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60: Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals to the Classroom with Dr. Jennifer Williams, Julia Fliss, and Nick Covington
12 Plays5 years ago
This episode is all about the Sustainable Development Goals, with some specific questions surrounding their implementation. If you're not familiar, the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015 and consist of 17 major problems the world aims to solve by 2030. Countries are working in partnership to solve issues such as ending world hunger, establishing gender equality, taking climate action, and reducing inequality. Each of these goals has many organizations working with the indicators - or specific tasks - within each goal.
During our panel discussion, we talk about motivating students to reach the SDGs in spite of their gigantic nature, as well as how to implement these ideas in our ever politicized world.
GUESTS
Dr. Jennifer Williams, co-founder and executive director of Take Action Global, co-founder of TeachSDGs, professor at Saint Leo University in the College of Education and Graduate Education, and author of Teach Boldly.
Julia Fliss, a language arts educator at Evergreen Middle School in Evergreen, CO and TeachSDGs ambassador.
Nick Covington, a social studies educator at Ankeny High School in Ankeny, IO (and Creative Director at Human Restoration Project.)
RESOURCES
- Overview of the SDGs
- TeachSDGs
- World’s Largest Lesson
- Teach Boldly: Using EdTech for Social Good by Dr. Jennifer Williams
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Support
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, before we get started, I want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by the human restoration projects, fantastic patrons, all of our work, which includes free resources, materials, and this podcast is available for free due to our Patrion supporters, three of whom are Sheila N Shannon, Olivia era and Burton Hable.
00:00:22
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Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:24
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You can learn more about the human restoration project on our website, human restoration project.org or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
What are Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
00:00:46
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Hello and welcome to Season 3, Episode 18 of Things Fall Apart, our podcast, The Human Restoration Project.
00:00:52
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My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:57
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Today's discussion is all about the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, with specific questions surrounding their implementation.
00:01:05
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If you're not familiar, the SDGs were adopted in 2015 and consist of 17 major problems the world aims to solve by 2030.
00:01:13
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Countries are working in partnership to solve these issues such as ending world hunger, establishing gender equality, taking climate action, and reducing inequality.
00:01:23
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Each of these goals has many organizations working with the indicators, which are the specific tasks within each goal.
00:01:30
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And we've linked specific resources for educators concerning the SDGs in the show notes.
Meet the Guests: Julia Fliss, Dr. Jennifer Williams, Nick Covington
00:01:35
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And our discussion today is surrounded with three different people.
00:01:39
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We have Julia Fliss, who is a language arts instructor at Evergreen Middle School in Evergreen, Colorado.
00:01:46
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Dr. Jennifer Williams, who is, this is gonna be quite the CV, who is co-founder and executive director of Take Action Global, co-founder of TeachSDGs,
00:01:56
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Professor at St.
00:01:57
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Leo University College of Education and Graduate Education.
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Author of the recent book Teach Boldly, among many other things, as well as also probably a couple other companies that I'm pretty sure I didn't write down, but a lot of different things on there.
00:02:09
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And also Nick Covington, who's the Creative Director of Human Restoration Project and a high school social studies teacher.
00:02:16
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So thank you all
Jennifer's Journey from K-12 to Global Education
00:02:17
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for joining us.
00:02:17
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It's nice to see all of you.
00:02:19
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Yeah, thanks for having us.
00:02:21
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Excited to be here.
00:02:22
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Thanks, Chris.
00:02:23
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Yeah, so this is going to be really interesting because rather than talking about strictly just the SDGs, I want to dive more into talking about how to implement them in a logical way and also in an era that's increasingly politicized and has just a lot of
00:02:43
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interesting discussion surrounding the UN, but also just how we saw world issues.
00:02:48
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But before we get there, I think it would be probably beneficial, especially for you, Jennifer, to introduce who you are, what you do, how you got involved with the SDGs, and kind of how you fit into all of this.
00:03:01
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Yeah, I'd be happy to share.
00:03:03
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So again, thank you so much for having me.
00:03:06
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I love any opportunity to share on the work that this
00:03:12
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amazing team of global educators around our world are doing around the global goals and to take action for social good.
00:03:21
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For me, as you mentioned, now I'm in higher ed and I work with global classrooms and, but my background really started in K-12.
00:03:30
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So I was in K-12 for over 20 years and I started off more on the science of education as a speech pathologist.
00:03:37
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Then moved to a Montessori World School where we were hyper-focused on global ed and even things like geography that aren't necessarily the focus of early childhood curricula.
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And
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Also, there wasn't as much need for therapy.
00:03:57
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So I started doing a lot of work around literacy.
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We were early adopters with tech.
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And so we had iPads land on our desks.
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We weren't quite sure what to do with them.
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So we said, let's align it to our work around global education and development of global citizens.
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And so we did that with our youngest students.
00:04:16
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So even we had age four students doing some global projects.
00:04:21
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This was way back when.
00:04:23
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And students up through eighth grade, we had incredible opportunities to take them abroad.
00:04:29
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And so we'd start to work with them over the course of the year and connect virtually.
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And then we would travel to places like Russia and Spain and China and be able to work with the other classrooms in person.
00:04:42
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So, yeah, and then I moved out of K-12 to higher ed in 2014.
00:04:49
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And that gave me the opportunity to really start moving all in on what my passion was after that experience in K-12.
00:04:58
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of how can we find ways to empower every student to take action on their passions, not just students that are able to fly across the world and go to Russia and Spain and China to work together.
How did the Teach SDGs Network Form?
00:05:12
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And that's when I kind of started doing a lot of work with Twitter and finding other teachers that were equally as passionate and saying, yes, this is it.
00:05:21
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This is what I want to do.
00:05:23
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It took a long time.
00:05:24
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So in the beginning, I would put in sessions for global ed and zero people would come.
00:05:29
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But there was a lot of interest around things like tech integration and learning space design.
00:05:33
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So I use that as my entry point saying, okay, well, let's start talking about that.
00:05:37
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And then weave global into it.
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And then we had these beautiful goals come out in 2015 that I
00:05:45
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we all say in our Teach SCGs network, they were really that glue.
00:05:49
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So that point when teachers started to say, yeah, I see myself in this conversation and I belong here and my students need to be here as well.
00:05:58
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So it has been an interesting journey since then.
00:06:02
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And we
00:06:03
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We talk about this story a lot, but we shared a tweet saying to the UN, who's doing this work?
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So in 2015, when the goals came out, we said, yes, finally, this is it.
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Who is doing this work?
00:06:15
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Because we were sure someone was in education and we have our very own goal.
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So, you know, who's doing this?
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And the UN responded and said, we're interested in finding out that answer as well.
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So,
00:06:27
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That's kind of how Teach SDGs formed.
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And now we just announced this week our fourth cohort of ambassadors.
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And we have an amazing group of educators from all parts of our world that are doing the work every day and are ready to really get busy in 2020 because we have 10 years to get moving on these goals.
Global Impact and Authenticity of Teach SDGs
00:06:51
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And we have a lot of work to do.
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That's so cool.
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I love the authenticness of everything, considering that it's literally a worldwide initiative.
00:07:00
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I can't get more authentic than that.
Julia's Project-Based Teaching with SDGs
00:07:02
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And I wanted to kind of turn it over to Julia for a second to talk about basically how you're using the SDGs as a part of that cohort and how this is all meshing together.
00:07:13
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Great question.
00:07:14
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So as a language arts teacher, I am a very project based, always have been since my start in high school, actually.
00:07:23
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I'm a...
00:07:25
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I'll give you a little background.
00:07:26
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I'm kind of an inside out teacher.
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I didn't go to, quote, teaching school.
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I packed my Volkswagen after college, drove west.
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I speak Spanish.
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They needed some teachers in Denver.
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So I started at Denver West High School.
00:07:40
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And my kids taught me how to teach.
00:07:42
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I mean, I went to all the alternative licensure stuff and I went through everything, but I learned through them.
00:07:46
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And when I needed to learn more, I asked them or I found a resource to help them learn.
00:07:52
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kind of like you said, Jennifer, be a part of that conversation in their own learning because that's what it was about for me.
00:07:58
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That's what it's about, I think, in any classroom.
00:08:01
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So
00:08:03
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After spending time at West High School and then helping to open Denver Public Schools Online High School, I came up to the mountains, landed in Evergreen, first started teaching as a language arts, excuse me, a world language and cultures teacher and Spanish teacher.
00:08:18
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And then when a language arts position opened up, I grabbed it.
00:08:21
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So I've always had that kind of open, open, open,
00:08:26
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perspective, open-minded, globally-minded, hey, let's look outside of ourselves in order to learn more of ourselves on the inside.
00:08:35
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I always have used the hero's journey to kind of help kids see out of struggle, because as I was at West High School, I mean, those kids were...
00:08:45
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in deep struggle.
00:08:47
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Maybe, you know, not in comparison to some kiddos I can think of in Africa right now or some refugee children in Belgium right now, but they were in their version of a deep struggle and they needed to be able to see out of it.
00:09:02
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So what I love to do with my kids in the classroom is help them tell their own stories by looking at the stories around them and
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identifying, kind of making their own mark in terms of what do I want to be part of my story?
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How do I want that to be part of my story?
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What can I learn from other people's stories?
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And how can I be sure that any bias I have around my story or another story doesn't become so ingrained in me that I think it's truth.
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So
00:09:35
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In the classroom, for me, the SDGs are a launch point.
00:09:38
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They're an access point.
00:09:39
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They're a, hey, what are you interested in?
00:09:42
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What do you love?
00:09:43
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What's your passion?
00:09:43
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Where's your voice?
00:09:45
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What do you care about?
00:09:46
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Starting in, like, at ground zero.
00:09:49
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My kiddos sit in their chair.
00:09:51
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We start with a writer's notebook every day.
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We talk about what's going on with them.
00:09:55
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I give them space to write, think about, talk about, and share their voice, and
00:10:01
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And as they start to realize that they have someone who cares and they're in a space that's not just shared space and safe space, it's brave space.
00:10:10
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Like I want them to speak up.
00:10:12
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And we cheer when someone shares something powerful or we snap when someone says something that's really profound.
00:10:19
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We just, we build up this space.
00:10:22
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kind of collective, I call it effervescence, where we just bubble up.
00:10:26
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And when I learned about the SDGs last year by doing my own PD, I'm one of those forever kids, lifelong learners, life-wide learners, who's always looking to learn more because
00:10:37
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My kids deserve that and I crave that.
00:10:40
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I took a genius hour course from Andy McNair and I was scrolling through just to get a start and saw the global goals.
00:10:49
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I'm like, I don't know what that is.
00:10:51
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So,
00:10:52
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I opened that particular module and I did not move from my seat.
00:10:57
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Like I jumped up and down, people watched me and I was like, Oh, where has this been my entire life?
00:11:02
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This is it.
00:11:03
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And then my heart started racing.
00:11:05
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I couldn't, I had more tabs open on my computer than I've ever had.
00:11:08
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And I run with a lot of tabs, just saying.
00:11:11
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I just, I couldn't get enough.
00:11:14
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And as I brought that passion and energy into my, I mean,
00:11:19
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I call them my CAP documents, my curriculum and planning documents.
00:11:22
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As a language arts teacher, I have the luxury of, I get to teach genre study.
00:11:28
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So personal narrative to start the year gets to be, let's study some world changers.
00:11:32
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Like I use Chopra.
00:11:33
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Let's study like people who are doing things in the world to make magic happen, to get connected.
00:11:39
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So we do, and I've done this for, I think five or six years, a
00:11:43
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like a world changer PBL.
00:11:45
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And then this year when we joined in the goals project, we brought in goal 16, peace, justice, and strong institutions.
00:11:51
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We just like, it all just kind of laid itself out into how can we use the global goals, the SDGs as an accent access point to dig deeper into the pages of curriculum that are typed out that my kids don't even like, I read it and I translate it and we talk about it, but yeah,
00:12:12
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to read a personal narrative about like Selva Dute, who is a lost boy and his story of coming out of a story that was told for him and turning it into a story that he gets to tell the world with.
00:12:31
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connected to STG number six, connected to like, my kids will tell you every single goal connects to this book because that's their passion.
00:12:39
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But like, you get to use that access point as a way to help create connections and personal narrative.
00:12:47
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Our next unit is informational writing and PS, sorry, I'm totally taking over the conversation.
00:12:51
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I think it's because I'm so nervous.
00:12:55
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Informational writing is next.
00:12:56
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So we're doing our PBL launch.
00:12:59
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Last year it was an info mural.
00:13:00
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And this year I'm asking the kids to write their own PBLs about the global goals.
00:13:05
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I want the kids to write the curriculum.
00:13:07
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I want them to be the ones to say, hey, this is what we should do.
00:13:10
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And here's how we'll connect.
00:13:11
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And what if we do this?
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And how can you connect to this?
00:13:14
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And I want them to reach out to schools.
00:13:16
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And then our last genre study unit is persuasive and argumentative writing.
00:13:20
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So that's kind of a no brainer.
00:13:22
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We can go from PSAs, we can do, I mean, we, there's so much magic there.
00:13:26
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They're going to tell me what we're going
Overcoming Challenges of SDGs in Education
00:13:28
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to do next.
00:13:28
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So that was a long answer to your question, but there you go.
00:13:33
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It's amazing.
00:13:33
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Seriously, if I even had like 10% of like your energy and enthusiasm, I could be like,
00:13:41
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It's honestly amazing.
00:13:43
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Everything that you're talking about and how well it all works together.
00:13:47
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And it actually makes my next couple of questions really awkward because I feel like I'm shifting it to something that's way more, not negative, but challenging to the concept of implementing the SDGs.
00:13:59
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Here's like where I'm at on this.
00:14:00
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So...
00:14:01
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going back actually to what you were talking about there with the hero's journey and students that are struggling, especially students that struggle in school or maybe are struggling at home and therefore are struggling at school.
00:14:13
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When these SDGs are implemented, and this question could be for really anyone, how do you deal with just how daunting they are?
00:14:21
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As in, like, these things are about, like, solving inequality or solving world food security.
00:14:28
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Yeah.
00:14:28
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Which are all giant issues that need to be solved.
00:14:32
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They have to be solved in order for human development to sustain itself.
00:14:35
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But as a result, do you feel like the daunting nature can lead to apathy?
00:14:40
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As in it's a barrier to entry because it's like, well, I can't solve, you know, food insecurity.
00:14:46
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I'm just a teenager, quote unquote.
00:14:49
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How do you deal with that motivational barrier of letting students realize that they can change the world if they work together and reach those points and set those goals?
00:14:57
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It is more than possible.
00:14:58
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It's just a matter of realizing that you can.
00:15:01
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I can jump in on this one.
00:15:03
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Just backing up a second, Julia, I think everything you said just makes me want to be a student in your classroom.
00:15:09
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I need to say that because I'm just listening to you going, you know what, I wish I could be in your classroom every day.
00:15:14
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And I think it's that passion you have that is really what's getting your students on fire about learning about these goals.
00:15:22
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Yeah.
00:15:24
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But switching over to your question, I think that for me, and it's even bigger than the SDGs, because I think when we think about anything that is massive, like the SDGs and making change on that scale, for me, it even strips down a little bit more to just education.
00:15:42
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And I, so I have these university students that come into me and they're like,
00:15:47
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breaking down the doors to get into their first classroom.
00:15:50
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They're like, I can't wait to get into my first classroom and have my first bulletin board.
00:15:54
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And I can't wait to get my table set up.
00:15:57
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Like, this is like no other profession.
00:16:00
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I know, you know, where, where do we have this, where we have this much positive energy.
00:16:06
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And then I think oftentimes we, as teachers look at education as this massive machine, like, Oh,
00:16:13
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How do I make the change that I signed up for?
00:16:16
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Like I signed up to be a teacher.
00:16:17
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I ask my students all the time, why?
00:16:20
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Why are you here?
00:16:21
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You know, it's not going to be for the glory or the money.
00:16:23
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And I want to make a difference in the lives of children and for our world.
00:16:28
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And so when they start to feel like, how can I, one person, make that change that I really envisioned?
00:16:36
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it becomes a little overwhelming and you start to feel that enthusiasm and that passion kind of dwindle.
00:16:46
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But then, and I think that's the thing about the SDGs and you see it come to life with Julia and these other teachers that are in our network.
00:16:55
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The goals for me, like they're the goals for the world.
00:16:58
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Like these are our world.
00:17:00
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We all together agreed upon these goals.
00:17:02
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Our world is working toward these and we have to act fast.
00:17:06
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But it's it's not to me like, OK, we need to solve gender equality, though.
00:17:12
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That's what we're aiming for.
00:17:13
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These are these opportunities just for opening up questions.
00:17:17
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And I think that the teachers that we are working with that are using the goals.
00:17:22
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Yes, they may be aiming towards life underwater or climate change or partnership for the goals.
00:17:28
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sustainable cities that, but it's kind of a lens they're using.
00:17:32
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I mean, we can look at even project-based learning or design thing or any of these different frameworks that just get kids talking and thinking and taking action and moving.
00:17:43
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Like, and even if it's moving in small ways, what I think we're finding is all these small little ways that we're finding we're impacting change and positive ways for the world really is adding up.
00:17:56
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And there's a lot of us, like there are a lot of teachers and there are a lot of students and we are doing the work every single day on learning.
00:18:04
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And so learning, which can be action, which can be changed.
00:18:07
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Like we are already set up.
00:18:09
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We're already set up to do this.
00:18:11
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Whereas other industries maybe are also aligned and working towards the goals, but yeah,
00:18:18
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It's going to take them a little bit longer to get there because we're already, I think, set up to do this work.
00:18:26
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But on the point of the SDGs, if we have students or teachers that are feeling this way, apathetic towards the goals, I'm almost seeing the reverse.
00:18:37
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So we just did a goals project.
00:18:41
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And we had teachers and we had 1,600 classrooms.
00:18:43
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So we had a lot of teachers working towards these goals.
00:18:46
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Some of them had never even heard of the goals.
00:18:48
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They just, this was something they saw on Twitter and they said, I want to be a part of this, whatever it is.
00:18:52
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And everybody kind of was signing up blindly because we were building it as we went.
00:18:56
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And so with that many teachers, we had some saying, I'm going to need a rubric.
00:19:00
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I'm going to need my step-by-step directions.
00:19:02
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And we, by design, said, no, this is we are just opening up questions for your students.
00:19:08
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Just see what happens.
00:19:10
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And by the end, we had so many coming to us saying,
00:19:14
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you reminded me why I got into education.
00:19:17
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You reminded me of my purpose because they started to see it wasn't about the grade.
00:19:22
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It wasn't about the standard.
00:19:24
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It wasn't about having to answer to someone else's extrinsic motivation.
00:19:29
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It was purely what was happening in the moment with the kids.
00:19:32
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I love that last point that you make surrounding the restoration of intrinsic motivation is huge.
Empowering Students through SDGs
00:19:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this podcast so far.
00:19:42
Speaker
Are you interested in diving deeper into progressive education?
00:19:46
Speaker
If so, Human Restoration Project would love to serve as a platform to amplify your voice.
00:19:52
Speaker
We're seeking writers to help contribute to our magazine.
00:19:55
Speaker
And if you really want a deep dive, we'd love to hear your ideas for something else.
00:19:59
Speaker
You can reach me at chris, C-H-R-I-S, at humanrestorationproject.org to learn more.
00:20:06
Speaker
Now, back to our discussions.
00:20:16
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And something that I was thinking about while you were talking is there's also that place for motivation in terms of kind of like place-based learning or just the concept of seeing yourself in the goals.
00:20:26
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All of us, I'm sure have students that, you know, go home every day and they see the inequality in their daily lives.
00:20:33
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And by engaging in civic participation, understanding the world around them, they are kind of learning how to organize and change these things for themselves and empowering them to give them the tools to make a better world for everyone.
00:20:45
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It makes me think back to a few episodes back we had Dr. Richard Wilkinson on.
00:20:50
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And his studies are all framed around how inequitable societies make everyone less happy.
00:20:57
Speaker
So even those that are incredibly rich and quote unquote successful and very powerful, they are actually sadder and more depressed and more anxious as a result of living in a very inequitable world.
00:21:10
Speaker
So finding ways for students to see themselves within those SDGs to make their own lives better seems like it has some place in terms of at least trying to marginally solve that apathy problem in whatever way that we possibly can.
00:21:25
Speaker
Nick, what are your thoughts on this?
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was I was going to chime in and just say that I think, you know, for a little bit of context with this, what kind of got me even thinking in this direction in the first place was was like my own experience with PBL and my economic engagement project.
00:21:39
Speaker
And I just pulled up a list of some of the questions that my students are asking, like, how does gender inequality present itself in the modern workspace?
00:21:46
Speaker
Are the things kids are learning in school beneficial for their adult lives?
00:21:50
Speaker
Are African-Americans getting the right education they need?
00:21:52
Speaker
How can students make an impact on mental health in schools?
00:21:55
Speaker
And so
00:21:56
Speaker
So I felt like this semester, those are the questions that kids are asking, but I kind of felt like they're spinning their wheels because it's kind of one and done, right?
00:22:03
Speaker
They're just kind of, they're individuals or they're groups of two or three or four, you know, students all trying to do that work just by themselves.
00:22:10
Speaker
It feels like Atlas, like they're just lifting it themselves.
00:22:13
Speaker
And I felt like...
00:22:14
Speaker
I have a chance because I teach a semester long class to, you know, what can I do to make that better for second semester?
00:22:19
Speaker
And so the first person I reached out to do that was Julia, because I remember she talked about those SDGs at one of the summits we had like in August, right before the school year started.
00:22:28
Speaker
And I think I tweeted at you or messaged you or something.
00:22:32
Speaker
I was like, what's that thing?
00:22:33
Speaker
Like, I don't remember what the name was.
00:22:35
Speaker
I tried Googling all of it.
00:22:37
Speaker
And that was right before Thanksgiving break.
00:22:39
Speaker
And in that thread, Julia linked me to like this, um,
00:22:43
Speaker
It was like to a certification thing for Microsoft.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:46
Speaker
And it was so funny because when you said the first time you heard about it, you had all those tabs open on your thing.
00:22:51
Speaker
That was totally my computer because as I was going through it, it had all those videos and all those links and all the Twitter accounts.
00:22:57
Speaker
And I was like following people and I was bookmarking things and I was like organizing folders of stuff.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it does.
00:23:02
Speaker
It just felt like I had found that missing link that made that like made that work connected to
00:23:08
Speaker
to something bigger than just kids in my room, you know, like, so that way they didn't feel like they were just spinning their wheels.
00:23:14
Speaker
They felt like they were contributing to a global goal, you know, like that is what the cool power of this is.
00:23:19
Speaker
And, and, and when you mentioned earlier, like it gives kids a chance to be able to tell their story.
00:23:25
Speaker
Like I think about in the sense of like the human centered learning and the goals that we all have here, that can't be a monologue or that they can't be one uni directional from teacher to student.
00:23:35
Speaker
If we're,
00:23:36
Speaker
Having kids explore the stories of, like you mentioned, Oprah or any of these other people around the world as they're related to those goals, well, they're going to naturally insert themselves and invite them into that conversation.
00:23:48
Speaker
So it's like it's humanizing just because the nature of it is.
00:23:52
Speaker
It involves discourse and dialogue and it involves learning about other cultures.
00:23:56
Speaker
And it's just like, it really, it did.
00:23:57
Speaker
It felt like I, when you shared that link and then, you know, talking with Jennifer Williams too, and, and I got to get my book.
00:24:03
Speaker
Um, I've got to get my teach boldly book.
00:24:06
Speaker
Um,
00:24:07
Speaker
It just felt like finding the missing link and all this stuff.
00:24:10
Speaker
So I'm really working hard in the next couple weeks to try and learn more about those and how we can connect that work that students want to do.
00:24:16
Speaker
They want to know about mental health in schools and the different kinds of education and health effects on young people, constitutional rights.
00:24:27
Speaker
What's happening to the bees was a question one of my kids asked.
00:24:32
Speaker
all connect now that I kind of see that map, the multicolored grid map, like I see that on there and it just, it makes those connections.
00:24:38
Speaker
So yeah, I'm just, I'm stewing.
00:24:40
Speaker
I'm excited.
00:24:41
Speaker
Like I want to get going tomorrow and all that stuff.
00:24:43
Speaker
Right on.
00:24:44
Speaker
Can I pipe in?
00:24:46
Speaker
So love that.
00:24:48
Speaker
I think one of my favorite parts is that it gives kids permission to ask questions about the world.
00:24:54
Speaker
For sure.
00:24:55
Speaker
Like it's big.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
And there's, I don't even know, like I have a whole, um,
00:25:02
Speaker
I don't know if you guys can see these, but there's like, there's targets for each goal.
00:25:06
Speaker
Like there's sub targets.
00:25:07
Speaker
And that's what we use for the info murals.
00:25:08
Speaker
You pick one sub target and they're like, but what's that one?
00:25:11
Speaker
And how does it differ from that one?
00:25:13
Speaker
And what do I do with that one?
00:25:14
Speaker
If I really care about three of them, like just asking questions in there.
00:25:19
Speaker
like information gathering like I've never seen.
00:25:23
Speaker
It's phenomenal.
00:25:24
Speaker
Then they get in conversations with each other.
00:25:26
Speaker
Like we do stand up debates in my room where, you know, the kids actually started doing them on their own.
00:25:32
Speaker
And by the end of the second one, if you really had a powerful point you needed to share, then you stood on your desk to make sure people knew, hey, I have something to say about this.
00:25:41
Speaker
Right.
00:25:41
Speaker
So the power of giving kids not just permission, but the floor, like give them the floor, give them the space to use their voice to make change and connect with the ecosystem that we are as a planet as and as a people.
00:25:58
Speaker
And there that's my vision of the cure for any kind of apathy.
00:26:03
Speaker
It's connect.
00:26:04
Speaker
It's connection.
00:26:06
Speaker
You can tie it to cell and sources of strength.
00:26:08
Speaker
You can tie it to so many different things.
00:26:10
Speaker
It's giving kids permission to connect in a way that's authentic to them so that their voice is honored and they own their own learning.
00:26:20
Speaker
And that's what's crazy when we know, like we think about that issue of apathy and are the questions too big, like like, oh, we're never going to end poverty.
00:26:28
Speaker
But like, listen to how you're talking about it and how students respond to those kinds of things.
00:26:31
Speaker
It makes it feel like those those those things are manageable because we're not doing it by ourselves.
00:26:37
Speaker
It's not the responsibility of any single person, but together we can do those.
00:26:41
Speaker
So it's, yeah, the only way we're gonna do it is if we make those connections and grow together.
00:26:46
Speaker
There's not a more, a better message in education than that.
00:26:49
Speaker
So that's perfect.
00:26:51
Speaker
Like planet literacy, right?
00:26:53
Speaker
It's a different level of literacy.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that pretty well answers that question.
00:26:59
Speaker
I think that's pretty solid.
00:27:02
Speaker
Maybe my pre-selected questions were awkward because I feel like I'm about to like, all right, let's take it all back down, folks.
00:27:09
Speaker
Let's go over to pluralization and neoliberalism.
00:27:14
Speaker
But just to kind of throw it out there.
00:27:18
Speaker
We live in an increasingly politicized world, polarized world.
00:27:22
Speaker
As a result, the United Nations, as well as really the solutions to every single one of these problems is politicized and on very firm lines.
00:27:33
Speaker
Some of us, I don't know about everyone.
00:27:34
Speaker
I teach in a very conservative district.
00:27:37
Speaker
And it's interesting to note the conversations that come up when you talk about things like inequality or gender equality or even things like environmentalism and how you go about solving those problems and whether or not those problems need to be solved.
00:27:52
Speaker
So I'm curious how exactly we go about implementing change via these policies without people automatically assuming that the goal is to politicize their children.
00:28:06
Speaker
Because I don't want to take the stance that they're not political.
00:28:09
Speaker
They all are political.
00:28:10
Speaker
Education is itself inherently
Political Challenges and Pushback on SDGs
00:28:13
Speaker
political.
00:28:13
Speaker
But at the same time, I don't want, you know, someone coming into my classroom and like saying, you know, you're brainwashing my student or something like that.
00:28:21
Speaker
How do we go about navigating that political discourse?
00:28:23
Speaker
Well, and that is happening.
00:28:25
Speaker
I mean, that absolutely is happening.
00:28:26
Speaker
And we've we've witnessed it with some of our projects.
00:28:30
Speaker
I think that we.
00:28:33
Speaker
I mean, we are, in my opinion, in the most exciting time in education, but it's also it's a challenging time, especially when we talk about things like social good and incorporating the SDGs into our classrooms.
00:28:43
Speaker
So work around these topics like you're talking around environmental justice.
00:28:48
Speaker
And we're starting to think on social inclusion and shared humanity, peace, justice, all of it.
00:28:56
Speaker
Those were areas that were really reserved for social work.
00:28:59
Speaker
So though we're doing that in the classrooms, and we have been for a long time, particularly at the high school level, but even as we go down into the younger grades, but it was
00:29:11
Speaker
kind of reserved for a different profession.
00:29:14
Speaker
But educators, I think, are saying, you know what, I'm doing this work.
00:29:17
Speaker
I have students in my class that are refugees.
00:29:19
Speaker
I have students asking these questions around gender equality.
00:29:22
Speaker
I am obligated to give them the right answers, to give them the resources that they need, and to, just as Julia said, be that safe space where they can come and feel okay to inquire.
00:29:36
Speaker
So a lot of it, though, is U.S.-centric.
00:29:40
Speaker
So we have teach SDGs, educators from all around the world that are working on incorporating these goals into their instructional design.
00:29:50
Speaker
And it's a non-issue.
00:29:52
Speaker
It is.
00:29:52
Speaker
We are mandated by the government, every industry, including education, to incorporate the SDGs.
00:29:59
Speaker
So they need to have alignment.
00:30:01
Speaker
And they're way ahead of us.
00:30:03
Speaker
They're like, we're already there.
00:30:05
Speaker
We're moving forward.
00:30:06
Speaker
And they're a passionate bunch, especially in Africa.
00:30:08
Speaker
So we have some really charged, fired up Teach SDGs ambassadors that are like, they're going to their ministries of education.
00:30:15
Speaker
They're advocates.
00:30:16
Speaker
They're activists.
00:30:18
Speaker
Here, when we're talking about the United States, I think we do have some teachers that are quite nervous because they, even though some of us are saying, you know what, we're unapologetic about this, we're doing this work, we believe in this, and we're going to find a way.
00:30:34
Speaker
There are some teachers that say, but I can't lose my job.
00:30:36
Speaker
I mean, I have pressure from my administration, from my school board, from my community members.
00:30:42
Speaker
We had the goals project.
00:30:44
Speaker
And some of the goals, like if they're talking about life underwater, they don't get pushback.
00:30:51
Speaker
If they're talking about SDG 13, which is climate action, they're shut down.
00:30:57
Speaker
So we must be empathetic towards that.
00:31:00
Speaker
And instead of saying, well, that's wrong, I think this is just another opportunity for us to open up and say, well, I'd like to hear your perspective.
00:31:09
Speaker
And it's going to take all of us to reach these goals.
00:31:12
Speaker
And so if we're looking down party lines or if we're in a very highly conservative communities, I think that
00:31:23
Speaker
It invites, it's challenging when we think about the goals, but I think invites opportunity for us to have shared experience and just open up our own eyes.
00:31:37
Speaker
So if we believe in the goals and we believe in things like climate change, yes, that's something that I feel strongly about, but I'd like to hear someone else's perspective.
00:31:44
Speaker
And that's going to, when we talk about mastery learning, that's going to make, Julie says she does debate in her house, like that's going to make you have to have stronger convictions in,
00:31:53
Speaker
what you believe in.
00:31:56
Speaker
So I think when if the SDGs themselves are areas that teachers are, it's just off limits for them right now.
00:32:07
Speaker
And then again, it's right now, maybe as we get a couple years, because a couple years ago, no one even knew about the goals.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so like, as Nick says, like, these are new for me or Julia a year ago, these are new for me.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's they're new for all of us.
00:32:17
Speaker
So what a beautiful opportunity for us to co-learn with our students and our communities.
00:32:23
Speaker
But I think we also have to be patient that we have this urgent agenda that we have to meet.
00:32:29
Speaker
We also have to have patience and we need to be kind to each other and we need to just slow down and listen.
00:32:35
Speaker
And I really appreciate that standpoint, because I think that a lot of times when people are pursuing curriculum development, they have a tendency, and we kind of do this sometimes on accident, to make teachers feel like if they're not doing something that they're in the wrong, which has a tendency to contribute to a lot of burnout, when really it's just a push towards a new initiative that's not meant to single anyone out.
00:33:00
Speaker
And it's very difficult to communicate that message in a way that doesn't come across as saying, like, if you're not doing this, then you're
00:33:08
Speaker
you're doing something wrong.
00:33:09
Speaker
Um, as opposed to if you're not doing this, let's have a conversation to figure out either how you can do it or why it's not happening or, you know, some, some form of dialogue.
00:33:17
Speaker
Julia, have you had the same, have you had any experiences in your classes with the SDGs and pushback of any kind?
00:33:23
Speaker
Definitely.
00:33:24
Speaker
And within that cadre of, um, teachers that Jennifer referenced, like the SDG women, we've, we share all the time about this just happened and that just happened and I'm not getting support and what can I do?
00:33:38
Speaker
So for me, the way that I kind of open any discussion around the SDGs in my room is that we're navigating uncertainty.
00:33:46
Speaker
These are uncertain times we need to make sense of them and we get to make sense of them in a way that makes sense to you.
00:33:54
Speaker
We all have our own brains.
00:33:57
Speaker
We all have our own filters and way of seeing the world.
00:34:00
Speaker
Thank goodness.
00:34:00
Speaker
And so you get to find your way to make sense of this.
00:34:04
Speaker
And it's going to be some information sifting and some asking questions.
00:34:07
Speaker
And you might run into some people who don't agree with you or people you learned so much from.
00:34:12
Speaker
And each of those people, each of those experiences, each book you read is like, it's a mark, a milestone in your life.
00:34:20
Speaker
And you get to like absorb that and become more
00:34:23
Speaker
a new you and a different you and a better you.
00:34:26
Speaker
So that's how we contextualize it in my class, but I'm a huge believer in transformative pedagogy.
00:34:33
Speaker
So like, I want the kids to connect with curriculum in that way.
00:34:38
Speaker
Some of my colleagues are not.
00:34:42
Speaker
I have a certain group of colleagues right now who are
00:34:47
Speaker
are saying that I'm stepping on their toes because in sixth grade, the social studies teacher is only supposed to cover the Western Hemisphere.
00:34:56
Speaker
And so if I'm talking Eastern Hemisphere, which you have to do when you talk about any of the goals, I like...
Success Stories in SDG Implementation
00:35:05
Speaker
got called out in a faculty meeting in a really kind of passive aggressive way.
00:35:10
Speaker
And I just got to speak my truth and say, you know what?
00:35:14
Speaker
I don't feel like I'm stepping on anyone's toes.
00:35:16
Speaker
Here's where I'm coming from.
00:35:18
Speaker
I'm using the goals as an access point here.
00:35:20
Speaker
I mean, I just described the way that we're talking about the goals in the class and
00:35:26
Speaker
There's still tension, but there's an opening and there's an invitation to come talk at my door and no one's, no one's shown up yet, but I think that's it.
00:35:38
Speaker
I think the goals create the opening to understand and have conversations about making sense in the world.
00:35:45
Speaker
And there's,
00:35:46
Speaker
that's a gift.
00:35:47
Speaker
There's one universal access point of people and working together to create not just student agency, but educational agency.
00:35:58
Speaker
Like we get to make learning what we want it to be.
00:36:01
Speaker
And if we don't ask the kids, we are just doing ourselves such a disservice because they're the ones who know.
00:36:08
Speaker
They're the ones who should be sitting in the driver's seat, in my opinion.
00:36:12
Speaker
And they're the ones who are...
00:36:15
Speaker
the leaders right now as evidence of the biggest momentum we've seen on the planet in terms of a shift for consciousness raising and awakening that I've seen in my lifetime.
00:36:26
Speaker
And like you said, Jennifer, it's so exciting.
00:36:29
Speaker
It's so exciting.
00:36:31
Speaker
So that's...
00:36:33
Speaker
There's some for me.
00:36:34
Speaker
And I think what's that lunch tray behind you is, I think, a testament to that, too.
00:36:39
Speaker
Like you just had the artifact
Interconnected Educational Systems and Global Problems
00:36:41
Speaker
of that.
00:36:41
Speaker
And what struck me so much about that conversation about you're only supposed to teach the Western Hemisphere and then they'll get the Eastern Hemisphere somewhere else is it's so interesting, right?
00:36:49
Speaker
How in.
00:36:51
Speaker
in more traditional settings, how those, we basically have to choose, right, between those silos and the goal of the curriculum and the sustainable development goals.
00:37:02
Speaker
So either you can meet the SDGs and look at things from a global lens, or you can teach in the predetermined silos that the curriculum says.
00:37:10
Speaker
And isn't that so interesting that as educators, we're forced to make that choice between, you know,
00:37:17
Speaker
colleagues and collegial relationships and the curriculum that we've been given or, right, teach to these SDGs to meet not just kids where they're at and help them tell their stories, but help them connect to these bigger pictures.
00:37:28
Speaker
It's just that there's so much tension in that that seems ironic from like an educational lens.
00:37:34
Speaker
Why wouldn't we get kids fired up about ending poverty or environmental justice and then turn them loose to solve those problems?
00:37:42
Speaker
Silos be damned.
00:37:43
Speaker
Like that gets my hackles up a little bit about that.
00:37:46
Speaker
THE
00:37:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:37:48
Speaker
It's it's a that's a great another example of systems have to work together in order to solve the education system.
00:37:54
Speaker
You got to have critical pedagogy.
00:37:56
Speaker
You got to decolonize the curriculum.
00:37:58
Speaker
You got to give students voice and choice.
00:38:00
Speaker
You got to use experiential learning as soon as you do one.
00:38:03
Speaker
All the other ones are kind of a requirement for that other thing to exist.
00:38:06
Speaker
And you mentioned, you know, the teachers, the need for rubrics or for some of those other things to how do we grade these kinds of things?
00:38:13
Speaker
But again, if the focus is on solving those problems,
00:38:16
Speaker
Well, we might not know for 10 years.
00:38:18
Speaker
If the goal is 10 years out, right, getting an A in SDGs in 2019 doesn't mean we've met the goal.
00:38:26
Speaker
So it kind of seems, yeah, it just, you have to make a choice between that authentic, meaningful, real world work that we're all contributing our little slice of the puzzle and those pieces of our lives to, or meeting these short-term artificial challenges
00:38:42
Speaker
you know, goals that, you know, might contribute to a credential, but don't have a bigger impact.
00:38:47
Speaker
Like there's trade-offs involved in that, you know?
00:38:49
Speaker
Right.
00:38:50
Speaker
Right.
00:38:50
Speaker
So my tray, Jennifer, is tray behind me.
00:38:55
Speaker
I had these two sixth graders who decided that they were done.
00:39:00
Speaker
They couldn't believe that we still had styrofoam trays in our cafeteria, plastic utensils, all this.
00:39:05
Speaker
So this is before I even knew about the SDGs.
00:39:07
Speaker
And we wrote proposals and leadership council, we did our world changer.
00:39:11
Speaker
We're like, okay, and they lobbied to the PTA.
00:39:14
Speaker
They've created a slideshow presentation that we shared with the superintendent.
00:39:18
Speaker
And this year, just this year, these are their signatures.
00:39:21
Speaker
We now have...
00:39:23
Speaker
recyclable trays and we have sustainability come into school and they're connecting with, you know, everything SDG now.
00:39:32
Speaker
And it's, it's powerful to watch.
00:39:34
Speaker
It's the whole, it's, it's take action global.
00:39:36
Speaker
It is give students the place to speak and use their voice and then help them learn how to use that as agency to make change.
00:39:46
Speaker
It's fantastic.
00:39:47
Speaker
It's what it's teach us these SDGs.
00:39:50
Speaker
It's just like, I feel like I really feel like there's this, like this ripple, like this, this energetic vibrational frequency that you just tap into when you start to see, wow, this is, this is what it, this is what we're, why we're here.
00:40:06
Speaker
Like, this is what's happening on the planet.
00:40:07
Speaker
The planet's asking us to wake up.
00:40:09
Speaker
Let's do this together.
00:40:10
Speaker
So it's, it's powerful.
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:12
Speaker
It's awesome.
00:40:15
Speaker
Honestly, this conversation has been incredible.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's making me very, very much motivated to do this tomorrow.
00:40:21
Speaker
I really, really love this conversation.
Conclusion and Resources
00:40:23
Speaker
And I appreciate you all joining us for this.
00:40:26
Speaker
Really quick, I think it'd probably be beneficial.
00:40:28
Speaker
Jennifer, can you give us like a one to two minute summary of Teach Boldly?
00:40:34
Speaker
So we can learn a little more about that.
00:40:36
Speaker
So we'll teach boldly as the book is my book that I published with ISTE.
00:40:42
Speaker
And it's really meant to be this guidebook and an invitation for teachers to consider their own practice and connect to purpose on their own to the guide students to start to take action on their own passions and purposes.
00:40:54
Speaker
And there are six chapters that guides teachers through starting to look at some exemplars.
00:40:58
Speaker
So we can we're in this really neat time where everything we've worked for in global education for many, many years, getting students to the point where they can advocate for their own interests.
00:41:11
Speaker
We're there.
00:41:12
Speaker
We were at that moment with students like Greta and others.
00:41:16
Speaker
And so we start off by, or I start off by talking about some of these wonderful students that are out in the world doing the work, then looking at our own spaces.
00:41:26
Speaker
So environment first, looking at digital storytelling, having teachers be conscious consumers, because we as teachers now are decision makers.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's different from when I started teaching a long, long time ago and your curriculum was handed to you and
00:41:41
Speaker
You went page by page as you traveled through the year.
00:41:44
Speaker
And then concluding just with ways that teachers can develop and grow on their own.
00:41:49
Speaker
And so that's Teach Boldly, the book.
00:41:52
Speaker
And then we have this community and social spaces like Twitter that are using this hashtag Teach Boldly.
00:42:00
Speaker
Along with hashtags like teach SDGs and take action EDU that are just out and making a change every single day and transforming our world for people on planet.
00:42:13
Speaker
I will link in the show notes to all that stuff.
00:42:15
Speaker
So that way everyone can access if they like and learn more, maybe purchase a book or run it from the library, support the work, do that kind of stuff.
00:42:25
Speaker
Other than that, I appreciate all of you joining me today talking about SDGs and basically how we can change the world.
00:42:31
Speaker
Thanks for having us.
00:42:32
Speaker
We appreciate it.
00:42:35
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
00:42:38
Speaker
I hope that this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:42:43
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:42:53
Speaker
Bye.