Unleashing Actions for Change

As educators, we evolve with our students' learning, we connect and co-create through many uncertainties during the learning process. Getting students to value passion for new ideas of learning by tapping into their own curiosity that empowers and relates to their community while unleashing actions that create change.

As mentors, we need to be skillful in giving opportunities for students to explore how they are creative thinkers. The previous post I focus on students' independent and personalized journey of Cultivating Own Giftedness. This post will focus on another journey of students' independent personalized journey; their passion and interests in their community from the United Nation Sustainable Development Global Goals (SDG'S) to their own community actions for change.

One class, I see seven times a week for French and Religion and another class that I see three times a week for Religion. Both classes focused on the well being in relation to the Catholic Graduate Expectations, the Ontario Ministry four domain of Well Being and reflecting during the process by focusing on the Six Global Competencies.

The students aligned the Catholic Graduate Expectation with the Well Being Dimensions from being a discerning believer, to an effective communicator and taking actions as a responsible citizen that is part of our School Innovation Plan for Student Achievement Wellness. 

We focused on being powerful citizens by impacting each other through the process of designing while taking actions by focusing on local and global sustainable changes. Both classes focused on being explicit collaborators, communicators, critical and creative thinkers and developing their character of persevering through the ups and downs of the process. The journey of effective citizens began unpacking the causes and factors and the connections between them through the Causal Models of the Sustainable Development Global Goals. 

The intentionality of students' autonomy and leadership is giving them a purpose to define their world through their own process of problem-solving. Having them define and experience their own cognitive, physical, social and emotional learning while dealing with obstacles to critically think through group learning. 

The autonomy is for them to problem solve and invest the time ideating and iterating their process for taking action. Experiencing the mindset of learning, evolving and connecting the skills and developing their competencies.  Designing is about inclusivity and diverse perspectives for problem-solving. The key for them is to reflect on their learning throughout the process and to be aware of how learning is taking place through iteration and ideating together for better solutions. It is important to allow time for students to think about their thinking to focus on how problems were solved and why decisions were altered to improve. 

Each class took on their personal journey and full autonomy for taking actions and engaged in inquiries and the design process that impact change. Students' inquiries were for improving the school community as well as contributing to the local community. How SDG's world issues could also relate to our school community and the local community?  

The slides capture some of the students' evidence. From creating an Instagram account and starting a movement for strawlessOTT to making sandwiches, or impacting the school community in so many sustainable projects.  The Ladder of Inference per group is shared as it is a metacognitive tool for students to be clear about their actions and the data of reasoning to come up to the conclusion. They have accumulated lots of data compiling the actions that they have experienced during the process. The importance that they concluded their effort of perseverance and critical thinking to take action has been implied and determined through a rich process of design thinking and creativity. 

The key to the success is always partnership and consultation for feedback. Mr. Sean Kelly, All Saints High School principal partnered with a class whom he connected with them face to face, visits to the classroom and via many emails guiding them for the next steps. The actions of autonomy are described on the following slides:

The following slides share the self-directed actions of a class that I met three times a week for Religion. They partnered with Mrs. Noble Moore via emails for permissions about dates and the plans. 

The students designed their inclusivity of collaboration and problem together, bringing the best in their critical thinking and creativity for action taking. Giving them a chance to embrace the framework of ideating and iterating for solutions as well as meeting with experts for feedback and recommendations for solutions.  The students created their own process of how to problem solve and take actions. By driving their own facilitation and tackling many obstacles during the process, they developed life skills of ownership as proven that the adolescent brain likes to take control. 

To have students understand how they learn and how they react, we listened and reflected on a Ted Talk, The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain - Sarah-Jayne Blakemore  We explored the functions of adolescent brain seeking out risks and being sensitive to Social and Emotional sensitivity when making decisions and regulating the emotional responses to their own behavior in teams. Having them navigate their decision making, when confronting with interesting challenges, generating new ideas and promoting creative thinking and taking risks. The reflections and the discussions during the process connected the emotional thinking and dealing with their emotions during team decision making. 

Below are  reflections during the process based on the progressions of the 6C's from New Pedagogies for Deep Learning: 

This student shares how everyone viewed the problems during tasks in different ways and how they each respected the personality and the quality of individual creativity.  They all became good friends and collaborated well by respecting all perspectives. This specific student had a difficult time at the beginning of the year accepting perspectives by the end of the year she became a great listener, leader and collaborator. 

In the beginning, this student thought she is developing as she always welcomed the ideas of others and thought her idea was not good. As she listened to the team they then found more flexible ideas. As they went on with their inquiry the team members had a hard time listening to each other as they were optimistic that their idea was going to be the best. They started the rule of the talking pencil that each one holds a pencil to share while others listen. 

The first part the student describes how they iterated their ideas and respected the point of view of team members.  They decided that the initial idea was not effective and they pursued to contact the farms for compost. The social, emotional and intercultural competencies are accelerating for her as she is conscious of her own perspective and how it differs from others. Also during discussions, she is able to listen and understand others ideas. 

The importance of self-awareness of emotional learning is key to the success for the adolescent brain. Working and dealing with their own personal journey and reflecting by identifying how their behavior is relevant to the team and the decisions of the team. 

This experience for me from the students is the start of the importance of developing the social competencies of perspectives on learning and confronting the effect of their social and emotional intelligence to their own development and their community of learning. 

On Twitter, two models had me reflect to persevere with next year and validate the importance of students' agencies of learners.  Katie Martin the 10 Characteristics of Learner-Centered Experiences and Stages of Personalized Learning Environment V5 by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey 

How are we impacting students' ownership of learning? What imperfections are we allowing in order for the adolescent brain to grow, collaborate through emotional risk-taking, reflect on the emotional awareness during the autonomy of actions? Are we making time for students to reflect on self-awareness of their emotional learning when meeting realistic expectations and experiences?

How are allowing our students to be agents of change to

• design new solutions within their lives and school, community?
• become a thinking culture?
• become changemakers?
• be optimistic of their own creativity?
• to focus on compassionate and empathetic curiosities?
• create their self-directed learning through inclusivity and collaboration?

"It's through mistakes that you can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good" Paula Scher

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun." Mary Lou Cook