STAGE 4
Q: How will I authentically investigate and become more deeply aware of the issues that I care about?
The AWARE phase of the Empathy to Impact zooms in on a specific problem, its impact, its causes and the various challenges that contribute to the problem’s existence or continued development. This phase requires real-world application of skills like–observation, interview question design, active listening and analyzing systems surrounding the problems. The goal of this phase is for students to identify a real (not assumed) need in a community/context and to hone in on one or two specific causes with a community partner or expert. This is the student’s foundation for planning sustainable action steps. But most critically, this CAN be done while teaching our mini-lessons, developing skills, and exploring your learning outcomes more effectively while also more deeply understanding the identified local or global issue.
AWARE steps:
Step 1: Revisit the WHY of the unit that you identified in CARE or the community or environmental problem that you’d like to address in your unit or learning experience. State the specific problem in a statement. Get feedback on your statement. Redraft the statement making it an inquiry question.
Step 2: Identify a type of invesitgation strategy that you might use to more deeply understand the issue
Conduct an interview (engaging questions + active listening)
Explore diverse media sources
Conduct an observation (a-e-i-o-u protocol).
Survey people involved
Conduct a Site visit
Collect data relevant to the issue
Use a systems thinking tool or a root cause analysis to unpack the issue.
Use photography to explore environments
Prepare for community or expert interviews by designing questions and practicing respectful dialogue
Considerations for Co-Curricular or Experiential Learning Circumstances
When connecting to curriculum, it is important for us to choose the right investigation strategies that align with our mini-lessons or skills lessons in the earlier part of the learning journey.
When working with student clubs, student leadership groups, after-school activities, or advisory programs, , there may be a particular skill that students are trying to develop, but there may not be a specific learning outcome or key skill we’re trying to align with. Regardless, what is most critical for all of these circumstances is that students find out more.
A lot of student groups jump straight to action without spending time listening to a partner, building relationships, conducting site visits, interviewing people who have been impacted, running surveys to explore whether their potential actions will work, or identifying what the actual needs or opportunities are in the community.
In all co-curricular experiences, it is critical that we guide students toward investigation strategies and help them understand that there cannot be impactful action without deep investigation. Students should not move toward action unless they have taken time to unpack and explore the issue with depth—ensuring they are not causing unintended harm and are engaging in meaningful, respectful, and reciprocal impact projects.
In experiential learning contexts, this is equally as important. When going on a trip, students are often brought to a location or a museum and listen to a speaker. But what is often neglected is the opportunity to equip students with the skills to investigate within a new geographical or socio-cultural context.
For example, on an experiential learning trip, we could:
• Use photography to conduct site visits connected to a guiding goal or inquiry question.
• Practice communication skills and develop effective questioning techniques to engage successfully across socio-cultural or socio-economic difference.
• Integrate interviews and community connections into the itinerary to deepen learning and relevance.
• Engage in pre-learning through investigation strategies to build context and understanding before the trip even begins.
Using investigation effectively in co-curricular and experiential learning contexts is key to cultivating a deep, meaningful experience and building authentic collaboration.
Explore the “AWARE” resources
Choose one or two tools from this resource page that can enhance the critical thinking and
research skills needed in this transformative learning experience.
Remember that when being used in curricular contexts these tools should help to level up an existing skill, support and existing mini-lesson, or allow students to engage with the real world while developing necessary knowledge, skills, and understandings.
Critical Media Literacy
The explosion in information has presented a major challenge to the world of formal education. For centuries, schooling has been designed to make sure students learned facts about the world—which they proved they knew by correctly answering questions on tests. But such a system is no longer relevant when the most up-to-date facts are available at the touch of a button.
What students need today is to learn how to find what they need to know when they need to know it, from the best sources available— and to have the higher order thinking skills to analyze and evaluate whether the information they find is useful for what they want to know and do.
Related resources:
Observation and Intercultural Understanding
AEIOU provides a template for observing contextual inquiries and collecting qualitative data. This heuristic framework provides an observation technique used to document contextual inquiries during ethnographic studies.
The Cultural Iceberg helps us to understand when one first enters a new culture, only the most overt behaviors are apparent. As one spends more time in that new culture, the underlying beliefs, values, and thought patterns that dictate that behavior will be uncovered. What this model teaches us is that we cannot judge a new culture based only on what we see when we first enter it. We must take the time to get to know individuals from that culture and interact with them. Only by doing so can we uncover the values and beliefs that underlie the behavior of that society.
Related resources:
Active Listening and Interviewing
Active listening is foundational skill in developing empathy for others, identifying successes and challenges in a community, and developing deeper, trusting, reciprocal relationships with diverse community members.
Utilizing questioning strategies, such as Thinking Like a Historian, to construct follow-up questions that elicit open and transparent answers, leads to compassionate conversations, meaningful storytelling, and intercultural understanding.
Explore the overlooked benefits of pushing past our default discomfort when it comes to strangers and embracing those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection. Through interviews and conversations, we can make more space for change.
Related resources:
Needs Analysis & Mapping Systems
Construct a root cause tree or fish bone diagram
for analyzing the sources or causes of an event or issue.
A root cause analysis is a systematic process used to identify the underlying cause(s) of a problem or incident, rather than simply addressing its symptoms. The goal is to find out why a problem happened so that effective solutions can be implemented to prevent it from happening again.
Related resources:
Data Literacy and Graphicacy
Data is everywhere. Collected, stored, open for the taking. Yet most of our society, workforce, and students aren’t equipped with the best analytical toolkit to take in and process all this information.
For example, Charts, infographics, and diagrams are ubiquitous. They are useful because they can reveal patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. Good charts make us smarter—if we know how to read them.
However, they can also deceive us. Charts lie in a variety of ways—displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty— or are frequently misunderstood. Many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day.
Related resources:
Deep Reading
Resources like Notice and Note introduce strategies and “signposts” that alert readers to significant moments in a work of literature and encourages them to read closely. This helps create attentive readers who look closely at a text, interpret it responsibly and rigorously, and reflect on what it means to them. Literature, when richly comprehended enhances thinking, learning, and expanding a reader’s knowledge and horizons.
Related resources:
Further reflection:
What research skills are at the heart of my inquiry and discovery?
“AWARE” in action!
From Awareness to Action: AES Biology Team’s Journey into Service Learning
At the American Embassy School (AES) in New Delhi, a team of biology educators set out to deepen their students’ learning experience by integrating authentic service learning into their curriculum. Their goal was ambitious: to move beyond traditional science instruction and create a meaningful, real-world connection between students, their environment and their community.
With the support of Inspire Citizens, specifically Aaron Moniz, the team found the guidance they needed to refine their approach to service, build a strong framework, and ensure that their work was truly impactful. What followed was an inspiring journey that connected students with…
(Read more…)
Bridging Generations: PreK students learn from community elders
The journey began with the children interviewing their grandparents. These interviews, conducted via video, delved into the grandparents' childhoods and the special moments they now share with their grandchildren. This exercise not only strengthened family bonds but also allowed the children to learn about history and traditions firsthand.
“The students recorded their interviews and shared them with the class,” explains Pre-Kindergarten teacher Juanita Carvajales. “We noted themes that emerged in interviews with the grandparents such as traditional games they used to play like 'Mariamandunga,' typical to the Colombian coast. Then we found those games and showed them to the children and they were able to play them.” (Read more…)