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Summit: Endorsing Student Voice Through Virtual/Hybrid Activism
12 Plays5 years ago
This is an audio version of our Summit on August 1st, 2020. Here's the video!
Inspire Citizens is an innovative organization focusing on active, informed civics through social justice, sustainable development, collective well-being, SEL, and ethical media literacy. Out of the Blocks is an NPR program focused on capturing the sounds on the street of Baltimore, formed on the idea of interviewing every single person on a given block. And Evan Whitehead is a school leader and educator of over 20 years with a focus on social-emotional well-being.
Check out this podcast between Inspire Citizens and Out of the Blocks on how this work can involve students.
Further, this Padlet has a huge collection of ideas shared today. Further, check out our write-up on writing.humanrestorationproject.org.
Our Summit focused on endorsing student voice through activism in a hybrid/virtual setting. How can we help students become involved in their community when it's difficult or impossible to actually walk around the community? How can we use technology (e.g. podcasts, photography, interviews) to help connect others? How can we promote social justice when it's difficult to build interpersonal connections?
Look out for future Summits via Human Restoration Project’s website and social media.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro to PDE Summit & Student Activism
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to a recording of our PDE Summit at Human Restoration Project on endorsing student voice through virtual and hybrid activism.
00:00:13
Speaker
This episode features Inspire Citizens, Out of the Blocks, and Evan Whitehead.
00:00:17
Speaker
And I'm Chris McNutt with Human Restoration Project.
00:00:19
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know this content is brought to you by our Patreon supporters, three of whom are Mary Becker, Brandon Peters, and Dylan Wentz.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:28
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
00:00:35
Speaker
We've attempted to edit this summit as an audio version, but you may find references to content that's on the screen.
00:00:40
Speaker
Please see our show notes for resources or a link to access the video version of this conference.
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:54
Speaker
All right.
00:00:54
Speaker
Well, as we continue to admit people, I'll go ahead and get started and we can do some introductions and kind of go from there.
Summit Format & Virtual Engagement
00:01:00
Speaker
So welcome everyone.
00:01:01
Speaker
My name is Chris.
00:01:03
Speaker
I work for Human Restoration Project.
00:01:04
Speaker
I'm also a teacher.
00:01:06
Speaker
I teach digital media to ninth graders.
00:01:08
Speaker
And today we're hosting a pretty cool professional development event surrounding virtual and hybrid activism.
00:01:14
Speaker
So
00:01:15
Speaker
Talk about how students are getting involved in activism in our new virtual and hybrid-based spaces.
00:01:22
Speaker
And if you're not there, you'll probably be there very soon.
00:01:26
Speaker
So we have a pretty interesting format here.
00:01:28
Speaker
We're going to start off with some introductions in a second.
00:01:32
Speaker
And then from there, we're going to go into some breakout rooms.
00:01:34
Speaker
In your email that we sent out, there should be one of three different links to a slightly different video platform based off of your last name.
00:01:43
Speaker
We can sort that out as needed, depending on our numbers.
00:01:48
Speaker
But make sure you just refer back to that here when we transfer that you know where you're going or else you're going to be left behind.
00:01:54
Speaker
Other than that, there will be a spot for some asynchronous
Inspire Citizens & Ethical Journalism
00:01:58
Speaker
conversations.
00:01:58
Speaker
If you have like any outstanding questions, if you wanna connect with people, there's a link at the bottom of that email that will help you out to ask those questions.
00:02:07
Speaker
So without further ado, we can just kind of like go around our different presenters here to introduce yourselves.
00:02:14
Speaker
We'll do like inspire citizens, then pass it over to Evan, then over to Out of the Blocks maybe, and just kind of go through from there.
00:02:21
Speaker
So Steve, I don't know if you want to start us off.
00:02:24
Speaker
and then just kind of pass the handle over.
00:02:26
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, guys, my name is Steve Sostak, co-founder and co-director of Inspire Citizens, although now there's three of us.
00:02:35
Speaker
I don't know.
00:02:35
Speaker
Is that tri-director?
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:38
Speaker
I'm actually in Chicago right now.
00:02:40
Speaker
I was a classroom teacher for 16 years, taught grade four, six and eight, taught some journalism, taught global citizenship, Chicago.
00:02:48
Speaker
And then I went international to Peru, to Malaysia and to Beijing where Inspire Citizens started.
00:02:55
Speaker
So today's going to be a great opportunity.
Out of the Blocks Documentary Project
00:02:58
Speaker
You'll get to know a little bit about the why of Inspire Citizens, and then we're going to kind of transfer that why
00:03:03
Speaker
with Donna, who is our co-director of Global Youth Media, and we're going to look at how we can answer those questions through ethical journalism and really like radio activism.
00:03:14
Speaker
So thank you for having me.
00:03:16
Speaker
Okay, I guess it's out of the block's turn.
00:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, my name is Aaron Henkin.
00:03:20
Speaker
I'm here in Baltimore with my co-producer, Wendell Patrick, who's on the call as well.
00:03:26
Speaker
And we do a...
00:03:29
Speaker
I work at the local public radio station, the affiliate here, national public radio affiliate in Baltimore, WYPR.
00:03:35
Speaker
And several years ago, Wendell and I co-created a documentary series called Out of the Blocks.
00:03:43
Speaker
which has got a kind of an unusual premise.
00:03:47
Speaker
And we ended up actually kind of dovetailing with Steve and Inspire Citizens and turning what we do into an educational tool, which we're gonna tell you about in the breakout sessions.
00:03:58
Speaker
But I'll turn it over to Wendell to talk a little bit more about what Out of the Blocks is, what it sounds like and what it's all about.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, good morning.
00:04:07
Speaker
So I'm Wendell Patrick and I work with Aaron on Out of the Blocks.
00:04:10
Speaker
And when you listen to the program, it's really an audio documentary soundscape where we make it our mission to meet and interview every single person on a particular block and then to tell their stories.
00:04:25
Speaker
And I'm a musician and a photographer.
00:04:28
Speaker
And so we also document each individual on the block with a portrait.
00:04:33
Speaker
And then I write an original musical score for each episode, often using sounds from the blocks themselves as a narrative tool.
Mission of Inspire Citizens & Student Activism
00:04:41
Speaker
And so we've done about two dozen blocks in Baltimore, and we've had the pleasure to travel to other cities as well.
00:04:50
Speaker
with this particular model.
00:04:51
Speaker
And it's been great to bring it to the youth and introduce it to them as a tool to both meet additional people and also expand their own knowledge of oftentimes their own cities.
00:05:06
Speaker
So I'm.
00:05:18
Speaker
Deputy Director of Inspired Citizens.
00:05:20
Speaker
And I guess I would say if my focus is on anything, it's on personal and collective well-being.
00:05:25
Speaker
But I'm totally driven by the why of Inspired Citizens that Steve referred to earlier.
Social-Emotional Learning in Global Contexts
00:05:31
Speaker
And so with him and Donna working together on the global youth media element,
00:05:37
Speaker
I'll be speaking to you with Evan Whitehead more about what does student activism and student voice look like when we're thinking about the embedding of social emotional well-being.
00:05:50
Speaker
Evan, do you want to go ahead?
00:05:52
Speaker
Sure.
00:05:53
Speaker
Good morning, everyone.
00:05:54
Speaker
My name is Evan Whitehead.
00:05:56
Speaker
I just started my 23rd year in education, my 11th year in Central Office Administration.
00:06:02
Speaker
I'm also a national presenter, consultant, and speaker.
00:06:06
Speaker
My focus for the majority of my educational career has been in special education and working with diverse student learners as well.
00:06:16
Speaker
And, you know, for me, my why and my mission now has really been the focus on social-emotional learning and well-being, not just for students, but for adults as well, especially given the time that we're living in.
00:06:28
Speaker
We know that it's a huge, you know, idea and it's a thought that we need to focus on.
00:06:35
Speaker
And also my work, I'm a mental health advocate as well and pushing for the
00:06:41
Speaker
you know, educator well being and self care as well.
00:06:45
Speaker
So we'll be talking a little bit about that during during the sessions.
00:06:50
Speaker
Let's get Donna in there, Donna.
00:06:54
Speaker
Some of you know me.
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm Donna Guerin.
00:06:56
Speaker
I'm entering my 21st year in education.
00:07:01
Speaker
I recently joined Steve with becoming co-director of Global Youth Media.
00:07:07
Speaker
And I am really excited to join this group because it does speak to my why, which is all about student voice and amplifying student voice.
00:07:16
Speaker
And so I'm just excited to be here and I'm ready to learn along with you all.
00:07:22
Speaker
Guys, I also want to thank Chris and Nick and Linda just for putting this all together.
00:07:27
Speaker
What you guys are all doing is fantastic.
00:07:29
Speaker
So,
00:07:30
Speaker
If you haven't checked out Human Restoration's work, it's really, really empowering stuff that really gets into the real pedagogy and the shift in where education needs to go.
00:07:41
Speaker
And also, I see there are a lot of familiar faces here, so I would challenge us as we walk away from this session is to say, what are some next steps that we can use to pull out of the blocks and the Inspire Citizens work and the work of Kavita
00:07:55
Speaker
Evan immediately into what we're doing this fall.
00:07:58
Speaker
So let's, while it is informal, let's also think about that idea of like, let's do something with this.
Virtual Activism in Education
00:08:08
Speaker
Most of you, I think, you know, have a good feel for what Inspire Citizens does in essence of our why, but I do want to just kind of bring it back to that mission because everything we do hopefully is mission driven.
00:08:19
Speaker
And then we'll start to expand into
00:08:21
Speaker
where Global Youth Media fits to that.
00:08:23
Speaker
And then we'll just kind of, maybe we can get a Q&A slash, you know, Impossible Dreams protocol going on how we can start to launch that type of work in our classrooms.
00:08:32
Speaker
Cause I know a lot of you guys are diving in in a couple of weeks.
00:08:34
Speaker
So we want to do everything we can to support you guys.
00:08:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:39
Speaker
So let me see if this works.
00:08:43
Speaker
All right, click on that.
00:08:46
Speaker
Can everybody, yep, there we go.
00:08:49
Speaker
You guys see all yourselves now?
00:08:51
Speaker
So I'm gonna flip over back to here for a second.
00:08:55
Speaker
So this is just a frame where we're going.
00:08:57
Speaker
These were in essence the three questions that we're gonna try to walk out of here with some answers for so that again, we can be ready to roll after walking out of here and we can experiment for the next couple of weeks so that you can work on this with your kids after you guys get your class set up and get everybody feeling well.
00:09:14
Speaker
So, you know, introducing activism, promoting voice like Donna mentioned, and that idea of a virtual environment, because a lot of us will be starting virtually, but also in a hybrid environment.
00:09:26
Speaker
Platforms and organizations.
00:09:27
Speaker
So we'll talk about some of those as we unpack some things, including in the out of the box work, obviously.
00:09:33
Speaker
And then that idea of coaching students through process of change.
00:09:37
Speaker
Right.
00:09:38
Speaker
So.
00:09:39
Speaker
Just so you can see, this is a visual that you could take from something like that Simon Sinek, that really famous Golden Circle podcast, right?
00:09:48
Speaker
The TED Talk, where if you're going to look at Inspire Citizens, our what is we took Target 4.7 from the SDGs.
00:09:56
Speaker
You know, we're looking to educate students to become civically conscious and then do something with that, but also linking it to their learning.
Global Youth Media & Student Voices
00:10:05
Speaker
Right.
00:10:05
Speaker
So we're applied learning for active global citizenship and sustainable development.
00:10:10
Speaker
How?
00:10:11
Speaker
That's hopefully what we do help you guys to do that.
00:10:14
Speaker
And then in the middle, we've identified sort of a bullet point list of why's and schools we work with.
00:10:21
Speaker
They'll go sometimes different directions, but really all of these things are interdependent.
00:10:27
Speaker
Development, social justice, wellness, social, emotional learning and ethics.
00:10:32
Speaker
Right.
00:10:34
Speaker
Everybody can still hear me?
00:10:35
Speaker
We're good?
00:10:37
Speaker
Thumbs up if that's good.
00:10:39
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:10:40
Speaker
This is what we call our student impact profile, right?
00:10:44
Speaker
So again, a lot of you have seen this, but if you haven't, just taking that why and asking kids to really apply their learning to impact change in sort of their personal community, local community, domestic community, or global community, right?
00:11:00
Speaker
And what we're really gonna focus today, even though all of these things are important in terms of the how, that idea of media makers or design thinking, that idea of compassion and empathy, which is so key if you're gonna be immersing yourselves and community and using media to amplify voices, right?
00:11:18
Speaker
But it's this concept of how do we do that in a media environment or in a journalism environment in particular?
00:11:26
Speaker
Because that's really a fantastic way to make anything you're teaching an applied learning outcome.
00:11:32
Speaker
All right.
00:11:35
Speaker
And lastly,
00:11:38
Speaker
Those of you that, again, if you take what we had in the center, and again, we'll send you guys all of this stuff in the chat afterwards.
00:11:47
Speaker
This is our empathy to impact cycle, right?
00:11:50
Speaker
So the elevator pitch on this is what you saw in the middle is ideally what we want kids to start to care more about, right?
00:11:58
Speaker
Again, personally, locally, domestically, nationally, or globally, right?
00:12:03
Speaker
And it could be sustainability, ethical discernment.
00:12:07
Speaker
I want to build my character and my intelligence in that realm, social justice and wellness.
00:12:12
Speaker
Where the media component, especially the virtual component, especially comes in is this piece of going more deeply into the awareness of our world, our civic world, our civic consciousness, right?
00:12:24
Speaker
And the idea being is that we want to take some of our standards, especially language development, which is happening in any class that we do,
00:12:33
Speaker
and start filtering it through how are we becoming more aware of the things we care about, including our communities, and then what are we gonna do with it, that action component?
00:12:43
Speaker
So again, this we're gonna share with you, every single one of these that has an underline actually takes you to a hyperlink that is sort of our go-to first resource to help kids and teachers unpack those particular elements, right?
00:12:58
Speaker
So that should be very helpful for you guys.
00:13:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:04
Speaker
Donna, I'm wondering if we just, this is something that we'll probably talk about within our discussion of global youth media, but Donna, do you want to kind of give the elevator pitch on global youth media and then we can just sort of have a round table talk?
00:13:21
Speaker
Sure.
00:13:22
Speaker
So I'm not as good as Steve at the presenting portion, so I'm going to try to do my best here and just speak from the heart.
00:13:29
Speaker
But basically, Global Youth Media is...
00:13:33
Speaker
Amplifying student voice through a media lens.
00:13:37
Speaker
It is all that is Inspire Citizens, but using that media lens as a focus.
00:13:43
Speaker
And so we are doing things like photography and videography, podcasting, podcasting.
00:13:52
Speaker
This particular slide is actually a really good overview.
00:13:57
Speaker
It kind of puts it all into one central location.
00:14:01
Speaker
But on the left-hand side, you'll see over there are the different labs that we're going to be offering.
00:14:08
Speaker
And so out of the blocks is getting students out into their neighborhood,
00:14:15
Speaker
to interview people on the street and that storytelling component, just getting to know your local community and being able to craft those follow-up questions, which are so important.
00:14:30
Speaker
Photobomb is our street photography.
00:14:32
Speaker
We've already been in touch with several experts in the area that do this for a living.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so I'm really excited about this just to get that into the classroom and use photography as storytelling.
00:14:48
Speaker
Debate for Impact is really awesome.
00:14:51
Speaker
I actually had a chance to do this and Julia actually joined us this past spring virtually and it was really amazing just to have the students be able to not just debate on a topic and just, you know, who won the debate and who gets the blue ribbon per se, but it was more about getting students involved and really engaging them in active listening.
00:15:16
Speaker
And I think really quick, I'm gonna jump in on this one guys, because we know right now, especially in the States that we're so polarized with the way that we are divided into politically, but also in the way that we interact with each other online and the adults don't model very good behavior for the kids, right?
00:15:36
Speaker
getting them to move from this concept of understanding two sides of an argument or two sides of the issue, and then actually giving some tools to move forward in action that compromise, mediation, et cetera, so that they actually, again, the goal with anything with Inspire Citizens
00:15:53
Speaker
is to move the needle to do something with the learning that is going to be a positive piece, you know, towards your community or towards yourself, right?
00:16:02
Speaker
So I think this is a really powerful one.
00:16:04
Speaker
We've done this in China with really great success.
00:16:10
Speaker
Donna, you want to talk about
Connecting Classrooms & Cultural Exchanges
00:16:11
Speaker
this one?
00:16:12
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:16:13
Speaker
So this one is, we're calling it sound waves.
00:16:15
Speaker
It's basically taking a walk outside with your microphone and
00:16:19
Speaker
just the importance of sound.
00:16:21
Speaker
So, you know, a few things that we've talked about is just...
00:16:26
Speaker
you know, listening to nature and we've talked about using sound in and out of context.
00:16:34
Speaker
I know I've done that myself with my own students where you have them record sounds and then they come back and when it's out of context, just they're not able to ascertain what the actual sound is.
00:16:50
Speaker
So just using those sounds on the street and the importance of that.
00:16:55
Speaker
And when you're podcasting that idea, there is a tech component to it, right?
00:16:58
Speaker
Even ideally we could, you know, we do a lot of this work with people that just have a phone, right?
00:17:03
Speaker
So how are we utilizing and getting to know the tools that we have in ways that we could still capture those sounds so that they're audible and that they they're telling them, setting the tone that we'd like.
00:17:15
Speaker
And it's just a great way.
00:17:16
Speaker
Also, I think it's a great way for wellness and that idea of reconnecting with nature and space and even silence.
00:17:23
Speaker
which I'd like to even add to the slide is this idea of like, how do we record silence and allowing for those breaks for certain moments, you know, in our recordings to, you know, bring that heaviness or that chance to breathe, which I think is also really important.
00:17:40
Speaker
Donna?
00:17:41
Speaker
Uh, this is one of my favorites.
00:17:43
Speaker
We're calling it culture shock, but, um, we are really looking to have a, uh,
00:17:51
Speaker
a platform so that students from around the globe can all have a place where they can discuss things.
00:17:58
Speaker
And so we've talked about doing roundtable discussions with students from around the globe on just things that they're passionate
Music & Spoken Word in Activism
00:18:07
Speaker
about.
00:18:07
Speaker
So, for example, maybe let's just take basketball, for example.
00:18:11
Speaker
So
00:18:13
Speaker
And they're just going to have a group of students from all around the globe, and they're just going to talk about hoops and what it looks like in their country and just have a place where they can share more about their country and their culture and developing that compassion and
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, guys, this picture is actually, we actually bring out of the block sometimes two schools that we work with internationally.
00:18:39
Speaker
So this is them in Seoul, South Korea.
00:18:41
Speaker
But the picture says a lot.
00:18:43
Speaker
You've got Wendell, you know, a Black American, and you've got Aaron,
00:18:47
Speaker
You know, and, and, and this idea of their bringing their unique culture and their unique experiences from their past and, and, and their diverse, you know, voices and the things that they do to Seoul, which is a really shocking place.
00:19:02
Speaker
Right.
00:19:02
Speaker
So, um, the fact that out of the blocks, who goes into all of these fantastic city blocks in the States coming to Seoul and then utilizing their experiences to teach kids and to, you know,
00:19:14
Speaker
provide these immersive experiences.
00:19:16
Speaker
So the key word there is an idea of immersive, right?
00:19:20
Speaker
And I think it's just a really fantastic way that you can still do it virtually, whether it's through photography, or just doing something like we're connecting classroom to classroom experiences.
00:19:32
Speaker
I just lost that.
00:19:33
Speaker
I'm sorry, guys.
00:19:35
Speaker
Last couple, Donna.
00:19:38
Speaker
This one, of course, for those of you who know me is near and dear to my heart as music is everything for me.
00:19:45
Speaker
But this one we're talking about doing tiny classroom concerts.
00:19:48
Speaker
So allowing students a way that they can share their music and writing their music or sharing their music.
00:19:58
Speaker
Also the importance of keeping the arts and music in the curriculum.
00:20:03
Speaker
So learning about different genres of music and also unpacking lyrics of different music and also using it as a way to amplify voice for activism.
00:20:18
Speaker
So I know I did with my own students where we unpacked Sun City, which was a little Steven, and how he used that album and to create awareness for Sun City.
00:20:31
Speaker
and just the power of music.
00:20:34
Speaker
And here you can see, this is Robbie from Bali.
00:20:37
Speaker
So again, this idea of you bringing a Balinese musician and activist, he's very much into environmental justice.
00:20:43
Speaker
This was actually my classroom that I had turned a corner of it into an actual live studio.
00:20:49
Speaker
And then the students could bring in musicians or artists to share their stories.
00:20:52
Speaker
They would interview them and then we would actually publish that.
00:20:55
Speaker
Again, that's something you can still do virtually if we can connect your students to artists and or musicians, which we can help you do.
00:21:03
Speaker
Last two.
00:21:06
Speaker
This one is called word splash.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so this one we're talking about the spoken word and how important that is and also the elements of poetry.
00:21:16
Speaker
So we're talking about slam poetry again, just the importance of the spoken word and integrating that into media.
00:21:27
Speaker
And here you also see radio drama where we have kids.
00:21:30
Speaker
I know like my daughter is a huge theater fan, so she's been really pretty down about not being able to do a live play coming into the fall necessarily.
00:21:40
Speaker
So how do we teach screenwriting and the idea of voice and radio drama is such a powerful medium as well.
00:21:46
Speaker
And we really took the idea of impossible ideas from TED Talks.
00:21:49
Speaker
We know that a lot of schools are using TED Talks, but then the question is,
00:21:53
Speaker
Are we using them well and are we really teaching the arts of creating the visual to support that deep thinking and the expression needed in a persuasive TED Talk?
00:22:03
Speaker
Lastly.
00:22:06
Speaker
The last one is play-by-play, which is documentary filmmaking.
Documentary Filmmaking & Student Storytelling
00:22:09
Speaker
So myself, I've actually had a connection with a gentleman named David Fidel, and he does documentaries.
00:22:19
Speaker
And so we're looking to possibly let students unpack documentaries and then be able to interview experts and find out a little bit more about what goes into documentary filmmaking.
00:22:32
Speaker
And personally, I'd like to see this one actually cross over with the music one and perhaps do like hometown documentaries where you can talk about music and the importance of music in your own hometown.
00:22:48
Speaker
Awesome.
00:22:49
Speaker
So that, guys, that just gives you a little bit of an overview.
00:22:52
Speaker
One last component, and we'll send you this too, is as you're teaching your kids, just like you would in a readers or writers workshop, you want to make sure that we have those ideas of mentor examples, right?
00:23:03
Speaker
So if we're going, that's one of the reasons that we partnered with Out of the Blocks was if we're going to take kids into the neighborhood,
00:23:10
Speaker
Let's get the expert in the room.
00:23:11
Speaker
Let's get out of the blocks to help us unpack their fantastic podcast.
00:23:16
Speaker
And then it allows the students to see where they could, in theory, go with this and be creative.
00:23:23
Speaker
Obviously, kids want to innovate from things.
00:23:24
Speaker
But remember that innovation is also taking something that already exists and
00:23:28
Speaker
and finding your own way to utilize that in your context, right?
00:23:32
Speaker
So this is just something of when we deconstruct, you know, like if we were using a mentor text, we're going to go through these five components.
00:23:40
Speaker
This is actually from the Center for Media Literacy.
00:23:43
Speaker
Just put it into a pretty poster.
00:23:45
Speaker
And then as we're constructing, we're thinking about those same things so that, again, this ties back to formative assessment.
00:23:52
Speaker
If kids are creating a piece of media,
00:23:54
Speaker
They should be able to intentionally discuss what they were trying to do as authors.
00:23:59
Speaker
What is their format in terms of why they chose the format they did?
00:24:02
Speaker
Who was their audience?
00:24:04
Speaker
What do you want your audience to get out of that?
00:24:06
Speaker
The content and the themes and the tone, et cetera.
00:24:09
Speaker
And then that purpose piece of really realizing that for us in global youth media, a lot of our purpose is advocacy and awareness and really moving the needle on sustainable development.
Radical Self-Care & Empowerment in Activism
00:24:19
Speaker
But also there's purpose in media that's driven by power structures and profit motives.
00:24:24
Speaker
So, again, getting kids into that type of thinking can be really, really critical.
00:24:29
Speaker
So I think that's sort of the fast pitch.
00:24:33
Speaker
Let me stop sharing my screen for a second and get everybody's faces back here.
00:24:39
Speaker
Can everybody see?
00:24:40
Speaker
Are we back to normal faces?
00:24:43
Speaker
Perfect.
00:24:44
Speaker
All right.
00:24:45
Speaker
So I'm just going to throw out the first question really quickly.
00:24:48
Speaker
And maybe you guys can talk a little bit about whether it's questions you have.
00:24:52
Speaker
But, you know, how are we going to promote this idea of virtual activism coming back in the fall?
00:25:00
Speaker
Because I think, you know, part of that activism piece I'm going to throw at you guys is also thinking,
00:25:05
Speaker
we're in the middle of a pandemic still, right?
00:25:08
Speaker
We're in the middle of a reckoning with systemic racism.
00:25:12
Speaker
How is it that we wanna transition back to the classroom for that healing piece and then really empowering change?
00:25:19
Speaker
Because we are definitely at a crossroads, right?
00:25:22
Speaker
Anybody wanna start?
00:25:24
Speaker
Julia, you're always so good to get us started.
00:25:26
Speaker
What are you thinking?
00:25:29
Speaker
Right on.
00:25:31
Speaker
So many things.
00:25:32
Speaker
I'm so inspired.
00:25:33
Speaker
So let me let me ground one of them.
00:25:37
Speaker
I know my vision includes looking at like radical self-care as the foundation of activism, that we must take care of ourselves, that oxygen mask, that we have to take care of our own
00:25:51
Speaker
vision of the world, what we need in the world in order to truly activate ourselves in the world.
00:25:57
Speaker
So I'm looking to help my kids kind of make some sense of where they are, get a vision of where they want to go, kind of identify those places inside themselves that they want to activate
00:26:10
Speaker
So they get to create like that personal activism point too.
00:26:14
Speaker
So not just personal passion with projects, but like personalized action plan.
00:26:18
Speaker
But what part of you do you want to activate to become an active member of our, what's happening right now?
00:26:24
Speaker
So radical self-care, radical self-awareness.
00:26:29
Speaker
And then I am looking to everything out of the blocks, everything you're working with Donna to really become a,
00:26:36
Speaker
not just the platform and the framework for that activism, but I want to collaborate.
00:26:40
Speaker
I want to collaborate with classrooms around the world.
00:26:43
Speaker
That's, I think, the magic part of what you're doing here with Inspire Citizens.
00:26:49
Speaker
You're creating a launch point so that we can activate our kids in a way that we're able to create that grid, that connecting the dots of not just classrooms around the world, but activists around the world.
00:27:02
Speaker
Like,
00:27:03
Speaker
Who are we?
00:27:03
Speaker
What do we stand for?
00:27:04
Speaker
It doesn't matter how old you are.
00:27:07
Speaker
What do you want to activate in you so that you can make a difference in what's happening right now?
00:27:12
Speaker
And so you can understand what's happening right now.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, let's get Abby.
00:27:17
Speaker
And then I want to get Clancy in too, because I want to hear a little bit of his context.
00:27:21
Speaker
really quickly, I just want to say that I love the Pete that piece Julia, because I think that I mean, if I look at just the way the past four or five months have impacted me, I have felt it's, it's impacted me in a sense that I have been paralyzed, I haven't been able to tap into
00:27:43
Speaker
a source of energy and motivation.
00:27:46
Speaker
It's just like something scrambled.
00:27:49
Speaker
What drive I had before quarantine has scrambled.
00:27:53
Speaker
And I know that kids may be feeling similar similarly.
00:27:58
Speaker
And I think that the activist part or taking those action steps really is about is healing because you go from being this passive position of what's been happening to me
00:28:09
Speaker
things are happening to me to then taking action and, you know, moving forward through that and becoming
Balancing Activism & Developmental Appropriateness
00:28:18
Speaker
empowered.
00:28:18
Speaker
I think that's really part of the healing.
00:28:22
Speaker
Clancy, you want to give us a little, and I see Ricardo's over here too.
00:28:25
Speaker
So Clancy, you want to give us a little about who you are, where you're at and tell us your thoughts.
00:28:32
Speaker
My name is Clancy Emanuel.
00:28:34
Speaker
I use he, him, his pronouns, and I'm from New Haven, Connecticut.
00:28:39
Speaker
I just finished my first year of teaching.
00:28:41
Speaker
I was a software engineer for three years, and I have graduated with a degree in electrical engineering before that.
00:28:46
Speaker
So I'm a little bit all over the place.
00:28:50
Speaker
And I teach at a private school.
00:28:52
Speaker
So sixth grade is still in the elementary school and it's the highest grade at the school.
00:28:57
Speaker
So it's 11 and 12 year olds.
00:28:59
Speaker
And I'm coming at it from a perspective of having only recently been engaged in activism myself.
00:29:06
Speaker
So
00:29:07
Speaker
The combination of being new to that and and being new to teaching and not understanding always what's developmentally appropriate for kids.
00:29:15
Speaker
That's something that I'm trying to be really cautious of and also still wanting to bring that energy into the classroom.
00:29:19
Speaker
So I have a co teacher and she's been at the school for 8 or 9 years and she's lovely and we're.
00:29:24
Speaker
talking frequently about what the plan is because like if we have face shields and masks and like all this stuff, how are we gonna build a community if we can't be really close to one another?
00:29:36
Speaker
And like, how are we gonna teach math if we can't?
00:29:42
Speaker
It's a big old mess.
00:29:42
Speaker
So we're trying to just be slow and realistic about heading in.
00:29:49
Speaker
And yeah, like I said, I think the thing for me is that
00:29:53
Speaker
In my situation, I can go to protest.
00:29:55
Speaker
I can throw myself on the line.
00:29:57
Speaker
I can do this or that.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I need to like figure out how to.
00:30:04
Speaker
Like I said, bring that energy to the classroom in a way that's developmentally appropriate and doesn't just like.
00:30:11
Speaker
accelerate things too quickly for the kids.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, just that's where I'm at.
00:30:16
Speaker
First of all, that makes a lot, and really quickly, the group that's here, you've got a lot of fifth grade and sixth grade teachers, so definitely connect with everybody here.
00:30:25
Speaker
A quick side note, too, is in that empathy to impact, I know I shared it really quickly, but in that action part where it says things like,
00:30:32
Speaker
creative expression for, you know, advocacy for participation.
00:30:36
Speaker
It doesn't have to be something where you're sending your kids out to the streets, right, for example.
00:30:41
Speaker
But you know what I mean?
00:30:42
Speaker
I think sometimes even when I started in this type of work, that idea of activism is sometimes I think even that word in and of itself, when I work in China, I can't use the word activism, right?
00:30:54
Speaker
So it's that that becomes a very threatening word for a lot of people.
00:30:57
Speaker
And we'll talk about that in a minute, too.
00:30:59
Speaker
But we'll send that to you.
00:31:01
Speaker
It'll give you a lot of very, you know, ideas of ways that can really, I think, not only bring kids together, but give you a lot of pathways for
International Teaching & Language Learning
00:31:09
Speaker
ideas.
00:31:09
Speaker
Right.
00:31:10
Speaker
So talk to us about where are you at, man?
00:31:13
Speaker
And and just tell us about your story and your thoughts.
00:31:18
Speaker
Oh, sorry.
00:31:19
Speaker
Were you talking to me?
00:31:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:20
Speaker
Hi there.
00:31:22
Speaker
I am Ricardo, born and raised in Panama.
00:31:25
Speaker
So I was looking forward to the presentation of the Tri Association.
00:31:32
Speaker
And we are born and raised in Panama.
00:31:34
Speaker
We're coming in 2021.
00:31:35
Speaker
It is still on, but we're pushing back a year.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yes, so I'm a Spanish teacher and I've been working with PBL but more focused through PVLL, Project-Based Language Learning.
00:31:52
Speaker
And we've been using a different framework, so I was very interested with the one you were showcasing.
00:31:59
Speaker
And other than that,
00:32:02
Speaker
I just moved back to Panama after working in New York.
00:32:06
Speaker
So I was there introduced to the SDGs and worked pretty hard, incorporated that into project-based language learning and looking for opportunities, especially I was at an IB school where, you know, part of CAS and all of this, you know, students had to go out and fulfill 30 hours of community service.
00:32:27
Speaker
per year.
00:32:29
Speaker
So it was very... So I still look forward to creating more.
00:32:35
Speaker
I do resonate and follow with
00:32:40
Speaker
what Julia had mentioned about like during this time, during this current impasse is to actually look out to online groups and classrooms around the world to connect and try to make this virtual connection at some point because I think
00:32:59
Speaker
This is going for the long run.
00:33:00
Speaker
And the other thing I would be interested, being an international teacher, I taught in the US for seven years, for 10 years.
00:33:07
Speaker
Well, no, yeah, 10 years, then seven years in the Middle East, in Oman.
00:33:12
Speaker
And if the borders get to open, I'll be making my way to Shanghai, certainly not to SAS.
00:33:21
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:22
Speaker
So I'm based in Beijing and we work in Concordia and Shanghai a lot.
00:33:26
Speaker
So we'll definitely connect once that happens.
00:33:28
Speaker
But fantastic to meet you.
00:33:32
Speaker
Donna, do you want to talk briefly about how we saw this idea that we'll be with media is a great way with like to start connecting world language teachers, but also amplify and the way we're looking at.
00:33:43
Speaker
I don't know if you know the WIDA standards.
00:33:45
Speaker
Do you know the WIDA standards, Ricardo?
00:33:47
Speaker
It's mostly for English as a second language learners, but we're actually looking at using WIDA standards to support language learners and help world language teachers see that PBL can be a way for more immersive learning, right?
00:33:59
Speaker
And Donna, briefly, do you want to talk a little about what you were doing?
00:34:03
Speaker
Sorry.
00:34:04
Speaker
We just thought like how powerful would it be if we could connect world language teachers to have real authentic experiences.
00:34:12
Speaker
So, for example, if you're teaching Spanish, like how cool would it be to connect with a sixth grade classroom in Spain or in Mexico and have them
00:34:22
Speaker
you know, the possibilities are really endless.
00:34:26
Speaker
I mean, they could do roundtable discussions, they could do mini newscasts, they could do TED Talks, but have them have that authentic piece where they can actually connect with people that are of that culture and really be immersed in the language.
00:34:41
Speaker
And so we just think for world language in particular, this would be an amazing opportunity just to build those language skills and also have that authentic,
00:34:51
Speaker
audience piece.
Activism Tools & Personal Growth Frameworks
00:34:53
Speaker
So you should definitely, we should definitely follow up with you because I think you'd find that to be a really great experience just to connect those classrooms.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'd love to get Clancy connected with everybody.
00:35:04
Speaker
Ricardo, we also are working with a group in St.
00:35:06
Speaker
Louis, a sustainability coordinator at a school there that's also a Spanish teacher and the head of the World Language Department.
00:35:12
Speaker
So let's get that connected as well.
00:35:15
Speaker
Clancy, you wanted to add something?
00:35:17
Speaker
I actually had a question and it might, I'm not sure how well it fits into this line of conversation, but what I'm wondering, is my connection okay right now?
00:35:24
Speaker
Can you hear me?
00:35:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:26
Speaker
What I'm wondering about is there seems to be a lot of like outward conversation going and I'm wondering,
00:35:35
Speaker
If you could talk also about like the inner work of like answering the question like, who am I?
00:35:40
Speaker
Or and like identity exploration with the kids if that's part of that makes sense.
00:35:47
Speaker
Most most definitely and let me show you quickly two things because we're going to be moving here.
00:35:52
Speaker
But this was part of what I wanted to share as resources, right?
00:35:56
Speaker
So, and I'll put these again, these will be follow-ups.
00:36:00
Speaker
So here, for example, is teaching tolerance.
00:36:03
Speaker
I don't know if you've seen teaching tolerance.
00:36:05
Speaker
They have some really wonderful social justice standards, but you notice how they speak with identity first, right?
00:36:12
Speaker
So it's really that who am I question first.
00:36:15
Speaker
And now if you can, you know, link those to the types of, you know, media or work you're doing,
00:36:20
Speaker
can be really powerful and then you move into diversity, justice and action.
00:36:25
Speaker
Another one that I use a ton is from this VIA character organization of looking at, you know, what are my, what are my sort of ethical components and the really the beautiful thing about this is again, you hover over this and they work as I can statements, right?
00:36:41
Speaker
So again, if I'm bringing this into a media, I can utilize this type of meta language then to connect those pieces of how this is exemplifying this type of maybe character trait or myself, or also identifying the stuff that I might want to.
00:36:56
Speaker
enhance you know in terms of like growth right last one that's a really good one is from this is from emory university in the dalai lama they put together this type of framework and they have statements in a whole language built around this but you can see again they start with that personal component of attention and self-awareness to the self compassion for the self and unpacking you know that component first before you start building into more of a
00:37:23
Speaker
interpersonal awareness realm, right, and social realm.
00:37:26
Speaker
And the thing I love about them too, and this is where the sustainable development goals and stuff starts to kick in, is then you get into that idea of systems thinking and how it how all of this is really interconnected, right.
Integrating SDGs & Community Issues in Education
00:37:38
Speaker
So a lot of this, right, really depends on
00:37:45
Speaker
how you wanna sort of approach the meta language, I think with your classroom.
00:37:49
Speaker
I would say, for me, I've been using all of those frameworks for a long time and I kind of can now know how to pick and choose and bring certain ones in at the right time.
00:37:57
Speaker
But thinking about maybe choosing one of those.
00:38:00
Speaker
And then I always say, if you link them to the sustainable development goals and targets, for example, this one, I just stopped sharing my screen.
00:38:08
Speaker
This here, which a lot of our team knows, but I just wanna show you.
00:38:13
Speaker
at the global goals, right?
00:38:15
Speaker
So for example, here, then I can click on this and it's really helpful because this takes me down to the target level, right?
00:38:25
Speaker
So a big one that I use, for example, with my students a lot is this idea of how am I promoting voice, not only my voice, but maybe the voice of an underserved community in this case, globally women, but like, what does that look like locally or in my own community, maybe my own school or maybe my own family, right?
00:38:43
Speaker
And, you know, those can be really powerful ways to start that, you know, that idea of making that move from the internal to more of the local and global, right?
00:38:56
Speaker
And Julia, you were talking a lot about that.
00:38:57
Speaker
Do you want to add on?
00:38:59
Speaker
I think you hit the nail on the head.
00:39:03
Speaker
It's just about that framework to build voice and activism in kids from the inside out and the outside in.
00:39:13
Speaker
So they're not just making sense of the world around them using the SDGs as that launch point, but they...
00:39:21
Speaker
are grounding them, they're like owning them inside themselves.
00:39:25
Speaker
So they're, they're accessing their own activism points, their own, as you said, Clancy, like that, that identity, like, what is it in you that you want to bring out right now?
00:39:37
Speaker
And how does that connect to what's happening in the world?
00:39:41
Speaker
Clancy, does that make sense?
00:39:43
Speaker
If we send you some of those things too, will that be helpful?
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
I mean, I wrote down the links too.
00:39:47
Speaker
The Emory University one, I couldn't jot down the link enough.
00:39:53
Speaker
It's called the CSEE, Social, Emotional, Ethical, Learning Companion.
00:39:58
Speaker
The companion is that PDF piece and
00:40:01
Speaker
I would recommend to zip in through that.
00:40:03
Speaker
But again, often what I'll do is I'll take a lot of these groups create resources that can be great launches in terms of like doing a one-off in your class.
00:40:12
Speaker
But I try to find ways to embed that language into the culture of the class.
00:40:16
Speaker
Right.
00:40:16
Speaker
So it's just a little play between that and stuff.
00:40:20
Speaker
So Abby, what about you with that internal piece or that identity piece?
00:40:24
Speaker
Well, I'm kind of taking that in and I think that, um,
00:40:31
Speaker
The work that I've done last year with my girls group and SDGs was really powerful.
00:40:38
Speaker
And then it kind of got, we didn't get to actually have a follow through with the campaign we were doing at our school because of leaving school in March.
00:40:48
Speaker
But the idea of like what Julia was saying of our students being able to
00:40:58
Speaker
personalize and see something in their local communities, not just the SDG target point applied to a global sense, but actually really narrowing the focus and bringing it into our own backyard is extremely powerful.
00:41:13
Speaker
And after some of our conversations, Steve, that's how I started.
00:41:16
Speaker
That's really how I was my entry point.
00:41:20
Speaker
into this work.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:22
Speaker
And we utilize, Lancy, a lot the work local, right, where it is trying to connect.
00:41:26
Speaker
But I really think you're that personal identity piece.
00:41:30
Speaker
And you got two people that just entered the room that are fantastic with that, with Evan and Kavita.
00:41:35
Speaker
So I'm going to pass the sort of the mic to them.
00:41:38
Speaker
So you guys are staying.
00:41:40
Speaker
Donna and I are going to change at the top of our thing to Human Res 2, but we can continue this like whatever you need, man, just from Twitter or anybody, Ricardo, please contact.
00:41:51
Speaker
I want to get a hold of you before you go to Shanghai or if you're in Panama.
00:41:54
Speaker
And Donna, we have to move.
00:41:58
Speaker
Steve, can I have a real quick request?
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:01
Speaker
Can I have you post in the chat that that link to the that SCE framework from Emory?
00:42:08
Speaker
Because I was just having a hard time finding that particular diagram.
00:42:11
Speaker
I was able to find the website, some of the materials.
00:42:14
Speaker
Okay, but I couldn't find that exact one.
00:42:16
Speaker
I thought that really captured me.
00:42:17
Speaker
You want me to put it in the main chat?
00:42:18
Speaker
Is that what we're looking for?
00:42:21
Speaker
If you could just put it in here and then maybe I could jump it over into the main chat too when we get done with it.
00:42:26
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:42:27
Speaker
Donna, do you want to make a move to room two and I'll be there in a second?
00:42:31
Speaker
But thank you both so much for this one.
00:42:33
Speaker
All right.
00:42:38
Speaker
So hi, everyone.
00:42:40
Speaker
So obviously I introduced myself earlier when we were in the Google Meets room.
00:42:44
Speaker
And I think, yep, I've got Evan in here with me too.
00:42:47
Speaker
So it's great to be here in the room with you.
00:42:52
Speaker
We've got about 19 minutes together now.
00:42:56
Speaker
So I'm going to sort of go ahead and share with you the kind of angle, I guess, that Evan and I are taking with the conversation.
00:43:05
Speaker
the key questions that have been put forward by the Human Restoration Project and sort of really talk about how we're going to approach this work that we're doing together today.
00:43:16
Speaker
But Evan, I wonder if you wanted to say anything, share anything from the previous group or anything like that?
00:43:23
Speaker
So I think, you know, that as we go through this work and kind of our session today, you know, really do some self-reflecting and in terms of some self-awareness
00:43:35
Speaker
Because a lot of the things that we're going to discuss in the journey that we're going to take has to do about, you know, starting with ourselves, right?
00:43:43
Speaker
And even though we want to, we're talking about how can we support our students, but the main thing is that we have to be in that space to do that first before we can expect that from our students.
00:43:54
Speaker
So, you know, as we talk about some things, you know, especially specifically when I'm modeling,
00:44:00
Speaker
and creating an opportunity so the students can see what we're doing, but also safety is something that we're going to talk about as well, because with everything going on,
00:44:10
Speaker
in the world, we wanna make sure that we are doing things to build a climate of safety for discussions and also for students to feel free to become advocates for themselves and to speak up and to have that voice.
00:44:23
Speaker
And oftentimes as educators, we forget about that.
00:44:26
Speaker
We kind of think that we own the classroom or the building that we work in, but we forget that we're there and all that space is provided for the students first and foremost.
00:44:37
Speaker
Thanks, Evan.
00:44:38
Speaker
So I think Steve had asked me to speak a little bit to community.
00:44:43
Speaker
And so we'll get into that in just a moment.
00:44:45
Speaker
But sort of segwaying more directly off what Evan just said, you know, one of the things about creating a safe space is, you know, promoting student voice to do that.
00:44:55
Speaker
But then in terms of the student activism, we want to extend that to creating a brave space, right?
00:45:01
Speaker
Somewhere where they really can own their
00:45:04
Speaker
ability to be active and you know create opportunities for them to to really sort of speak out for themselves as Evan said you know starting with self and then extending that out to the unsung voices the unheard voices of the community which can really think about um you know this idea of okay when we're talking about the unheard voices it can be
00:45:28
Speaker
literally the planet, meaning, you know, the animals, the plants, you know, the wildlife element, but also those communities that, you know, need some promotion, some sort of
00:45:41
Speaker
idea that you know really okay on this digital platform maybe they don't have as much access as we all do you know maybe there are some equity issues that are underlying and uh you know really sort of preventing them from being activists for themselves so um what we decided to do Evan and I is to really have this time with us as
00:46:04
Speaker
as interactive as possible and so in the chat I've put a Padlet that I'm hoping that you all can access and rather than creating a new one with each room I've sort of decided to keep it going and you know sort of
00:46:19
Speaker
you can read some of the the things that people in the other rooms have added and then add your own so the invitation for the first sort of four to five minutes is just to look at the first two columns initially and really think about what is your definition of student voice what is your definition of promoting activism so you know i'd invite you to go through a bit of a sensory experience you know what will it look like
00:46:47
Speaker
What will it sound like?
00:46:48
Speaker
How will it feel as an environment for yourself?
00:46:52
Speaker
You know, when we asked some grade 11 and 12, they took it to another level in terms of their poet, poetic sort of metaphors for what it would also smell like, what it would also taste like.
00:47:05
Speaker
So feel free to get as creative as you like in expressing your voice as to what you understand student voice and promoting activism to be.
00:47:14
Speaker
I just love, I love being able to shout out when you see something and it really like sparks you.
00:47:21
Speaker
So can we make it extra interactive and as we're looking, be like, Whoa, check that out.
00:47:27
Speaker
I love that.
00:47:28
Speaker
And then just tag on.
00:47:29
Speaker
Is that okay?
00:47:29
Speaker
Kavita?
00:47:30
Speaker
I would love that.
00:47:31
Speaker
I don't see any Naseo's in the room right now.
00:47:35
Speaker
So.
00:47:44
Speaker
And thanks for the praise, Nick.
00:47:48
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:47:50
Speaker
Do as we say, right?
00:47:51
Speaker
Do as we say.
00:47:55
Speaker
Right on.
00:47:55
Speaker
Well, then I'll start.
00:47:56
Speaker
I just, I love, for me, especially someone who really values the art of language, it's powerful for me to speak the words that I'm feeling or speak the words that I see mirroring one of my thoughts.
00:48:13
Speaker
So to have created a platform here where we're able to share with each other, like vocally and type and like
00:48:22
Speaker
get a note down on a padlet that I'm going to be able to look at in the future is a super powerful tool tool.
00:48:30
Speaker
It especially allows for those kids who are more like reflective, like every kid gets to experience their own education, their own sense of activism in their own way.
00:48:42
Speaker
And I have kids who are amazing writers.
00:48:45
Speaker
I have kids who are willing to stand up and do slam poetry.
00:48:48
Speaker
So I just appreciate the openness of,
00:48:53
Speaker
this particular activity and your, I guess, vision for how to create that internalized sense of activism that is able to reach outward.
00:49:04
Speaker
You know, that's such a great point, you know, because, you know, you hit on a lot of topics right under that umbrella of self-awareness, right?
00:49:12
Speaker
Knowing, knowing our strengths, knowing what we're good at, knowing what we're, how we're able to, you know, express ourselves and,
00:49:18
Speaker
and understanding that, you know, that's okay if it's different than someone else, but then also utilizing different forms of media to do that.
00:49:26
Speaker
And I think that's so important that we have that understanding
00:49:32
Speaker
And we create that and help our students understand that about themselves because it also provides them that sense of self esteem to be able to have the confidence to go out and do some things and be and be that that that activists and have it be very, very self advocating for themselves as well and knowing what they need and know what they want and how to get there.
00:49:59
Speaker
So agree.
00:50:00
Speaker
And hopefully no one minds that I just keep piping in.
00:50:02
Speaker
I actually am thinking about creating like sentence stems for kids, like that whole vision of radical self-care.
00:50:10
Speaker
I know that a lot of my kids don't have the language they need to express
00:50:15
Speaker
what they're feeling or what they I say to them, hey, what do you want to activate?
00:50:18
Speaker
They're going to look back at me like, what are you talking about?
00:50:21
Speaker
Right.
00:50:22
Speaker
So if I provide them some sentence and actually teach them the language of wellness, like it's math, like it's Portuguese, like it's a different language because we we don't.
00:50:35
Speaker
I'm going to backtrack.
00:50:36
Speaker
We're not as good at that at doing that in schools.
00:50:40
Speaker
yet.
00:50:41
Speaker
So I just, I really feel like we need to teach them the language of self care, wellness.
00:50:47
Speaker
And, and as Clancy was saying, just identity, who are you on the inside?
00:50:52
Speaker
You know, you may be wearing a physical mask on the outside, but what other masks did you put on during this pandemic and which ones are you ready to grow out of?
00:51:00
Speaker
Where else are you wanting to go?
00:51:03
Speaker
Have you seen Ashanti branches masks project, Julia?
00:51:09
Speaker
His name is Ashanti.
00:51:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:11
Speaker
I love that concept.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:51:13
Speaker
I love it.
00:51:14
Speaker
And then world facing mask.
00:51:16
Speaker
Great points.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:20
Speaker
But how crazy ironic, but not because it's all with perfect timing.
00:51:27
Speaker
We're literally putting on masks right now.
00:51:29
Speaker
Like every kid's going to have a different mask.
00:51:32
Speaker
And we get to use that as a way to activate
00:51:36
Speaker
a different lens and a different self understanding and self awareness.
00:51:40
Speaker
It's there's so many gifts all along this path.
00:51:43
Speaker
It's it's insane.
00:51:45
Speaker
It's so crazy.
00:51:47
Speaker
I love that attitude, Julia, to see everything that's happening as an opportunity, right?
00:51:53
Speaker
An opportunity to deepen your relationship with your students.
00:51:56
Speaker
And that's really sort of, you know, a big driver for everything I do, as you all know, those of you that know me in the room.
00:52:03
Speaker
But like, it's all about relationships.
00:52:05
Speaker
It's all about, okay, how can I get to know you a little bit better?
00:52:09
Speaker
Like, you know, what is your why?
00:52:10
Speaker
What is, you know, what gets you going?
00:52:12
Speaker
What are you excited about?
00:52:13
Speaker
All of this kind of thing.
00:52:14
Speaker
And, and also helping and supporting to, as you say, have the language to talk about it, you know, to be able to sort of take something that you say and then develop it further.
00:52:26
Speaker
And, and, and I love the embedding of social emotional relationships.
00:52:30
Speaker
language in everything that you just said, because, you know, as our students come into the classroom, you know, wearing these masks potentially in the hybrid sort of set up, you know, some will be wearing, you know, masks that they've designed for themselves and some will be just wearing the surgical masks.
00:52:47
Speaker
And, you know, what does that say?
00:52:49
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:52:50
Speaker
How are they feeling about it?
00:52:52
Speaker
You know, and being able to connect with them on that level will be so important, I think.
00:52:57
Speaker
Because, you know, and again, I know that a lot of you have heard me say this before, but what a way to make the students feel seen.
00:53:06
Speaker
You know, what a way to make them feel like you're hearing them.
00:53:09
Speaker
And most importantly, what a way to make them feel valued.
00:53:14
Speaker
because just by being there, you've really seen them, you know, you've really considered their voice and really given it value.
00:53:22
Speaker
And I think, you know, again, that's something that's really important in the current climate with, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement and things like that as well, because unfortunately, you know, that's where we need to start having some of the safe and brave conversations.
00:53:38
Speaker
What value are we giving to another?
00:53:45
Speaker
I am having a look at the Padlet and seeing some great ideas coming up.
00:53:52
Speaker
So we officially have another seven or so minutes in this room.
00:53:56
Speaker
So I wonder if I can invite you all to sort of start thinking about the technicalities around what we're doing and maybe add some platforms, some organizations that you've come across.
00:54:09
Speaker
that you feel are really gonna support promoting student voice and introducing activism.
00:54:16
Speaker
There's already some ideas on there and feel free to add questions, to really think about that.
00:54:23
Speaker
I'm sure that Donna and Steve spoke to podcasts
00:54:29
Speaker
and other forms of communication that are widely used in this time to really open up voice.
00:54:38
Speaker
And so feel free to add some of those on there.
00:54:43
Speaker
But I am also going to go straight into looking at the coaching and really thinking about how are we going to be proactive in coaching those students to use those platforms.
00:54:53
Speaker
So once they listen to it, what are they going to do next?
00:54:57
Speaker
And how are we going to provide that framework of questioning to say, OK, whatever we invite you to interact with, let's reflect on how it's changed you.
00:55:08
Speaker
And then let's ask you, what are you going to do about it?
00:55:11
Speaker
And I'm sure that my friend Evan is just laughing at me because he is known for saying that to me.
00:55:19
Speaker
That like, when I get upset about something, the question I get asked is.
00:55:25
Speaker
So what are you going to do about it, Kavita?
00:55:28
Speaker
So, yeah, I invite us to do the same for our students.
00:55:38
Speaker
Can I chime in for just a second too?
00:55:39
Speaker
Is that okay?
00:55:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:41
Speaker
So, so one thing that I'm thinking about, like just putting my, my HRP hat on, you know, in terms of planning professional development, a lot of times we have to think about, and we prompt teachers to reflect on what are those barriers that are preventing you in your context
00:55:55
Speaker
Be they real or imaginary, because so often some of the barriers that we have aren't actually barriers because we don't bother to test them.
00:56:03
Speaker
We don't bother to push up against them.
00:56:05
Speaker
And so we don't know that they're real until we actually try.
00:56:09
Speaker
But one sort of way I think that these frameworks help us overcome those real and imagined barriers is
00:56:15
Speaker
is that, you know, in a sort of standards-based world, kind of thinking about the realpolitik of, you know, curriculums and schools is, I mean, there are so many different frameworks that we can connect any of this work to, right?
00:56:29
Speaker
Teaching tolerance, SDGs.
00:56:31
Speaker
Steve and the previous group just linked to some SCE frameworks and universal, I have a YouTube video pulled up of it, universal values, right?
00:56:41
Speaker
So there's not just one set of standards that we all have to be beholden to.
00:56:45
Speaker
So there is great appeal for me, right, as someone who thinks from that PD lens and trying to help teachers overcome those barriers is, well, how can we use these frameworks as a way to convince administrators and curriculum directors to see curriculum differently
00:57:02
Speaker
And that maybe has a trickle down effect on what we can do in our classrooms.
00:57:06
Speaker
If we can connect an activity to a different set of values and standards, we can really sort of push the pedagogy in a positive direction.
00:57:15
Speaker
So that's just a reflection that I kind of had looking at the different platforms and organizations there on the Padma too.
00:57:23
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:57:24
Speaker
I appreciate that.
00:57:26
Speaker
Because I think you're right that it's about how we use the tools.
00:57:30
Speaker
And one of the things that Evan and I discussed this morning is how do we make sure that when we're thinking about the use of technology, it's not as a replacement for pen and paper.
00:57:40
Speaker
You know, like, how do we really lift up technology to become a tool for activism?
00:57:48
Speaker
And, you know, some of the ideas that we thought about were things like, you know, really sort of making sure that when we're engaging with things like that, you know, we're really sort of
00:57:58
Speaker
using it to share out, but doing that in a responsible way.
00:58:02
Speaker
And again, I'm sure that Stephen Donagh sort of touched on that a little bit, you know, that the thoughtful consumption of media, the responsible production of media.
00:58:10
Speaker
And then also, you know, as we said earlier, empowering others with their voice, you know, with their sort of absent voices, you know, not being in the room sort of thing.
00:58:20
Speaker
thinking about what's important to the students and using our position of influence in a positive way.
00:58:27
Speaker
And some of those ideas have come from one of our good friends from our Twitter PLN, George Curos.
00:58:34
Speaker
And so I'd invite you to check him out as well as an organization.
00:58:38
Speaker
I'm not sure if anyone's put him on the Padlet yet, but there are a lot of good ideas as to how we can do exactly what you were just describing.
00:58:47
Speaker
So thank you for that.
00:58:49
Speaker
Oh, also, I have another question.
00:58:51
Speaker
So I'm noticing that there are a lot of people who already know each other and I don't know a single person in any of these meetings.
00:58:56
Speaker
And I hear you saying, I hear you saying, which I'm excited about.
00:58:58
Speaker
I'm not like, oh, for me.
00:59:01
Speaker
There's a lot of language and wording going around that I'm unfamiliar with.
00:59:06
Speaker
So I was wondering if somebody could fill me in on what's your why.
00:59:09
Speaker
Where's that come from?
00:59:11
Speaker
Sure.
00:59:13
Speaker
So for myself or for others?
00:59:16
Speaker
Just the general language, like I can kind of intuit, but I'm wondering if there's like a deeper framework that exists that that is part of that I'm unaware of.
00:59:23
Speaker
Right.
00:59:24
Speaker
So for myself, my personal why is to be the best me that I can be for the benefit of others.
00:59:34
Speaker
And so how that shows up is to really think about, OK, what does it mean to be well within myself?
00:59:42
Speaker
and how to model that to inspire others.
00:59:44
Speaker
And to that end, I've become the deputy director of Inspire Citizens.
00:59:48
Speaker
So you met Steve and Donna.
00:59:50
Speaker
Steve being, you know, like at the beginning, he was like, well, there's three of us.
00:59:53
Speaker
I'm number three.
00:59:56
Speaker
So, you know, so, and Donna's just joined us for the global youth media sort of arm of Inspire Citizens.
01:00:02
Speaker
So that's me, I guess.
01:00:05
Speaker
I wonder if anyone else wanted to join and sort of explain their why.
01:00:11
Speaker
I'll jump in.
01:00:12
Speaker
Surprise.
01:00:14
Speaker
So Clancy, I think in addition to asking specifically about personalized why's, I think you're asking about the language of the why and that's Simon Sinek.
01:00:24
Speaker
Like everything points to Simon Sinek.
01:00:27
Speaker
I just dropped the link in the chat.
01:00:29
Speaker
He's the one who Steve started with earlier with the circles and it had the why in the middle and then the what and the how, which is a perfect
01:00:37
Speaker
transition to what Nick was actually asking, like, how are we going to get all this into our classrooms?
01:00:43
Speaker
I think that's the key right there.
01:00:45
Speaker
I think as soon as we start having conversations and we're having to have those conversations with not just our kids in our classrooms about their why, like helping them access their why, but we're we're getting to talk with them about
01:00:59
Speaker
Okay, so let's look at this from a systems perspective.
01:01:02
Speaker
That's SDG work.
01:01:03
Speaker
Here's a framework.
01:01:04
Speaker
Here's a system for understanding the world.
01:01:06
Speaker
Technology is a tool so that you can access that system.
01:01:10
Speaker
So we're actually kind of
01:01:13
Speaker
framing our learning with kids in a different way.
01:01:19
Speaker
And that why, how, and what I think that's that target image is what can help kids zero in on how they fit in the world.
01:01:29
Speaker
It helps them understand their own access point for the system, the learning, I would say the pedagogy for me, but I think that's what we're
01:01:40
Speaker
that's the bigger why question I thought you were asking.
01:01:45
Speaker
Thanks, Julia.
01:01:47
Speaker
Just a sort of administrative thing.
01:01:49
Speaker
Evan and I need to move to the other room in two to three minutes.
01:01:53
Speaker
So, you know, please feel free for everyone to continue the conversation.
01:01:58
Speaker
But yeah, we'll be sort of moving into the next room soon.
01:02:01
Speaker
But it was so great to see you all.
01:02:04
Speaker
Thanks, Kavita.
01:02:06
Speaker
That was great, Kavita.
01:02:07
Speaker
Thank you, Evan.
01:02:08
Speaker
Thank you.
01:02:09
Speaker
Bye.
01:02:10
Speaker
Thank you.
01:02:15
Speaker
You're waiting for us.
01:02:16
Speaker
OK, hey, here we are.
01:02:17
Speaker
Last meeting, we jumped in and they were still there.
01:02:20
Speaker
And we felt a little, we were like, hey.
01:02:25
Speaker
What's the etiquette?
01:02:26
Speaker
OK, cool.
01:02:28
Speaker
All right, so hi, everybody.
01:02:29
Speaker
You guys all probably, did you get a chance to introduce yourselves to each other?
01:02:34
Speaker
That's what we're kind of doing in between the session there, yeah.
01:02:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:38
Speaker
I see there's Ricardo, Clancy, Abby, Julia, Nick, and me and Wendell.
01:02:46
Speaker
So Ricardo, you want to say hi?
01:02:49
Speaker
Tell us where you are, what you do.
01:02:54
Speaker
Hi there.
01:02:54
Speaker
I'm Ricardo.
01:02:57
Speaker
originally from Panama.
01:02:58
Speaker
I'm right now in Panama.
01:03:00
Speaker
And I've been just looking forward to working, continue working with project-based language learning and using different empowering students to become true solutionaries.
01:03:11
Speaker
Ricardo in Panama, good to meet you.
01:03:14
Speaker
Clancy, let me have you say hi.
01:03:17
Speaker
Hey, I'm Clancy.
01:03:18
Speaker
I use he, him, his pronouns, and I'm from New Haven, Connecticut.
01:03:22
Speaker
And what do I do?
01:03:23
Speaker
I take care of my garden out back, growing some tomatoes, some eggplants.
01:03:27
Speaker
I like to play music too.
01:03:31
Speaker
And I think the question you're really asking is I teach sixth grade at a school over in Fairhaven, which is just like a neighboring neighborhood.
01:03:41
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:03:43
Speaker
Sounds like a good life.
01:03:45
Speaker
Good to meet you, Clancy.
01:03:46
Speaker
Abby, let me have you say hi.
01:03:49
Speaker
Hi there, I'm Abby French.
01:03:51
Speaker
I am in Woodstock, Virginia, which is about 90 minutes outside of Washington, DC.
01:03:57
Speaker
I teach sixth grade US history and I've been on a quest to just make teaching and learning much richer for all classroom participants.
01:04:08
Speaker
And this is one of the ways.
01:04:10
Speaker
I'm really interested in the out of the blocks portion of this, global youth media.
01:04:17
Speaker
So excited to work with you guys.
01:04:19
Speaker
Good to meet you, Abby.
01:04:21
Speaker
Julia, let's have you say hi.
01:04:25
Speaker
Hi, I'm Julia.
01:04:27
Speaker
I teach sixth grade language arts in Evergreen, Colorado.
01:04:31
Speaker
A huge believer and proponent of transformative pedagogy, truly see the world as our classroom and am committed to connecting every kid I teach to his or her own journey in a powerful way.
01:04:46
Speaker
And I strongly believe that's through global connections, obviously technology right now and always.
01:04:52
Speaker
Excited to be here.
01:04:54
Speaker
Good to meet you, Julia.
01:04:56
Speaker
Nick, let's have you say hi.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm Nick in Iowa.
01:05:00
Speaker
I teach high school social studies.
01:05:02
Speaker
I'm also the creative director here at Human Restoration Project.
01:05:05
Speaker
And yeah, I'm just, I'm happy to facilitate, you know, a conversation and get some learning done with you all today.
01:05:13
Speaker
Good to meet all you guys.
01:05:14
Speaker
So I'm Aaron.
01:05:15
Speaker
Wendell's here, and we're over-preparers, so we actually have a slide deck for you.
01:05:22
Speaker
So I'm going to figure out how to share my screen here briefly.
01:05:24
Speaker
We're going to walk you through a couple of slides, and then we'll open it up for some Q&A stuff.
01:05:33
Speaker
Basically, we're going to start just by talking about how we ended up kind of
01:05:37
Speaker
randomly discovering that this documentary project, this podcast and radio show that we do, actually translates really well into an educational tool.
01:05:45
Speaker
We partnered up with Inspire Citizens.
01:05:48
Speaker
They actually brought us to Seoul, South Korea, last year for a week.
01:05:53
Speaker
And I want to take you through kind of what we worked on with students there before they headed out ultimately into the neighborhoods of their own city to record interviews with strangers.
01:06:06
Speaker
When we're working with kids, we tell them that, you know, this kind of thing, what they're about to do, to go out in the world with this sort of unusual mission, it's this mission to talk to complete strangers about their lives.
01:06:18
Speaker
And it's weird, right?
01:06:19
Speaker
Like our parents tell us not to do this, but our point is that this can actually be a really kind of profound experience and a really fulfilling experience if it's done, you know, under the right safe and supervised circumstances.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, so while we're talking with you this morning, we're gonna show you a slideshow of some of the faces of some of the people we've met and interviewed.
01:06:42
Speaker
So I do all of the music, I write an original musical score for each episode and also all the photography.
01:06:47
Speaker
So these are some of the photos that I've taken.
01:06:51
Speaker
And so these are from Baltimore, Maryland, where we are currently, and then also from some of the other cities in the US that we've been to.
01:07:00
Speaker
The reason we want to show you these faces is because we've learned something very profound about life from every single one of these people's stories.
01:07:08
Speaker
So on this particular slide deck, you can see on the left, we have Pamela.
01:07:13
Speaker
And she told us the story of holding her mother's hand as she died.
01:07:17
Speaker
In the middle is Michael, and he told us the story of getting shot in his face and trying to control his urge to take revenge on the person who shot him.
01:07:27
Speaker
And then on the right is Kemi.
01:07:28
Speaker
And she told us a story about opening her own African restaurant after immigrating to the U.S. from Nigeria.
01:07:34
Speaker
So people share some really profound and personal stories with us.
01:07:38
Speaker
It's amazing what people are willing to talk about if you are willing to listen.
01:07:44
Speaker
So we talk with students about this idea that, you know, what we do is kind of a documentary leap of faith.
01:07:51
Speaker
It's rooted in this belief that everybody has got a story that's worth sharing.
01:07:55
Speaker
And we talk about
01:07:57
Speaker
the idea that our agenda is kind of a radical agenda, which is to say that we have no agenda.
01:08:02
Speaker
We just show up somewhere and we listen.
01:08:05
Speaker
And when we work with students, we invite them to make that their agenda as well, to show up, to listen, to be present, and to trust that there's a story to be told and to learn from.
01:08:18
Speaker
And I'm going to, I could tell, we could tell you bios about every single one of these people in every single one of these photos, but in the interest of keeping things moving along here, I'll just do, I'll do a teaser for the podcast.
01:08:30
Speaker
You got to listen to the podcast to find out who the rest of these folks are.
01:08:33
Speaker
And I'll let a slide go to the next slide here.
01:08:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:37
Speaker
So as Erin said, we want to make sure the students know that they should trust that there's a story to be told.
01:08:44
Speaker
And then we ask them to think about the question about whose stories get told and whose don't and why that is.
01:08:52
Speaker
And we let them know that this is their chance to go out into the world themselves and be the new answer to that question.
01:08:59
Speaker
And really, they only need three things to get started.
01:09:04
Speaker
Those three things are courage,
01:09:06
Speaker
curiosity and empathy.
01:09:09
Speaker
And if they happen to have a microphone and a camera with them, that's helpful.
01:09:15
Speaker
But you don't need those things to get started in terms of having a meaningful conversation with a stranger.
01:09:22
Speaker
So we let students know that when you do this kind of work out in the community, when you meet someone, someone that you want to interview,
01:09:29
Speaker
The first part of that encounter with that person really isn't about interviewing them.
01:09:34
Speaker
It's about introducing yourself and in a sense, letting that person interview you.
01:09:38
Speaker
We tell students, your job is first and foremost, really just be authentic about who you are, to be transparent about what you're there to accomplish.
01:09:47
Speaker
Who are you?
01:09:48
Speaker
Why are you there?
01:09:49
Speaker
What do you hope to learn?
01:09:51
Speaker
Answer these questions before you ask any of your own questions.
01:09:56
Speaker
We talk about this idea,
01:09:58
Speaker
that disclosure begets disclosure, that honesty begets honesty.
01:10:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:06
Speaker
So there's a saying that goes that when you share power, you gain new powers.
01:10:11
Speaker
So we train kids that with each new person that they meet, they should ask that person, who else do I want to make sure that I meet around here?
01:10:19
Speaker
And that's really one of the ways that our show works is we will have a list of people that we we have contact information for and scheduled interviews.
01:10:29
Speaker
But then those people will tell us who else in the community we should talk to.
01:10:35
Speaker
And so we encourage students to do this as well, because when they do this, they're being inclusive and conscientious and immersing themselves in a network of organic relationships, which helps things move a lot more smoothly.
01:10:49
Speaker
So this is kind of a daunting prospect for students or grownups.
01:10:54
Speaker
And we talk with our students about the idea that in any group of people, you've got your extroverts and you've got your introverts.
01:11:04
Speaker
You know this.
01:11:05
Speaker
Some people, the first time you meet them, they'll share their life story with you.
01:11:09
Speaker
Other people, they're going to keep you more at arm's length.
01:11:13
Speaker
And we prepare students for the fact that they're going to encounter some people who are going to be less talkative than others, who maybe aren't going to want to have anything to do with them.
01:11:21
Speaker
And that's okay.
01:11:22
Speaker
That's natural.
01:11:24
Speaker
That's human nature.
01:11:25
Speaker
And don't take that personally.
01:11:26
Speaker
That's part of this experience.
01:11:29
Speaker
And instead, you know, we really encourage students to concentrate their time with the people who do sort of light up when they're proposed with this, you know, encounter.
01:11:39
Speaker
People...
01:11:40
Speaker
And they'll be pleasantly surprised at the number of people who really do want to share with them in really kind of profound and surprising ways.
01:11:50
Speaker
So we train students to work towards two primary goals in the documentary encounters.
01:11:55
Speaker
The first is to think of an audiovisual tour.
01:11:59
Speaker
So to collect a palette of different environmental sounds and images.
01:12:04
Speaker
and then also a description of what's behind those sounds and images to help to create a sense of space.
01:12:11
Speaker
And then the second thing is a compelling story, which includes, or these are two sort of things to shoot for, an anecdote and a reflection.
01:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, and we'll talk more about each of these elements here briefly.
01:12:26
Speaker
As far as the audio-visual tour, we train students that
01:12:31
Speaker
The more sounds and images that you can collect, the better.
01:12:35
Speaker
You've got your camera, maybe.
01:12:36
Speaker
If not, you've got a microphone, at least.
01:12:38
Speaker
You can use that microphone like a camera.
01:12:40
Speaker
You can get close-ups of certain sounds.
01:12:42
Speaker
You can get wide shots.
01:12:44
Speaker
You can collect these sounds, and after each sound, you can ask the person that you're talking with, you know, what are we hearing?
01:12:50
Speaker
Let them paint a picture with words to describe their space, what happens there.
01:12:54
Speaker
You can record a person just doing what they do and talking about what they're doing.
01:13:00
Speaker
You can record someone interacting with other people in their lives.
01:13:04
Speaker
And you can end up with a really sort of a cinematic experience by using your microphone as a camera.
01:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, and so we like to stress the idea that when you do an interview, the questions that you ask are obviously important.
01:13:26
Speaker
But it's really listening to the answers to those questions is even more important.
01:13:30
Speaker
And so we encourage students to think of an interview sort of like fishing, where each question is like casting a line in the water.
01:13:39
Speaker
And then you watch the bobber, which is as you're listening to the response.
01:13:45
Speaker
you'll get some nibbles to your questions and you want to keep casting, but eventually you'll get a bite on one of those questions.
01:13:51
Speaker
And so, you want to make sure that even if you have sort of a pre-existing set of questions that you're focused on the response, because that can guide you to what you want to ask next.
01:14:01
Speaker
So to continue the analogy, right?
01:14:03
Speaker
Like you've got a beautiful fish on the line now, meaning someone has really opened up and begun telling you a meaningful, compelling, personal story about their life.
01:14:14
Speaker
And
01:14:15
Speaker
We encourage students to think about this moment as, you know, you're still wearing the hat of interviewer, but you're listening actively and you actually, at this point, you kind of want to switch hats and put on the hat of story coach.
01:14:29
Speaker
There's a story there, you know there's a story there, and your job now is to really take your time with that person and help them in a way to tell that story well, to tell that story completely.
01:14:42
Speaker
And so we mentioned before the two main ingredients that we want to sort of help students gather.
01:14:49
Speaker
One is an anecdote, which is a sequence of actions that builds the momentum and raises the questions that are going to be answered.
01:14:57
Speaker
So stringing together a series of actions.
01:14:59
Speaker
So this one thing happened and then this next thing happening.
01:15:04
Speaker
So doing that makes the audience feel like they're moving toward a destination.
01:15:09
Speaker
And then the reflection, equally important, is the moment when someone clearly says or explains this is the point of this story.
01:15:20
Speaker
We really kind of invite students to adopt the language almost of a movie director at this point in a conversation and to really
01:15:30
Speaker
You know, you can ask a storyteller to rewind.
01:15:34
Speaker
Let's go to the beginning of that story or that day.
01:15:37
Speaker
Set the scene.
01:15:38
Speaker
Tell me a little bit more about that.
01:15:40
Speaker
You can invite a storyteller to oftentimes when I'm interviewing people, I say, let me let me pause you there.
01:15:45
Speaker
Let's zoom in and really talk about.
01:15:48
Speaker
What was going through your mind at that moment?
01:15:51
Speaker
You can really put into focus certain moments of a story.
01:15:56
Speaker
It's like collecting multiple camera angles.
01:16:00
Speaker
And you can do this by not being afraid to kind of control the conversation a little bit and ask sometimes the same questions over and over again in different ways and kind of solicit different details along the way.
01:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, and so for the reflection, we also train students to help their storytellers verbalize the significance of their stories.
01:16:22
Speaker
So again, sort of asking, what is the point?
01:16:27
Speaker
But in different ways.
01:16:28
Speaker
So you can ask,
01:16:29
Speaker
the interviewee, you can ask, what do you think you learned from that experience?
01:16:34
Speaker
How did that experience change you as a person?
01:16:37
Speaker
Or what is the moral of the story?
01:16:39
Speaker
So there's different ways to sort of get to that reflection moment to get the interviewee to express it clearly.
01:16:49
Speaker
So we ask a lot of different questions.
01:16:51
Speaker
We work with students to think about a lot of different kinds of questions that prompt people to tell stories.
01:16:57
Speaker
But really, we tell kids when you're doing work like this, every question you ask is essentially just another way of getting at one essential question, which is, you know, tell me a story about your life that helps me understand something important about who you are as a person.
01:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, and we talk about the fact that, you know, sharing a story is, you want to think of it sort of like planting a seed, right?
01:17:23
Speaker
Just like when you plant a seed, there's no way to know if anything's going to actually happen as a result.
01:17:29
Speaker
But, you know, we can tell you every single person who's been inspired to tell the story, I know this is true for me, that their inspiration came from them hearing a powerful story from someone else.
01:17:40
Speaker
And so, you know, for me, sort of my love of stories and hearing and telling stories came from listening to my dad telling me stories when I was a little kid.
01:17:49
Speaker
And I think we all sort of recognize, you know, the power behind that.
01:17:54
Speaker
And so we like to think that when a student invites someone else to tell a story, that that student, in a way, is paying something forward and that that person, you know, will hopefully extend the invitation down the line to the next person.
01:18:09
Speaker
So there's a theory out there that it's the secret wish of the soul to be interviewed.
01:18:16
Speaker
that no matter how skeptical someone might be, you know, at some level they're curious about participating with you.
01:18:23
Speaker
And with students, what students are doing when they do this kind of work, we tell them is kind of getting people past that initial skepticism.
01:18:36
Speaker
And in the process, I hope that these students learn, you know, that when someone realizes that your only agenda is
01:18:44
Speaker
to be a patient, active listener, there really is no limit to what can happen next.
01:18:50
Speaker
People I have been really, young people have been really surprised at the depth of experience that total strangers will share with them about their lives.
01:19:00
Speaker
And hopefully they'll learn along the way that it's actually very deeply validating to have someone take a genuine interest in you as a person, no matter who you are.
01:19:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:11
Speaker
And so there's a quote that I actually first heard from Aaron and I've heard him say it many times.
01:19:17
Speaker
But that quote is that the universe is made of stories, not atoms.
01:19:22
Speaker
And so we like to leave students with the idea that stories are the most important tool we have for shaping our reality.
01:19:30
Speaker
and the reality of others, frankly.
01:19:33
Speaker
And that stories can put us in the minds, eyes, and hearts of other human beings.
01:19:38
Speaker
We all have examples of how stories have created empathy.
01:19:43
Speaker
And for students, this whole experience flexes that empathy part of their brains.
01:19:47
Speaker
And it's intimidating at first, and it does take courage for them to do this.
01:19:51
Speaker
We've seen students struggle with that initially,
01:19:57
Speaker
But, you know, throughout through the experience, you know, when we see kids come back from the experience with their footage and their stories and sort of the success of having broken through that, you know, sort of that barrier of not being able to talk to someone initially, they're really honestly, truly lit up inside.
01:20:15
Speaker
And it's just a huge, huge accomplishment for them.
01:20:20
Speaker
And hopefully what they've learned is that even though they're in schools surrounded by really great teachers, that they can treat everyone that they meet as a potential teacher in that moment.
01:20:30
Speaker
You don't just learn in school, but anybody who's telling you a story is teaching you something.
01:20:37
Speaker
So, all right, I think I just unshared the screen.
01:20:42
Speaker
Is that correct?
01:20:43
Speaker
Are we all here?
01:20:43
Speaker
Okay.
01:20:46
Speaker
So that's kind of...
01:20:48
Speaker
what we do and sort of what we learned about turning this into something useful for students, we're happy to hear your thoughts, your reflections on sort of what you're doing in your own sort of educational environments to broaden your students' horizons, to get them out of their classroom bubbles, if you will, to answer any questions you might have about
01:21:16
Speaker
you know, why or how we do what we do.
01:21:19
Speaker
I'm not sure how much time we have before we get shuttled along to our next portion of the of the morning, but we're all ears and the floor is open.
01:21:28
Speaker
So.
01:21:35
Speaker
I just want to say, well, hello, because I'm just a huge fan of what you do and why you do it.
01:21:43
Speaker
And
01:21:44
Speaker
I have to say that like thinking about helping my students move into this role and this type of project is so empowering and so exciting.
01:21:59
Speaker
And I think that it speaks to just such authentic, real,
01:22:08
Speaker
impact for their lives, for kids, you know, and being able to connect with a subject, a person, developing empathy from it, developing connection and how that then reframes like how they see themselves and their community.
01:22:24
Speaker
You know, I wonder, like with everything going on with the pandemic,
01:22:30
Speaker
how that will impact this type of work, at least in the media.
01:22:35
Speaker
See, but I know there are certainly routes around that, but, um, I, I just want to get started doing this, whether it's students interviewing people in the school building as a community or, you know, on the campus.
01:22:51
Speaker
Uh, I think, you know, that's a place to start going, zooming in, going very, um, kind of localizing and then
01:23:01
Speaker
I don't know, I just want to do this.
01:23:03
Speaker
I want to support this platform.
01:23:06
Speaker
Well, I'm grateful to hear your enthusiasm.
01:23:08
Speaker
And I can tell you, it's not rocket science.
01:23:11
Speaker
It's a really simple idea.
01:23:13
Speaker
And it can be done.
01:23:14
Speaker
Look, Wendell and I, we're struggling with the social distancing world.
01:23:19
Speaker
And it's totally ground to a halt, the normal formula of the way we do things.
01:23:24
Speaker
But we're figuring out ways around it and having people record remotely.
01:23:30
Speaker
I think for students,
01:23:35
Speaker
You could actually,
01:23:37
Speaker
if you think about yourself as maybe sort of an executive producer role, where maybe you can look around, as you say, to the people in your immediate educational environment who aren't on your teaching staff.
01:23:49
Speaker
Maybe they're on the janitorial staff.
01:23:51
Speaker
Maybe they're on the kitchen staff.
01:23:52
Speaker
Maybe they're in other supplemental transportation services or whatever.
01:23:56
Speaker
There's a whole world of people that make a school work who aren't teachers, but who can be treated as teachers.
01:24:03
Speaker
And you can have them...
01:24:05
Speaker
You can record Zoom meetings very easily or other social media platforms where we're on with each other live.
01:24:13
Speaker
So you could, I think, very easily set up a situation where you reach out to these other folks in your educational community or just in your daily life.
01:24:26
Speaker
Maybe it's the person you get coffee from in the morning or maybe it's just someone in your place where you live or in your own neighborhood and say, hey, would you
01:24:36
Speaker
be interested in letting students interview you about life.
01:24:40
Speaker
I mean, you could probably get some people to bite on that idea and then, you know, set your students up in these sort of one-on-ones with them.
01:24:48
Speaker
And yeah, I think Zoom in a way makes people kind of more available than having to run all over town sometimes.
01:24:59
Speaker
The ultimate sound quality, you know, is a little more lo-fi, but it's actually kind of liberating.
01:25:04
Speaker
Well, I think it's a way to look at it.
01:25:06
Speaker
Like that's a great way to turn kind of a stumbling block into a stepping stone for sure.
01:25:12
Speaker
There's more access really.
01:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, truly.
01:25:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:17
Speaker
And now hopefully you don't mind me piping in, but as we start to question more the stories that are written down in books and as we teach kids how to dig deeper into that level of inquiry, just the idea that we can shift the storytelling to an active story.
01:25:38
Speaker
proactive actually experience of the world where we are using our own self-awareness to help kids tell their own stories and collect the stories of others that are just as valid, just as authentic, just as powerful as the stories that have been told over and over again in history.
01:25:56
Speaker
It just, this is such an access point for true voice and reflection about the power of story, the power of the single story, the power of
01:26:06
Speaker
who the heck did write down that story in history?
01:26:08
Speaker
And what is the story of like the first racist person?
01:26:12
Speaker
And like, there's just so much to connect to here.
01:26:18
Speaker
It's phenomenal.
01:26:19
Speaker
I'm really excited about it.
01:26:21
Speaker
Being able to examine a single point or a single event or a single time right now, like this moment from different perspectives, translates really beautifully to being able to examine, you know, this topic in US history and understanding
01:26:36
Speaker
It's not a singular, there's not, it's not a singular story.
01:26:39
Speaker
There are multiple ways that we have to go about looking at it, like the stories.
01:26:46
Speaker
For sure.
01:26:46
Speaker
Like who told that story?
01:26:48
Speaker
What was their bias?
01:26:49
Speaker
Why did they tell it like that?
01:26:51
Speaker
What are they bringing in?
01:26:52
Speaker
What's the context?
01:26:53
Speaker
Like all of that to just be able to see the microcosm and the macrocosm at the same time.
01:26:59
Speaker
Like this is how it's been in the past.
01:27:00
Speaker
And I wonder how can we use our own lenses to change that perspective now?
01:27:06
Speaker
Well, you know, for us doing the show, it's been amazing for me.
01:27:11
Speaker
Oftentimes when we'll have interviews with people that are older, you know, 60, 70, 80, you know, 90, and, you know, Aaron will ask them about specific times in their life, and they will share stories that usually tie into something of great historical sort of global significance.
01:27:31
Speaker
And hearing those individual perspectives has then, you know, made me then go,
01:27:36
Speaker
look up about something that I really, you know, I'd studied, I thought I knew about it, but, you know, again, hearing an individual's perspective can be really eye-opening.
Learning from Personal Narratives & Storytelling Techniques
01:27:46
Speaker
And I think, and, you know, I'm in my 40s, right?
01:27:48
Speaker
And so I can imagine, you know, we can see, like when you have a young student, you know, speak to somebody,
01:27:57
Speaker
who's been here for a really long time about something that is particularly something that they're learning about right then and there.
01:28:03
Speaker
It can be really transformative in a way that, you know, that learn in a different way from learning in the classroom.
01:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, make stuff that seems like it happened a long time ago when you read about it suddenly seem much more immediate when you, you know, you're hearing from someone whose parent or whatever grandparent told them a story about their own life.
01:28:27
Speaker
And, you know, it's all of a sudden you're hearing a first person source connecting you with something that seems so remote in a book.
01:28:35
Speaker
I'm curious what...
01:28:41
Speaker
Is it what the arc is from you two having never met students in a room to kind of like that first stage, if it exists of like, how do you, if they don't already know, how do you, how do you welcome them to the power of story and finding their own story in a way?
01:29:01
Speaker
And is that a step in the process or do you, do you go immediately to, we're going to go interview these people?
01:29:07
Speaker
Like how, how does that sort of internal, how do you help them internalize?
01:29:12
Speaker
Right.
01:29:12
Speaker
That's a great question.
01:29:15
Speaker
So we, you know, we've been at this a long time and we have a pretty big body of work.
01:29:22
Speaker
Some of it may be a little extreme to play for students, depending on their age, but we have the stories we hear are all different kinds of stories.
01:29:31
Speaker
They're, you know, stories, tragic stories, they're triumphant stories, they're love stories.
01:29:39
Speaker
We have enough stories in our archive that we can sort of pick and choose some stories, maybe lean toward younger storytellers and share some excerpts of what we do as we talk about the idea of this documentary project of ours.
01:29:58
Speaker
So we'll share some excerpts and then what we'll do is we'll invite students to
01:30:06
Speaker
pair up and take turns interviewing each other.
01:30:09
Speaker
And the activity oftentimes that we'll do is we'll say, we're going to give you one story prompting question.
01:30:15
Speaker
And that's the only question you get.
01:30:19
Speaker
And you're going to interview this fellow student for four minutes, but you don't have a list of questions.
01:30:26
Speaker
You have one question.
01:30:27
Speaker
And the real challenge is to be a good listener and to figure out
01:30:32
Speaker
what the next smart follow-up question is to take that student either in another interesting direction or to invite them to speak in more detail about what they've just said to you.
01:30:44
Speaker
So it becomes this exercise in, you know, flexing your active listening skills.
01:30:51
Speaker
And for some students, that four minutes can seem like forever.
01:30:57
Speaker
But for other students, you know, we'll all come back together as a group after pairing off like that.
01:31:02
Speaker
Some students will say, that time flew by.
01:31:04
Speaker
We had just really gotten started talking.
01:31:07
Speaker
And those, you know, those conversations sort of are sort of an indoctrination into, you know, what they're going to then reach out and begin to do with people maybe that they're not so familiar and comfortable with.
01:31:23
Speaker
Hey, Aaron, do you guys have, excuse me, any resources about like first steps in class, like to do with kids or first steps that you promote, you found successful?
01:31:36
Speaker
Like, do you have those anywhere?
01:31:37
Speaker
Any?
01:31:39
Speaker
Well, Aaron, do you want to talk about your deck?
01:31:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:31:43
Speaker
A deck of cards.
01:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, there's a deck of cards.
01:31:46
Speaker
I've got one here.
01:31:48
Speaker
We actually, this was a random little moment of inspiration.
01:31:53
Speaker
But we made, this is a deck of playing cards, right?
01:31:58
Speaker
Like it's a normal deck of cards.
01:32:04
Speaker
You can play poker or whatever you want with them.
01:32:07
Speaker
But on each card is a different ace I keep up my sleeve in my mental Rolodex of questions that prompt people to share stories about their lives.
01:32:18
Speaker
Like this one says,
01:32:21
Speaker
What mistake do you make over and over again?
01:32:26
Speaker
Here's what can you do today that you couldn't do a year ago?
01:32:32
Speaker
And before you even bring out suggested prompts like this, you can really go through a brainstorming activity with students about what makes a good question.
01:32:42
Speaker
What kind of question really invites someone to tell a story about their life?
01:32:46
Speaker
There are obvious questions that are not going to go too far, which are like random informational yes or no questions.
01:32:54
Speaker
And then there are also questions that maybe we'll get vague philosophical answers from people that are kind of like mushy, squishy answers.
01:33:04
Speaker
Like, tell me your thoughts on the likelihood of world peace.
01:33:08
Speaker
But then there are those questions that really ask in not so many words, like, tell me a story about you, about your life.
01:33:16
Speaker
You know, what was your most recent why?
01:33:22
Speaker
You know, what problem are you currently grappling with?
01:33:27
Speaker
So, you know, you can, you know, you can work with students to come up with a short list of good questions, do prompts.
01:33:35
Speaker
This, I'm running out of these.
01:33:37
Speaker
I got to reorder.
01:33:39
Speaker
But I've got, you know, I've got a small supply of these decks.
01:33:42
Speaker
I always give a bunch of them to Steve and the Inspire Citizens folks.
01:33:48
Speaker
So, and, you know, it's also, frankly, they're web resources that, you know, you can probably Google, you know, conversation starting questions and, you know, sort of prepare yourself, stack your own deck, if you will.
01:34:01
Speaker
I actually have that deck.
01:34:03
Speaker
And I love those.
01:34:05
Speaker
And I think like for Clancy, Julia, other teachers, like this would be an awesome way to start the year.
01:34:13
Speaker
You know, this would start, like set the tone for the importance of reflection and the importance of listening to each other.
01:34:24
Speaker
It just hit me when you were talking about some of those questions.
01:34:28
Speaker
That's how I want to start it with my sixth graders this year.
01:34:32
Speaker
They are definitely turbocharged conversation starters that get you beyond sort of the small talk.
01:34:37
Speaker
And I mean, if we all had started at the beginning of the session, answering one of those questions, instead of just saying our name and where we are and what we teach, we'd be at a different place with each other sort of in terms of our understanding of each other.
01:34:49
Speaker
So yeah, it's, I mean, it's definitely diving feet first.
Vulnerability, Equity & Growth through Storytelling
01:34:54
Speaker
Yeah, Clancy.
01:34:55
Speaker
I have a question that might generate a vague philosophical answer on your part, but it's just something I've been thinking about recently.
01:35:00
Speaker
Have you thought about the interplay between vulnerability and equity, if that comes up at all in your work?
01:35:12
Speaker
I don't really know quite what I'm asking, but that's just something I've been thinking about recently.
01:35:17
Speaker
I'm curious if that resonates with just being around so many folks and
01:35:24
Speaker
generating a vulnerable space.
01:35:29
Speaker
I don't know.
01:35:30
Speaker
Wendell, you got thoughts on that?
01:35:33
Speaker
Well, it's a good question.
01:35:37
Speaker
And it is, I mean, I can appreciate the vagueness of it.
01:35:43
Speaker
And so my answer might be equally vague, but I think it will somehow relate.
01:35:49
Speaker
So, you know, one of the things that we do with our show is we don't,
01:35:54
Speaker
Well, first of all, we try to go places that don't get sort of, you know, a lot of coverage in general, or if they do get coverage, their coverage often tends to be negative and very specific when, you know, quite frankly, people are just, most people are just living their lives anywhere they happen to be.
01:36:17
Speaker
And, you know, so that's,
01:36:21
Speaker
Going to place and we also try to go to places that we we don't necessarily know well ourselves.
01:36:26
Speaker
So there's a certain amount of vulnerability on our part, just in terms of, you know, like it it takes.
01:36:32
Speaker
It takes effort to put yourself somewhere where you yourself don't necessarily feel completely comfortable or you don't really know what sort of the outcome is going to be.
01:36:41
Speaker
And then it requires vulnerability on the person of the people that you're meeting to open up to you.
01:36:48
Speaker
It's one thing if you meet somebody or you have a conversation with someone at your local grocery store who you've seen from time to time.
01:36:55
Speaker
It's another, if you're having a conversation with somebody who's never seen you before, doesn't know why you're there.
01:36:59
Speaker
Maybe they think you're a police officer or, you know, someone from the city, you know, they, they, it takes additional time to sort of break, you know, break down those barriers.
01:37:08
Speaker
And, you know, of course that's, that's not time that, that students or a school necessarily has, but when we were in Korea, for example, and we know we took these students out after these initial steps that Aaron described where students interviewed each other and
01:37:25
Speaker
And for them, this really, you know, yes, it was in their community, but these people were total strangers.
01:37:31
Speaker
And so they had to sort of deal with being vulnerable themselves.
01:37:36
Speaker
And it was honestly, it was kind of fun to watch at times, you know, there'd be sort of this group of five kids,