VIGNETTES

Photography and art: We are constantly in a state of becoming. We are constantly changing how we see the world, how we make photos, and whatever we find interesting. We are constantly changing our tools, our processing methods, and our own visual acuity is in flux — some things become brighter in our eyes, some things more dim. We are becoming both more near-sighted and far-sighted at the same time. - Eric Kim

Service and action in Kindergarten involves elements of imagination, play, active listening, relationship building, and also personalizing discovery based on interest. By leveraging transformative learning goals into authentic outputs and opportunities for deeper connections, students can be encouraged to use creativity in problem solving towards developing ideas like happiness in the community.

Futures thinking for education is a crucial component in identifying contextual, common transformative learning goals across a school or district following a challenging 2020-21 and a complex and ambiguous future. By focusing on change drivers such as globalization, sustainability, economics, work, social discourse, technology, and media, learners and educators are being presented with the urgent need to reimagine goals for learning that center on cognitive skills and dispositions for students to thrive in this complex landscape.

Seoul Foreign School's Voice Lab is a way to actively engage with media maker skills and make the MYP ATLs and Design Criterion come alive. It is also a way to develop global competence and concepts related to compassion. By using media to inspire audiences and have them engage with local communities and local community issues, this design class aims to inspire and encourage positive change.

Collaborative planning with students, especially those in upper elementary or above brings many advantages to both teaching and learning. Students often bring a lot of prior knowledge to units and if unit planning is too teacher-centric and rigid, students can be demotivated or demoralized quickly by lack of engagement and relevance. In this case, Empathy to Impact also offers a number of pathways where teachers and students can together determine points of relevance, deep research, applied skills, and collaborative or more individualized community actions, which immediately promotes critical and creative thinking though a lens of great agency.

Committing to exploring and reflecting on qualitative data learned from student evidence around the demonstration of these critical transformational goals, schools and educators can build innovative learning experiences and assessments that are future-focused and student-centered in response to our volatile, uncertain, and complex present and future.

Inspired by Storycorps, and as part of a partnership with the acclaimed Baltimore podcast Out of the Blocks, Inspire Citizens’ learners explore and converse with senior women in the local community to capture publishable stories via their subject’s world views on culture, personal histories, happiness, family, and words of wisdom for younger generations. This transformative learning experience now exists in numerous interdisciplinary units at Inspire Citizens’ partner schools, as part of the Future Now Leadership Toolkit, as well as being a feature mentor example for an Inspire Citizens podcast: Out of the Blocks: Global Youth Media

Centered on taking action for avoiding stereotypes and single stories of diverse communities, students practice Thinking Like a Photojournalist as part of the Global Youth Media Photo!Bomb photography and storytelling learning experience and community publication.

As part of the recent #ISTEGlobalPLN SDGs in Education Playground, Inspire Citizens' Steve Sostak and student leaders from Western Academy Beijing led an interactive Socratic Seminar on the future of students, educators, and schools. Video here.