tearing up just thinking about it.)
  2. Field Trip to the Landfill. What does the trash tell us about the wealth in our community?  Depending on where you live in the world, you may actually bare witness to people who are living in extreme poverty.
  3. A ride on the local bus through impoverished neighborhoods. In some places, just the bus ride alone can be quite an eye-opener to the people who live in poverty. I would add the See, Think and Wonder thinking routine to this excursion.
  4. Student Challenge: What might it be like living on 1 USD a day?

Blogging about these experiences will be illuminating and can be done either in-class or for home learning. Here are some possible blog prompts:

blog prompts.png

I would also recommend that students read and respond to each other’s blogs using the comment feature. No matter the age-group, I think a review of what constitutes a helpful comment would be a smart idea. I would NEVER assume students understand the complexity of netiquette. In first grade, these were some of the “starters” we gave them to help guide appropriate responses: Helpful Comments. Perhaps those might provide a guide on how you might want students to engage with each other online.

These suggestions, as well as the blog prompts, are merely the beginning of what could be possible. If you go to the TeachSDGs website, you can find more resources and ideas. The great thing is that students could share their blog posts on social media platforms to further spread the message of the SDGs as well as be a resource to others grade levels within our school communities or across the globe.

If you have any feedback, I’d really appreciate how you felt about this information:

 

*This is the 1st of our Digital Lunch series, in which using Google Apps for Education training was used to support teaching the Sustainable Development Goals put forth by the United Nations. In this lunch hour training sessions, participates were exposed to SDG #1: No Poverty and the digital tool of Blogger. This blog post gives an overview of the training.

What Really IS “Best Practice”

What Really IS “Best Practice”

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It’s Tuesday at 4:45pm and my brain cells begin to take a break. I’m struggling with my energy level, peeved at myself for not drinking a tea earlier so I had a mental boost for this meeting. Because I care. It’s about the counseling program at our school, and I want to be fully present. I think it’s important.

Now it’s 2:30am, and I am awake, a bit annoyed that I have the term “best practice” ruminating in my mind. Why is this the first thought this morning? And how can I make it stop troubling my thoughts?

You see the other day I had a colleague make a remark that for some reason has really gotten under my skin–“oh, it’s really just best practice, right?”. Here’s the thing, I’m really tired of hearing the term “best practice”. It implies some secret sauce, some cookbook, that if all teachers follow, will result in amazing student achievement. I think that’s an overused term to get teachers to comply with certain boundaries of your curriculum. Think about it, if you teach in a highly structured system (Think a national scheme like France’s, in which all French schools have to be on the same page, literally, on the same day), then they have an idea of “best practice”. However, in our PYP school, we are more unstructured, textbookless, with flexible timelines, and no literacy model or math program (ex: Everyday Math) that we all follow. Needless to say, our idea of “best practice” has less to do with teacher compliance and more to do with teacher creativity. Those are very different perspectives on education. And who is right? Which is better?  Who is the “best”?

Rumi-Quotes-10I’m not here to pick a fight but I want to call our attention to how we throw that term around. In fact, I’d like to toss that term on the ground and squash it. I want to bury it. It’s undefinable in our broad views of education. Because of that, I think it’s a “nothing” word like a cliche or overused term that has lost its precision and value.

John Hattie’s idea of “Know Thy Impact” is more meaningful because it really helps schools to define their context and go deeper into the Why with the How they implement their curriculum, no matter how rigid or adaptable the structure is. I feel that we should use a more active term to define the type of work we do with students:  Impactful Practice.

Yet, I think there is a space in which all of us can connect, an area of our schools that we can all agree upon. It’s the one thing we can all consent to- student relationships matter.  john hattie relationship.png

This is where our dichotomous learning approaches merge. No matter what curriculum we use, the pedagogy of the heart is the central feature of all the work we do in schools. It’s the reason why I made a strong commitment to fight off my tiredness and engage in a meeting about our counseling program because we are talking about the hearts of our students. Connecting with them?–Yeah, I want to do that- Every day, for at least 190 days this year!

It’s now 6am and I have transformed this agitation into a clarity of purpose. Perhaps you, dear reader, may feel the same way.  I hope that wherever we are in the world, despite how we teach, that we can all agree upon really digging in and cultivating an intention of “impactful” practice, connecting to and understanding the emotional landscape and perspectives of our students.  Doing this– that’s the only practice that matters. Don’t you agree?

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

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It’s hard not to think about the recent school shooting in America and think about how innovation could benefit schools. These acts of violence are the most extreme case of why we need to change “school as usual” and start creating a paradigm shift in how we think about our school culture and climate.

abraham
Innovation can happen when schools look beyond scores and see the child in front of them. 

It’s hard for me to imagine that a student who felt connected and supported at school would have ever fathomed to pick up a weapon and kill. There is no way that he would want to destroy what brought meaning and value to his life. Think about it.

 

I believe that if a child knew that it was a leaf or a branch on a tree, it wouldn’t hack away at its bark, it would turn toward the light and would be eager to nourish its supporting system.

We know the future will present great challenges ahead that we will need to develop more creativity, empathy, and resilience in order to tackle them. We need students prepared for that. But maybe instead of test scores, we need to think about student achievement through a different lens. Personally, I have been thinking a lot about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how our schools play a role in an individual’s life.maslow-hierarchy-of-needsRemember this pyramid of needs?-the core message was if you want to have a happy and fulfilling life, you need to reach the highest level of this. School provides a major basis for this, 7 hours a day, 180 days a year.

Perhaps our whole definition of student success should be reframed to include emotional intelligence and other indicators of SEL (social-emotional learning) because cultivating the mind without the heart is a great malfeasance of our educational system. Even as an IB school, which has character development as a central part of our framework, we never consider to assess SEL as meaningful data points. The IB’s stance (at least its workshop leaders) say that it’s too subjective to assess our Learner Profile, but I’d like to challenge this. We can’t say that we are creating internationally-minded citizens which work to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect (IB Mission Statement) without some data that proves that we are in fact developing these values in our school communities.

So it is becoming quite evident to me that we cannot speak about innovation without considering how it broadens our definition of learning. And we’ve got to think about how we all–students, school leaders, and teachers included– can climb this pyramid together.

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