How A T-Shirt Can Spark Systemic Change

Stories of Service Learning Across Middle School Classes

As each generation leaves the problems of the world to the next, are we teaching the next generation to address these problems meaningfully? Or are we confusing ourselves and therefore our students with an overemphasis on test scores and terminology, potentially blowing out our opportunity to prepare them to create a brighter future?

Curiosity needs to be sparked and that spark needs to be fanned in middle school. We need to get students to be “curiouser and curiouser” about themselves, the world, their role in it, and their impact on it. As importantly, they need to let curiosity drive their learning, give them time to reflect on what they learn, and help them imagine possibilities for positive action, individually and collectively.

Here are stories of two middle school classrooms, where students are asked to “get curious” about the harms of consumerism and empower students to make different choices.

In our school, the middle grades each focus on one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to anchor learning. This allows for rich multi-disciplinary exploration of a global issue and related local manifestations throughout the year. These two stories are part of a middle-school-wide effort to bring service learning into all classes.

Both classrooms used the Solutionary Framework to guide the work, a four-phase process that includes problem identification, investigation, innovation and taking action. This Solutionary approach to teaching and learning empowers students to make informed choices and consider their real-world impact now and in the future. Curiosity is stimulated and fostered throughout the process. Isn’t that the type of education our students deserve?

Grade Five – Access to Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG #6)

Let us start in Amanda´s grade five class, where curiosity was sparked after watching the SIMA Academy Films: Good Will Dumping, Rain Harvests, and World and Me. As part of the unit: Water for Life! Investigating the Global Water Crisis, students were percolating with thoughts and wonderings about the injustice of water access.

The class recorded their questions:

Padlet from Amanda’s Grade 5 Class at Munich International School 17.10.2025

Students wanted to understand more about the role they played in the global issue of water access. A vocabulary activity allowed students to learn some necessary vocabulary words they needed to understand the issue like scarcity, conservation, drought, sanitation, and terms like equity vs. equality.

If this were a traditional classroom, where tests measured knowledge, the unit would end here. However, for Amanda´s students, this was part of the road map to taking action!

The role Amanda needed to play was coach (something she is good at). She thought, “How can I flame these sparks of curiosity into action?”

This is where systems thinking comes in! Amanda realized students needed to understand the global problem of lack of water access from multiple perspectives. Yes, we use water for our survival as a species, but we also use water to clean, produce electricity, and even to make t-shirts.

Logan, one of Amanda´s grade five students, had already researched The Hidden Cost of A Cotton T-Shirt and presented to the class some facts, including that it takes 2,700 liters of water to make one t-shirt, according to the EU Commission on Fast Fashion.

After Logan´s presentation on the excessive amounts of water used to create a t-shirt, Amanda decided it was time to ground the unit in a problem statement that described a local manifestation of this global issue: Our school produces two XL-sized trash bags full of lost clothing items, including t-shirts, every few months.

Grade Five Solution Brainstorming – Behind two bags of ´Lost and Found´ items. 25.11.2025 (Photo Credit: Kathryn T. Berkman)

This global problem, which is often ´solved´ by raising money for wells in other lands, was now becoming a complex issue with many interrelated parts that students could work on, and which related directly to their own actions and choices.

Curiosity was in play. Some of the questions emerging included:

– Whose clothes are these?

– Where were they made?

– How did they get shipped to Germany?

– Where does the water come from to make these clothes?

– How much does it cost to make a t-shirt?

– Where are they made?

– Can we recycle lost items?

The investigation process came next. Table groups examined and analyzed different types of “lost” items. They were upset to learn that eventually most items are just discarded.

As Amanda´’s class continued to dive deeper into this problem, she guided them to use the ‘More-Good, Least-Harm´ (MOGO) principle to evaluate the potential consequences of each student-made solution to reducing our school’s number of ´lost and found´ items and reducing water waste.

Ideally, we want students to develop solutions that address root and systemic causes of the problem and mitigates or prevents the problem from reoccurring. Although donating the clothes in the lost and found might help in the short term, it will not prevent the amount of clothing in the lost and found continuing to grow. Similar to donating leftover food, it could actually cause the problem to grow as people assume “It does not matter if we discard food or clothes because they will be donated.” The students thought that bringing awareness to this community-wide problem might help. Who needs to be involved? What has already been done to solve the problem?

During the upcoming winter break assembly, Logan and his peers plan to hold a ´lost and found´ fashion show, along with informing about the estimated numbers of water needed per item. Their hope is that people will reclaim their lost items, saving hundreds of thousands of liters of water because, of course, they would not have to purchase new clothes items to replace those that were lost.

The students in Amanda´’s class are learning how their actions to be responsible for lost items are connected to a larger system, and that they can take specific action to help improve understanding of the value or pricelessness of water.

Grade Eight – Responsible Production and Consumption (SDG #12)

Meanwhile, down the hallway, the grade eight students were learning about the issues of responsible production and consumption.

After showing students the production cycle of a t-shirt in their Individuals & Societies (I&S) class using the NPR video, Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt as a text, the Tess, the grade 8 I & S teacher, commented: “This was a bit mind-blowing for the students, which sparked curiosity.”

Curiosity was in play as Simone a grade 8 student asked, “Where are the raw materials from?”

The product life cycle gave the students’ key vocabulary and a way to understand and discuss the issue: extraction of raw materials, manufacturing & production, packaging & distribution, purchasing, use & maintenance, disposal. A mysterious process had become known.

True Price Activity; Institute of Humane Education

Students also learned about planned obsolescence. They were eager to understand more about their role in this global cycle.

A field trip was arranged for students to visit a repair cafe inside another school. Who knew repairing a toaster could be so exciting?

Then each student chose one company to investigate (ex., car manufacturers, ice cream makers, technology companies, ice cream companies) and created a problem statement in the form of a research question.

“How can we remove harmful dyes from the H&M clothing production cycle?” -Ben, Grade 8

“Why does Coca-Cola advertise without showing plastics?” -Sid, Grade 8

These grade eight students had begun to realize that they could, and needed, to make more informed decisions about the items they bought. A final showcase of the True Price unit took place last week. While interviewing the students about what they learned, it was echoed by many that what we see – and the prices we pay – are often just a peek into the true price of items.

Grade 8 student, Carla, presenting during the True Price showcase on Shein Fashion Company; 25.11.2025 (Photo Credit: Kathryn T. Berkman)

Let us return to the urgency of our work as educators. The young teenagers in front of us today could be unaware of the consequences of their actions as consumers. By failing to educate them on the systems that we are all a part of, we fail to show them the negative impacts of issues, such as advertising. We also fail to provide them with the opportunity to consider alternative behaviors and choices that could be better for people, animals and the environment.

What if, instead, the purpose of education became to support students to investigate and address the problems students are curious about meaningfully and strategically?

Teachers can use the voices of those often unheard, statistics, and images to spark curiosity. And, from curiosity, nurture the next generation to identify the problems they want to solve, with inquiry, innovation, and action. Tess and Amanda´s students are the generation that will be looking back at our actions to construct their futures.

The first word in the International Baccalaureate mission statement is inquiring:

The IB develops inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect.

Source: IBO.org

There is a jump that must be made from students who primarily focus on gaining knowledge and demonstrating that they know content or have skills to students whose purpose as learners is to ask questions to actively create a more sustainable and peaceful world. Fanning the sparks of curiosity is key. Helping students navigate the spaces between understanding, further inquiry and taking action is where many educators get dissuaded. Join those in your community who are bringing inquiry to action approaches into the classroom. A better future for all may depend on it!

To spark your own curiosity as educators reading this blog, did you know what Edward Bernays, the nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, said about consumerism?

“Bernays pointed out that you can provoke people to consume far beyond their needs simply by manipulating their psychology. You can seed anxiety in people´s minds, and then present your product as a solution to that anxiety. Or you can sell them things on the promise that they will provide social acceptance, or class distinction, or sexual prowess.”

Source: Jason Hickel, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

Kathryn T. Berkman is a middle school educator at Munich International School who believes social justice and service learning should be integrated into all subjects in school. She is also a coach with the Institute for Humane Education. In her free time, she loves running in the alps and dancing.

Designing Advisory That Lands: Where Neuroscience, Social Emotional Learning, and Effective Instructional Design Come Together

At the American School of Barcelona, we had worked so hard designing an advisory program to meet the needs of our young people. We created units on relationships, making healthy choices, and addressing all the other critical issues adolescents face today, but when it came down to it, we knew we were missing the mark. We were creating well-designed lessons, slides, and activities for teachers to teach, but at times, it felt inauthentic to students and teachers. As Ellen Mahoney, from Sea Change put it, “It’s like we’re asking teachers to deliver somebody else’s stand-up comedy routine.” That was it! Our teachers didn’t feel confident in facilitating these complex topics, and the curriculum we had built was well-designed, but it wasn’t landing with students the way we intended. We realized that we needed to rethink the structure and approach to advisory.

This past school year, we began a thoughtful process to revise our middle years advisory program, grounded in David Yeager’s 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, the CASEL SEL competencies, and close collaboration with Sea Change’s Ellen Mahoney. Our goal: design an advisory experience rooted in current developmental psychology and neuroscience while placing adolescent identity, belonging, and motivation at the center.

Reframing Adolescence: The Identity Pathway

10 to 25 challenges ongoing myths about adolescence, irrationality, and inevitable rebellion. Yeager reframes ages 10–25 as an important high-opportunity window when young people are actively constructing a sense of self in relation to the world. As social status and respect matter most to middle school students, they are craving connections with mentors and adults who can help them connect learning to a deeper purpose. When adolescents see a meaningful connection between who they are, who they hope to become, and the effort they invest in school and life, motivation and resilience increase.

We realized that this would be an important focus as we began an advisory re-design process. Our advisory program was well-intentioned and thoughtfully designed but it lacked coherence across grade levels and didn’t consistently help students reflect on identity, agency, or purpose. In partnership with Sea Change, we committed to rethinking advisory through the lenses of adolescent neuroscience and culturally responsive SEL.

From Audit to Architecture: Creating an Advisory Road Map with Sea Change

Sea Change’s SEL Roadmap system aligns with the science in 10 to 25 and helps schools put the neuroscience into practice, based on developmental alignment, relational trust, and meaningful learning experiences. Over several months, we:

Audited current practice through student/staff feedback and observation.
Mapped the student experience through heat mapping the highs and lows of school life, revealing what matters most at each grade level and informing a vertical progression of skill and mindset development.
Identified the instructional strategies best suited to create experiences that help students develop these skills and explore adaptive mindsets.
Designed an intentional sequence of themes and practices that match developmental priorities over time.
Committed to integrating the SEL Roadmap’s Four Universal Elements into learning experiences: inclusive welcome, norm setting and noticing, purpose for learning, and reflective closure.

For example, in Grade 7, when peer identity and social dynamics intensify, we might use Fishbowl Discussions where small groups model inclusive leadership and difficult conversations while others observe and reflect. This allows students to see positive peer dynamics, establish group norms, and practice constructive feedback, directly addressing seventh graders’ social challenges.

By Grade 10, when the emphasis shifts toward autonomy, purpose, and planning for the future, we might use Jigsaw where students become experts on different aspects of life planning (career pathways, financial literacy, college preparation, etc.) and teach their peers. This builds autonomous learning skills while helping students see how today’s knowledge-building connects to their long-term goals and personal purpose.

What Changed in Our Advisory Design: The Four Universal Elements

To make advisory work practical and consistent across classrooms, we built our approach around the SEL Roadmap‘s Four Universal Elements. The Inclusive Welcome and Intentional Close draw from CASEL’s SEL 3 Signature Practices to create meaningful opening and closing rituals. Purpose for Learning incorporates Yeager and colleagues’ research on adolescent motivation to help students connect their growth to making a positive difference. Norm Setting and Noticing builds on research on the science of learning to foster collaborative expectations and accountability. And the Intentional Close allowing for purposeful closure and reflection. Together, these elements keep advisory simple while giving students more ownership, engagement, and voice while positioning teachers as skilled facilitators.

Inclusive Welcome A brief, purposeful activity that starts advisory by fostering connection, acknowledging each student, and creating a sense of belonging through joyful interaction or meaningful exchange.

Norm Setting and Noticing A collaborative process where students help create and maintain advisory expectations, regularly reflecting on how they’re building respect, inclusion, and positive relationships together.

Purpose for Learning Connecting advisory activities and discussions to students’ personal growth and their ability to make a positive difference in their community and world.

Intentional Close A purposeful ending that helps students reflect on their growth, make connections to their lives, and transition forward with clear next steps or renewed motivation.

Across a week or unit, this structure builds belonging, connection and strengthens student voice while keeping advisory prep manageable and consistent.

What’s Next: Embedding and Expanding

Whole-school alignment: connect advisory with MTSS so well-being and belonging data inform supports and interventions.
Ongoing adult learning: continue coaching on developmentally aligned mentoring, restorative language, and culturally responsive practice.
Professional learning with Dr. David Yeagar: to continue to grow our understandings of adolescent neuroscience.
Family partnership: host learning sessions that translate science into everyday strategies at home; elevate family narratives that reinforce identity, autonomy, and belonging.

At ASB, our advisory redesign process has reminded us that when we align practice with research and focus on relationships first, students feel supported, connected and empowered. 10 to 25 gave us the why, and Ellen Mahoney’s expertise helped us shape the how, anchoring our program in neuroscience, SEL, and practices that truly land with adolescents. Through embedding the Four Universal Elements outlined in the SEL Roadmap of inclusive welcome, norm setting and noticing, purpose for learning, and intentional close, we are creating a consistent structure where every student feels seen, has a voice. The goal is to shift advisory from an outlined lesson to be delivered by the teacher to a collaborative space of belonging, identity, and purpose. We are at the beginning stages of our journey in shifting our advisory practices but there is already a more noticeable buy-in with teachers and an understanding of the importance of the time. As we look ahead to continued learning with Dr. David Yeager and Sea Change, we remain committed to ensuring that every young person at ASB is seen, connected, and supported to thrive in their middle years journey. We would like to give a special shout-out to ASB teachers and leaders who are at the forefront of this work, especially the ones paving the way: Monica Villanueva, Peter Iversen, Anca Niculescu, Luisa Muigez, Randi Burns, Katie Wrobel, Lindsay McBride, Maggie Stuhan, Richard Petersen, Omar Ugalde.

Dr. Johanna Cena

Director Of Teaching and Learning American School of Barcelona, MTSS Staff Developer for Lead Inclusion and Inclusion Consultant

Ellen Mahoney

CEO of SeaChange Mentoring. Helping International Schools Build Relationship-Rich Cultures | SEL & Wellbeing Consultant | Speaker & Research Contributor

David Yeager, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the cofounder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He is best known for his research conducted with Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, and Greg Walton on short but powerful interventions that influence adolescent behaviors such as motivation, engagement, healthy eating, bullying, stress, mental health, and more. He has consulted for Google, Microsoft, Disney, and the World Bank, as well as for the White House and the governments in California, Texas, and Norway. His research has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and more. Clarivate Web of Science ranks Yeager as one of the top 0.1% most-influential psychologists in the world over the past decade. Prior to his career as a scientist, he was a middle school teacher and a basketball coach. He earned his PhD and MA at Stanford University and his BA and MEd at the University of Notre Dame. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their four children.
His best selling book is 10 TO 25: The Science of Motivating Young People. Asynchronous educator professional learning opportunities with David include FUSE and the Power of Mindset Masterclass.

Learn more about the mentor mindset in David’s pre-conference: “The Mentor Mindset: How to Motivate Middle School Students”

Witching for a New Enlightenment: Reclaiming Futures in Education

The systems of international education we know today are not neutral. They are rooted in inherited frameworks that trace back to the Enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries. These frameworks, born in Europe, continue to shape what counts as “knowledge,” how progress is measured, and who is imagined as the ideal learner. Universalism, rationality, meritocracy, and individualism still permeate curricula, policies, and classroom practices.

Yet the Enlightenment was paradoxical. While it advanced ideals of liberty, reason, and progress, it also created hierarchies that excluded vast swaths of humanity. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, described Enlightenment as “humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity” — but his writings also included deeply racist classifications positioning white Europeans at the pinnacle of civilisation (Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 1798). The same moral code that proclaimed human rights was used to justify colonisation, enslavement, and the pillaging of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

These are not just historical abstractions. In education today, Enlightenment legacies are alive: universalism that minimises difference, individualism that pits students against each other, and progress narrowly defined by academic achievement. These frameworks allow schools to celebrate “excellence” while quietly reproducing othering and systemic exclusion.

Looking Back to Look Forward

Globally, we see both resistance and regression: the rise of fascist movements, a backlash against diversity and inclusion, and censorship of histories of racism and oppression. At the same time, urgent global challenges — climate collapse, forced migration, deepening inequality — cannot be solved with individualism or exclusion.

Middle schools are uniquely positioned at this crossroads. Young people in these years are forming their identities and asking who they are and where they belong. If we continue to offer them only frameworks of the past — rationality without empathy, progress without equity, universality without nuance — we risk preparing them to uphold systems that do not serve them or the world they will inhabit.

What we need is a new Enlightenment for education: one that is anti-racist, feminist, anti-ableist, queer-affirming, Indigenous-honouring, and deeply relational.

Witching in Education

In the Czech Republic, where the ELMLE conference will gather in Prague, history reminds us of the silencing of women and those who lived outside patriarchal norms. Across Central and Eastern Europe, witch trials persecuted women whose knowledge, independence, or difference was deemed threatening. These histories echo the Enlightenment, where ideals of reason and progress were tied to white male voices while others were cast as irrational or expendable.

Today, “futures thinking” dominates educational discourse — yet the voices most elevated in this space still belong predominantly to men. When men project into the future, they are lauded as visionary; when women do, they are too often branded ambitious, intimidating, or irrational. Invoking “witching” in education is a metaphorical reclaiming: a call to project futures while centering perspectives once silenced, disrupting systems of power, and rooting education in relational, equitable ways. Our students deserve nothing less than educators bold enough to conjure just, inclusive, and humanising futures.

From Cabinets of Curiosity to Communities of Care

The Enlightenment’s “cabinet of curiosities” provides a vivid lens. These collections displayed artifacts, animals, and even human remains taken from colonised lands, framed as celebrations of curiosity and discovery, yet reducing living cultures and beings to objects of spectacle. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called human zoos were staged in European cities, including Prague, where African men, women, and children were put on display. Curiosity became exoticisation, appropriation, and othering.

Schools risk echoing this dynamic when diversity is treated as a showcase rather than a structural commitment. Flag parades, cultural days, and food fairs may look celebratory, but if they exist without dismantling inequity, they reduce students’ identities to spectacles. Instead of cabinets of curiosities, we need communities of care: spaces where difference shapes school life and students’ identities are honoured as integral, not performative.

Redefining Universality

Universality — the belief in universal truths, rights, and progress — is another enduring Enlightenment legacy. Too often, universality was defined by a small group and imposed on others. True universality cannot mean sameness or assimilation.

Targeted universalism, developed by john a. powell and the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, offers a path forward. It begins with a universal goal — for example, all students thriving — but recognises that different groups face different barriers. Each group may require targeted strategies to reach the shared outcome. True universality means every student has what they need to thrive, even if the supports look different along the way.

For international middle schools, this means asking: What does each student need to feel belonging, learn deeply, and lead courageously? How do we remove structural barriers that hold some back while privileging others?

Rethinking What It Means to “Do Good”

During the Enlightenment, European men defined “goodness” in ways that aligned with their own values, often weaponising morality to justify conquest. Charles Mills argues in The Racial Contract (1997) that ideals of justice and equality were never meant for all — they were racially exclusive.

In education today, we see echoes of this when inclusion is treated as benevolence rather than solidarity. Doing good cannot be about bringing students into existing systems on our terms. It must be about changing the systems themselves.

Goodness isn’t a permanent state but something we create together — it’s the sum of how we keep showing up with accountability, humility, and transformation.

Practical Steps Toward a New Enlightenment

Interrogate and decolonise the curriculum
Audit whose knowledge is centred and whose is absent. The ISADTF’s Humanising Pedagogy reminds us that learning and teaching is never neutral — it either reproduces exclusion or cultivates dignity, belonging, and shared power. Make space for historically marginalised voices, indigenous histories, and multiple knowledge systems, and ensure students’ lived experiences shape what is taught.
Rethink success and assessment
Move beyond narrow academic measures. Value collaboration, empathy, creativity, and contribution. Design assessments that honour multiple ways of knowing.
Reimagine school culture and policies
Examine who current rules serve and who they marginalise. Build systems of accountability where power is shared across staff, students, and families.
Ethically renew international education’s promise to students
UNESCO’s Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (2021) calls for education to emphasise cooperation, solidarity, and collective well-being — preparing learners to build inclusive and sustainable futures.
Embrace targeted universalism in practice
Set universal goals for belonging and thriving, but design targeted strategies for different groups of students. Equity means ensuring everyone has what they need to flourish.
Prioritise ongoing reflection and learning
Commit to professional development that engages bias, privilege, and systemic oppression. Make space for discomfort as part of growth.

Why This Matters Now

Students are watching. They notice contradictions between what schools claim to value and what they reward. If we continue relying on frameworks rooted in outdated Enlightenment ideals, we leave them unequipped for the crises of our time.

But if we embrace curiosity not as spectacle but as solidarity, compassion not as charity but as justice, and courage not as bravado but as transformation, we can cultivate citizens ready to build something new.

A Call to Witching

The Enlightenment was never universal — but the next Enlightenment can be. It will be defined not by a few men in salons and academies, but by communities of educators, families, and young people daring to imagine otherwise.

Perhaps what we need is not another age of reason, but an age of witching: reclaiming knowledge, power, and perspectives that patriarchal and colonial systems sought to suppress. If the old Enlightenment placed people in cabinets of curiosity, the new one must build circles — or covenants — of belonging. If the old Enlightenment universalised through exclusion, the new one must universalise through equity.

This is how we cultivate curious, compassionate, and courageous citizens. This is how we reimagine education for our time. And the future begins now.

References

Aow, A. (2022). What it means to be and do ‘good’. Council of International Schools. https://www.cois.org/about-cis/news/post/~board/perspectives-blog/post/what-it-means-to-be-and-do-good

Blanchard, P. (2008). Human zoos: Science and spectacle in the age of colonial empires. Liverpool University Press.

International Schools Anti-Discrimination Task Force [ISADTF]. (n.d.). Humanising pedagogy guidelines. International Schools’ Anti-Discrimination Task Force, Humanising Pedagogy Committee.

Kant, I. (1798/2006). Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (R. B. Louden, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.

Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.

powell, j. a. (2020). Targeted universalism: Policy & practice. Othering & Belonging Institute, University of California, Berkeley. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/targeted-universalism

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. (n.d.). Slavic witchcraft: A living tradition. Smithsonian Folklife Magazine. https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/slavic-witchcraft

UNESCO. (2021). Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/social-contract-education

You can join Angeline in her pre-conference workshop, “Leading Inclusive Change: with Compassion, Connection and Collaboration”

Angeline will facilitate two session topics during our main conference:

Humanising Pedagogy
Becoming a Totally Inclusive School: the Role of Language

Angeline is an international educator, author, consultant and pedagogical leader. She has undertaken multiple roles within schools, as a teacher, curriculum coordinator, accreditation coordinator and professional learning and development coordinator. Angeline leverages these experiences to support collaborative learning communities with enhancing inclusive mindsets and systems, designing humanising pedagogical approaches and achieving shared inclusion and intercultural goals. Angeline is an advocate of intersectional inclusivity, coaching, concept-driven learning and teaching and contributes as an active citizen on social justice issues through her advocacy across multiple networks and work with the Council of International Schools. Her co-authored book, Becoming a Totally Inclusive School: a Guide for Teachers and School Leaders was published by Routledge in November, 2022.

You can connect with Angeline @ https://www.angelineaow.com/

The Cabinet of Curiosities: Unlocking Student Agency with Empathy-to-Impact

Many schools have strategic plans around service learning, sustainability, global citizenship, or student leadership. But very few schools have clear approaches that any stakeholder can use to actually put these plans into practice with fidelity.

At Inspire Citizens, we use what we call the Empathy-to-Impact Approach. This is a way for tens of thousands of students and thousands of educators to ensure that learning doesn’t stop at caring, but moves into meaningful action. It gives students a chance to explore their curiosities, their talents, their interests, and how they want to make a difference in the world. When schools adopt a shared approach like this, we do a service to our students: we empower them with the tools and strategies they need to take action, make a difference, and believe that their learning matters.

Empathy-to-Impact is like reaching into a Cabinet of Curiosities. Students can pull out something that sparks empathy and wonder, and then step back out into the real world to investigate, apply skills, take action, and reflect. This article will walk readers through how to use Empathy-to-Impact to transform learning into real world action

(Throughout this article, feel free to visit the links provided to access a deeper step by step walk through, resources and strategies, visuals and toolkits, and examples of how other schools and educators have used these resources)

https://inspirecitizens.org/e2i25

Step 1: Start with the Why

Empathy-to-Impact begins with identifying an important ‘why’. We ask:

What do I care about? What am I curious about?

This could be a Sustainable Development Goal, a local community issue, a matter of belonging or well-being, or an issue of social justice. This could be educator selected, or student selected depending on the context.

Whether in a curricular or student-initiated context, we need to give students the space to clarify their why before diving into investigation. As educators, we can design provocations, simulations, or activities that spark empathy and curiosity. For students, we can allow time to reflect on what matters to them.

“Once we have actually identified a ‘why’ or plucked out a curiosity from the cabinet, then we have to focus on investigation.”

https://inspirecitizens.org/Care25

Step 2: Investigate and Authentic Awareness

Once students know their why, they need strategies to investigate further. They can use interviews, observations, surveys, media analysis, data collection, or a root cause analysis to unpack the issue.

In curricular contexts, these strategies should be paired with mini-lessons and skill development. In leadership or service programs, students can use them to talk with stakeholders, understand the perspectives of others, and adapt their plans.

“When they identify their curiosities, we can investigate to pull these curiosities out of the cabinet.”

https://inspirecitizens.org/Aware25

Step 3: Apply Skills to Make a Difference

Curiosity and investigation lead to meaningful action when students apply the right skills. In a curricular context, this means using the standards and outcomes embedded in the unit:

Argumentative writing (topic sentences, embedding quotations, flow of ideas, etc.)
Math models such as y = kx
Science and geography standards around human-environment impact

In leadership or service contexts, this includes project management, collaboration, and communication. Students succeed when we clearly outline the skills they need and give them the support to apply those skills to their chosen issue.

If students identify what they care about or are curiosity about, they learn key skills while investigating that issue, and then they use their knowledge, skills, and understandings, to begin taking action, transferring their knowledge to novel contexts using their learning to DO… then we get deeper engagement from our students, but they also feel hopeful and empowered because they see their purpose in the learning and the potential that their agency holds. So, it is imperative that we give them an opportunity to take action with this learning.

“As students ‘acquire’ the object from the cabinet of curiosities, we don’t just want them to put it back, we want them to use it to engage with the world. So we allow opportunities for them to practice and use the object.”

https://inspirecitizens.org/Able25

Step 4: Act with and Learn from Others

The next step is identifying possible community partners and taking action that benefits all parties involved. In teaching, this means helping students connect with community assets and partners, and choosing effective forms of action. This can be done in the curriculum by providing voice in choice or a ‘menu of actions’ that students could take with their learning.

An example with argumentative writing:

Publish a feature article that teaches parents about….

Use your writing to create a video or media piece that inspires change in our advisory lessons

Collaborate with an NGO and use your arguments to create social media campaigns that the NGO can post as content on their online platforms.

This is the same ‘assessment’ for argumentative writing and doesn’t add much more work for educators or students, but the piece does not end up in the garbage after an educator has ‘marked’ it. Student learning instead, has the potential to inspire and create change in the real world.

Not all actions are equal. Fundraising or donation drives can be meaningful, but often represent a lower level of complexity and impact. If we want students to do more, we have to equip them with strategies and opportunities that make deeper impact possible. Challenge them to use a community assets map and any of the other 16+ types of action, and the possibilities are endless.

“The fourth step is figuring out who we can ‘learn from and act’ with as a means of enacting what we are curious about.”

“If we don’t provide students and educators with the skills and techniques, then we can’t really expect people to do something meaningful with what they’re curious about.”

https://inspirecitizens.org/Impact25

Step 5: Reflect for Growth

Finally, we must make sure that students reflect. This can be linked to school values, ATLs, learner profile attributes, or a school’s portraits of a learner. Reflection should happen at least two or three times in a learning journey so students can connect growth to who they are becoming.

Students can reflect on how they are growing as people and as changemakers, and whether their actions had real impact or were more investigative or theoretical. Reflection turns posters on the wall into living attributes of learning and character, and character traits that live in our students for generations to come.

https://inspirecitizens.org/Reflect25

There is No Conclusion to Curiosity, but There is to a Blog Post

One way to support curiosity and interact with the many ‘Cabinets of Curiosities’ that exist in our diverse world experiences is to use the Empathy-to-Impact approach. This allows any educator to level up a learning experience, whether in the classroom, a leadership program, or a service project, so that students move from curiosity to meaningful action, and from caring to making a difference.

If we take the great work that we are already doing and we are more intentional about adding a WHY and a WHAT NOW to existing teaching and learning, we have the potential to shape thousands of lives through our respective careers and we give students the skills to contribute to a better present, and a more harmonious future.

You can join Aaron in his pre-conference workshop, “Inspire Citizens’ Empathy to Impact Approach: A curriculum enhancing approach to level up global citizenship, reciprocal service learning, and education for sustainable development”

Aaron will facilitate two session topics during our main conference:

Inspired Student Leadership

Inspire Citizens’ Empathy to Impact Approach: A curriculum enhancing approach to level up global citizenship, reciprocal service learning, and education for sustainable development.

You can connect with Aaron @inspirecitizen2

Aaron Moniz is the Co-Founder and Director of Inspire Citizens. Aaron helps schools around the world to develop whole school implementation programs for service learning and education for sustainable development as a means of developing global citizens.

Aaron uses the Inspire Citizens’ Global Impact Schools Self Discovery Tool and Whole School Global Citizenship Roadmap to conduct strategic visioning and goal setting to articulate best practice professional learning approaches and personalize them to the unique context of each school. Aaron also uses the Inspire Citizens Empathy to Impact Approach to enhance curriculum at any grade level or subject area, and he helps schools to design K-12 scope and sequences, scaffolding the development of service learning and active global citizenship.

Alongside the Inspire Citizens team members, Aaron also helps to develop student leadership programs, and supports the Inspire Citizens Global Citizenship Certificate; an online professional development program for global educators. Aaron is also the Director of the Inspire Citizens Foundation. Aaron believes that schools can become centers for community impact and strives to help schools see the large-scale impact that they can have by slightly optimizing their existing systems and centering on global citizenship education.

Preparing for the Future: Using AI With Students

Artificial Intelligence is no longer an abstract future—it’s here, shaping industries, careers, and daily life. If we continue teaching as though nothing has changed, we risk preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist. The question isn’t whether students should use AI, but how we guide them to use it with integrity, creativity, and purpose.

That guidance begins with structure. Classrooms need an AI Matrix—a clear framework outlining when and how AI should be used. Just as we teach when calculators are appropriate or when sources must be cited, we need shared expectations that help students see AI as a tool to extend their thinking, not replace it. Pairing this with transparency is essential: students should disclose how AI supported their work, building trust and clarity rather than suspicion.

Ultimately, success comes down to setting classroom expectations. Students thrive when they know the rules of engagement—what’s encouraged, what’s off-limits, and how to acknowledge their process. When we establish these norms, we not only reduce misuse but also invite deeper conversations about ethics, authorship, and the role of technology in learning.

AI is part of the world our students are entering, and it’s our responsibility to help them navigate it wisely. Our goal as educators is not to hold them back, but to prepare them for their future—not our past. Artificial Intelligence is no longer an abstract future—it’s here, shaping industries, careers, and daily life in profound ways. From healthcare diagnostics to creative arts, AI is redefining possibilities and demanding a new set of literacies from the next generation. If we continue teaching as though nothing has changed, if we cling to outdated pedagogical models, we risk preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist, a past that no longer serves as an accurate blueprint for their future. The critical question facing educators isn’t whether students should use AI, but how we guide them to use it with integrity, creativity, and purpose, ensuring it serves as an accelerator of human potential rather than a substitute for it.

That guidance begins with clear, actionable structure. A comprehensive and dynamic framework that explicitly outlines when and how artificial intelligence tools should be integrated into the learning process. Just as we painstakingly teach students the appropriate times to use a calculator for complex mathematical problems, or the stringent requirements for citing sources in academic work, we need to establish shared expectations for AI usage. A framework helps students to perceive AI as a powerful tool to extend their thinking, to augment their problem-solving abilities, and to explore new dimensions of understanding, rather than a mere replacement for their own intellectual effort. Pairing this structural clarity with radical transparency is essential: students should be required to disclose precisely how AI supported their work, detailing the tools used and the specific stages of their process where AI was leveraged. This practice fosters an environment of trust and clarity, dismantling the suspicion that often arises when AI usage is left unaddressed.

Ultimately, successful integration of AI in education comes down to setting explicit and consistent classroom expectations. Students, much like adults, thrive within a framework of clear boundaries and understood guidelines. When they know the rules of engagement—what types of AI use are encouraged for exploration and innovation, what applications are off-limits due to academic integrity concerns, and how to appropriately acknowledge their process and the tools they employed—they are empowered to make responsible choices. When we proactively establish these norms, we not only significantly reduce the potential for misuse and academic dishonesty but also invite deeper, more meaningful conversations about the complex ethical dimensions of AI, the evolving nature of authorship in a technological age, and the transformative role of technology in human learning and creativity.
AI is not an isolated phenomenon; it is an intrinsic part of the world our students are entering, a foundational element of their future careers, civic engagement, and personal lives. It is, therefore, our profound responsibility as educators to equip them with the knowledge, skills, and ethical understanding necessary to navigate this landscape wisely and effectively. Our overarching goal is not to hold them back from engaging with these powerful tools, nor to insulate them from technological progress, but rather to proactively prepare them for their future—a future shaped by AI—rather than inadvertently trapping them in the methodologies and limitations of our past.

You can join Jeff in his pre-conference workshop: “Empowering Educational Leaders: Leveraging AI for Personal and Schoolwide Transformation”

Jeff will facilitate two session topics during our main conference:

Setting Up AI-Ready Classroom Structures for Success

Build Your Own AI Assistant: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Custom GPTs for School Leadership

Jeff Utecht is a lifelong educator, innovator, and global thought leader in modern learning. The child of two educators, Jeff’s journey began in Spokane, where his passion for authentic learning first took root. From volunteering as a teacher at 17 to receiving a Bill and Melinda Gates Technology Grant in 2001, Jeff has continually pushed the boundaries of education by exploring technology’s transformative power in the classroom.

With over 75,000 educators upskilled worldwide, keynote addresses spanning the globe, and a reputation for creating sustainable change in schools, Jeff remains driven by a singular mission: to ensure we prepare students for their future, not our past. Today, he shares insights drawn from decades of experience as a teacher, leader, and consultant, inspiring audiences to reimagine what’s possible in education.

Embracing AI in Middle School: A Guide for Educators on Navigating LLM Bias

As generative AI becomes increasingly prevalent in education, middle school educators face the unique challenge of teaching students not just how to use AI tools, but how to understand and critically evaluate their limitations and biases. Central to this challenge are Large Language Models (LLMs). A Large Language Model (LLM) synthesizes excessive amounts of data created by humans to generate realistic outputs for users.

During my deep dive into LLMs, I discovered early on these generative AI tools are based on potentially biased human training data. This bias can be displayed in both subtle and non-subtle ways. As educators, it is imperative that we understand the implications of using these tools in our various contexts.

One day while I was scanning LinkedIn I came across an article titled, “Gen AI is Racist. Period.” The title drew me in as I wanted to learn more about this specific declaration. Generative AI is inherently biased, that I knew, but I was interested in learning more about the assertion in the title.

The author highlighted a quick activity to investigate the biases of generative AI. In short, two almost identical essays were graded differently by a number of the popular LLM’s.

What was the difference?

In one essay the writer stated that their favorite music was classical music and the other essay stated that their favorite music was rap music. Guess which essay was graded lower?

The notion of this blatant bias is not only troubling, it is a call to action for all of us to be discerning when using generative AI. In their book, The Promises and Perils of AI in Education: Ethics and Equity Have Entered The Chat (2024), Shelton and Lanier assert that Artificial Intelligence is not objective and it just mirrors the biases of the creators. Human biases exist in every context and AI amplifies those biases. If we are aware of this, do we stop engaging with the use of generative AI? Do we limit the use? Or do we become more discerning while understanding the implications?

How do we as educators mitigate bias when using generative AI in our classrooms?

Awareness and Education:

Teachers who use generative AI need to be aware of and able to identify embedded biases. When schools are engaged with professional learning about generative AI, it is imperative that these sessions address how these tools amplify bias.

Critical Evaluation of AI output:

Educators should always lead with their HI (Human Intelligence). All AI outputs and results should be critically assessed. Middle school students are developing their critical thinking skills and the onset of generative AI adds additional complexities.
Reflecting on one’s own biases

Educators must identify and examine their own biases when teaching but also when using generative AI to support their practice. Through honest self-assessment and relevant professional development teachers can ensure that their instructional decisions do not perpetuate additional harm.

AI Literacy

In 2024 UNESCO released AI competency frameworks for students and teachers to help schools navigate the complexities of AI use in education. It is imperative that AI literacy is addressed and these frameworks provide a roadmap for schools to develop ethical, human-centered approaches to generative AI.

The integration of AI in middle school education offers exciting possibilities but also requires careful consideration of ethical issues, notably bias. By engaging in conversations addressing bias with faculty and students, schools can create more informed and critical use of generative AI.

Dr. Nneka Johnson is an advocate for international education. She believes in the power of servant leadership, design thinking/innovation, global engagement/collaboration and mentorship. Nneka strives to empower school leaders to use innovative methodologies to make a positive impact within their diverse communities.

In 2023, Nneka became the first Fellow at the Council of International Schools (CIS). Before joining CIS, she spent five years at the International School of Dakar (ISD), where she held the position of Director of Innovation and Strategic Development. In her senior leadership role at ISD she was responsible for a number of school strategic initiatives. She currently serves on the Association of International Schools in Africa (AISA) Board of Trustees and the AISA Professional Learning Design Team. She is also an Edsafe Women in AI Fellow.

Nneka’s educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Queens College in New York City, a Master’s degree in Instructional Technology from Georgia State University, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Mercer University in Atlanta.

You can connect with Nneka on X (Twitter) at @NnekaJ_Edu

Enduring Approaches to Student-Led Learning

In my teaching career, I was fortunate to spend time in lower, middle, and upper school classrooms. I guess I’m drawn to change, young adult novels, and loud bus rides because most of those years were with sixth through eighth graders. I appreciated the opportunity to observe agency across students, often the same students, as they navigated growth from elementary to high school. And I took note: a lot shifted in content and curriculum, but the foundations for student agency stayed constant.

Given all the world has thrown at us in the last four years, and all the ways (much admired) teaching communities have flexed and adapted, I’m reflecting deeply on what endures in our middle school classrooms. I’m observing the systemic approaches–regardless of changing technologies, grade levels, and initiatives–that ensure our students grow as agents of their own learning.

Prioritizing Belonging

The only starting point in students leading learning is establishing the conditions for belonging. “Students’ sense of belonging matters. It matters in promoting deeper learning and equity. It matters every day, in every classroom, in every school.” (Equity and Voice: How a Sense of Belonging Promotes Students’ Agency by Alison Lee and Meg Riordan) Cultivating belonging sets the conditions for students to feel safe enough to make choices, to take risks, and to drive next steps. And when students are taking those actions, belonging becomes self-sustaining; students themselves partner in fueling belonging-rich spaces. As educators, this means invitational spaces and intentional design: From participation, discussion, and collaboration norms to modeling vulnerability, building trust, and deepening self-reflection.

Moving Beyond ChoiceChoice boards and student selected topics are pedagogical moves with merit. And without the scaffolding of enduring systems, they become mere choices and not developed agency. In “Part 1: What Do You Mean When You Say ‘Student Agency?’”,

Jennifer Davis Poon shares three lastling components that shift students into the role of learning co-designers and not just choice-makers: Agency-empowered students set learning goals, initiate action towards those goals, and reflect on progress towards goals. Agency begins with students knowing their learning targets deeply and in having an active role in how they achieve them. As educators, we’re called to articulate meaningful skills with clarity, to plan for personalized learning pathways, and to develop valuable feedback ecosystems that invite students to tell their learning stories.

Embracing the Complexity

When we’re clear on what student-led learning is, we gain clarity on what it’s not. And it’s not tidy. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t follow a linear trajectory. And it’s definitely not a checklist. It’s ongoing opportunities to converse, to seek student perspectives, to design, and to reflect. “[Agency] is a multi-faceted skill and disposition—invoking past, present, and future. It is students’ abilities to set advantageous goals, initiate action toward those goals, and reflect and redirect based on feedback, all the while internalizing the belief they can have agency” (Davis Poon). Designing for agency is perhaps the most important work we do in our middle schools. It is disruption and change resistant. It is a lens to leverage and respond to innovations–like AI–for what really matters. It is complex work, and it is valuable work.

Dr. Anindya Kundu defines agency as “a person’s capacity to leverage resources to create positive change in their lives.” Intentional, foundational moves to design for belonging, cultivate enduring systems, and embrace the complexity of human-centered approaches support our middle school students in growing as changemakers in an ever shifting world. And for middle school educators, wise people already used to being consistent in the midst of change (and keeping our senses of humor in the midst of loud bus rides), there’s no better time to nurture agency rich environments that ensure our students thrive.

Becky Green loves that she gets to learn from students and educators around the world as the Associate Director of Professional Learning with the Global Online Academy (GOA). Since 2016 she has coached, facilitated, designed, and led across their professional learning and student programs. But first and foremost, Becky is a middle school teacher having spent two decades in international and public school classrooms.

She cares deeply about ensuring students thrive beyond school walls, and whether it’s supporting transitions to competency-based learning, partnering purposefully with AI, facilitating portrait of a graduate processes, or reimagining learning design, Becky prioritizes joyful, relational, student-centered experiences.

Introduction: Getting on the MBE Pathway

What makes a teacher adjust or transform their instructional design and work with students when introduced to the most promising research and strategies in the science of how the brain learns?

Since our founding in 2011, The CTTL has been pondering this question with 100% of our Preschool through 12^th-grade colleagues at St. Andrew’s, as well as teachers and school leaders from around the world. From my own experience as a history teacher, I can point to many teaching and learning strategies that I am using today that I was not using in 1991 when I began my career in Spokane, Washington.

Back then, I used to think that I teach… and the students learn. That was my educational philosophy. My job was to teach topics such as the colonization of the already populated New World, the causes of wars and revolutions, and the expansion of Enlightenment ideas across national borders. I certainly did not understand the complexity of the organ of learning – the brain – that each student undoubtedly has with them each day. Nor did I understand the connection between emotion and cognition or how identity – mine and theirs – impacts teaching and learning.

What changed for me was learning about how the brain learns, which began when St. Andrew’s decided to train every one of its teachers in Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) science, starting in 2007. Along our journey we have been helped by many great friends from academia. The late, great Kurt Fischer, and others, including Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, David Daniel, Mariale Hardiman, Rob Coe, Pooja Agarwal, Dan Willingham, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Mark McDaniel, Pedro De Bruyckere, Pamela Cantor, Dylan Wiliam, and Christina Hinton, and many more, have helped us understand this transdisciplinary field that includes neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and education research. Our work to make research principles come to life in classrooms and schools has been supported by giants, and we are forever grateful for their friendship and support.

But let’s go back to 2008 – before The CTTL was even an idea. At a Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston, I sat in the audience, confused and a bit angry: “Why have I never been taught the promising principles, research, and strategies that are being shared here?” To be the most effective teacher for all of my students, I need to know my history content well, but I also need to know how to set the right conditions for learning, use the right memory strategies to make learning stick, and how best to assess, provide high-quality feedback, set purposeful homework, and foster student agency and independence. There seemed to be so many places in my daily work with students that could be made better – if only I could find ways to get this Learning, Brain, Research “stuff” to work for me. The chasm between research and everyday practice seemed wide and difficult to cross.

In the ten-year history of The CTTL, we have had the privilege to work with individual teachers, schools, and districts who also recognized the research in the science of teaching and learning as one of the most important solutions to elevate student achievement, close student learning gaps, and support student well-being. This has become even more true after COVID – and elevating teacher practice through the highest quality professional development is the best solution we have. But we teachers can be stubborn and hold fast to what we think is working or what feels comfortable. Change is hard. Change at scale? Harder still. But surely every child deserves a teacher who has an accurate understanding of how learning happens?

The mission of St. Andrew’s is “To know and inspire each student in an inclusive community dedicated to exceptional teaching, learning, and service.” From our school’s founding in 1978, we have held fast to the research-supported idea that great teachers really matter. In the words of David Steiner, head of the Institute of Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, “The strongest education research finding in the last twenty years is that the quality of a teacher is the single greatest in-school determinate of student outcomes.” The CTTL is a driver for great teaching.

We have invested a lot of time collectively growing our teacher’s knowledge and research-to-classroom translation skills. We have developed many tools to support their MBE journey, like the MBE Placemats and Roadmap, Neuroteach Global, and our Science of Teaching and School Leadership Academy. We help teachers build a broad MBE knowledge and skillset, but also give them autonomy to choose their own adventure – deepening their practice with those MBE principles that may have the greatest impact with the classes they teach, the departments they are in, and the students they work with in classrooms, clubs, studios, and on the stages and sports fields.

But where does the MBE journey start? As the CTTL team presents around the world, we often use this graph from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. It tells a story of what might be the most important concept from neuroscience that we can use to transform teaching and learning: neuroplasticity. Schools and their teachers have the unique privilege to be working with students when their brains are experiencing some of the greatest change. The good news about neuroplasticity is that it also means the teacher-brain can change. The idea that the brain is “set” at roughly eighteen years of age is a neuromyth.

I am 54 years old as I write this, and the vertical line provides some indication of the effort I will need to change my brain. It is more effort than for my students—but I can change my brain. This is one reason why most one-and-done professional learning experiences lead to little change in how teachers teach and how their students learn. What ultimately got teachers like me to change our practice was finding promising insights from research that could: (1) enhance our effectiveness with all the learners we work with; (2) enhance student academic, social, and emotional outcomes; and (3) enhance our efficiency. It also helps that we use research on how to change teachers’ practice, like Thomas Guskey’s model for teacher change, and the work of David Weston’s work at the Teacher Development Trust. The CTTL’s work with educators around the world uses the science of teaching and learning to teach the science of teaching and learning.

Meg Lee, the Director of Organizational Development in Frederick County Public Schools, Maryland (FCPS) and a contributor to this volume of Think Differently and Deeply, proclaimed about MBE, “Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.” The role of The CTTL for 100% of our St. Andrew’s preschool through 12^th-grade teachers and school leaders, our colleagues, is to get them to see MBE. To see how it can touch every aspect of what they do at school, and to help make it so “everyday-useful” that they never think to unsee it. Whether they are early in their career or elevating their already excellent practice, the CTTL provides our colleagues a pathway of sustained professional growth – all focused on making our classrooms, hallways, stages, and sports fields an even better experience for our students. The importance of having the whole community of teachers and leaders in a school understand the science of how the brain (both student and adult) learns, works, changes, and thrives cannot be emphasized enough. The brain is the organ of learning and will remain so, whatever future technologies, including AI and those we have yet to imagine, bring.

My pathway to becoming MBE research-informed will not be yours; my school’s journey will not be yours. But many threads of this journey will be the same. The translation of research into everyday practice, and the extent to which it works or doesn’t, is very context-dependent. This is the joy and the challenge of the work – committed educators playing with the art and science of educating, making it work for them, with their students, in their community. Mind, Brain, and Education science offers many different paths, and we can choose these to align with a teacher, division, department, school, or district’s strategic priorities. What will be your first step, or next step, on your MBE pathway?

Glenn Whitman (gwhitman@saes.org) is the Executive Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew’s where he also teaches history.

Motivation is the Key to Lifelong Learning

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said. How true!

We are quick to identify the teacher as the single most important factor in learning, and this makes sense (and is backed by research), but how good can a teacher be, or be expected to be, if the student is not motivated to learn in the first place? Of course, a truly remarkable teacher will be able to turn a student around completely, taking them from disinterested to engaged, bored to curious, and apathetic to passionate, but these are rare cases and require exceptional circumstances and specific chemistry between the learner and the teacher.

If examination results are bad, or grade averages are low, if attainment falls by the wayside, will administrators get away by telling their boards that the students didn’t do any work, that they didn’t study hard enough? Probably not. And wanting to blame students, or teachers for that matter, for underperformance is not a very productive way of going about the analysis of achievement.

And yet, a truism remains and sometimes we need to be reminded of it. If you are genuinely motivated to learn something, you will learn it. When we want to find out something or appropriate some new skill, learn how to cook a meal or repair a bicycle tyre, we go online and learn about it through a tutorial. That’s how most people learn low-level procedural knowledge today. If there’s a real appetite to know something, all that is necessary is the source material to access the knowledge.

The point is important when we turn inwards and ask what motivates us, what we want to achieve, where we really want to go and why. This is where inner resources, lifelong learning, and motivation become the most important drivers. It is also why education is not just the transmission of knowledge but the activation of the necessary self-awareness and intrinsic motivation to learn, and to carry on learning after school.

Students at University of the People choose to learn online with us because they are lifelong learners—because they want to break out of their present situations to new planes of thought and opportunity through education. This is an extremely powerful vector that propels learning to great heights.

So next time you find yourself bored by someone or not engaged, reflect on the part you must play in that exchange, that it cannot just come from the emission of knowledge or skills but has a lot to do with your own readiness to learn, your own attitude, your own motivation.

Conrad Hughes (PhD, EdD) is the Director General of the International School of Geneva (Ecolint). He is also a Senior Fellow at UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, a member of the advisory board for the University of the People and research assistant at the University of Geneva’s department of psychology and education.

Conrad’s most recent books are Education and Elitism: Challenges and Opportunities (2021, Routledge), Understanding Prejudice and Education: The Challenge for Future Generations (2017, Routledge) and Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges (2018, Brill).

You can learn more about Conrad’s work at his website, Conrad-Hughes.com

Just Emotion, or a Mental Health Issue?

We’ve Done Awareness – The Future of the Mental Health Conversation is Greater Specificity

When working with pupils aged ten to fourteen, one of the first questions I ask them is how they would know if a friend had good mental health. This question tends to give them pause. They’ve generally had lessons, by this stage, about mental illness. They have a range of vocabulary to describe various states of poor mental health and know about symptom spotting. But positive mental health? Generally, they’ve had fewer occasions to think about that.

What invariably happens is that eventually one of the class raises their hand and gives the answer: ‘They’d be smiling and/or happy’.

This is a great opportunity for me to explain two things. The first is that it is a mistake to conflate good mental health with constant happiness. As human beings, we experience a range of emotions and not all of them are pleasant. Sadness, anger, nervousness, stress, guilt, shame – they’re all part of life’s tapestry and entirely normal.

The second is that, counter-intuitive as it may sound, a person appearing to be happy all the time is potentially a symptom of mental health struggles. Some people put on a mask to avoid confronting the reality of anxiety, depression or suicidal ideation with their friends and colleagues.

For me, a person can be described as being in a state of good mental health if they have the ability to do the following four things:

Sit with emotion

We live in a world where there are hundreds of things we can use to distract ourselves. We’ve trained our brains to chase the temporary highs we get from junk like caffeine, sugar and likes on social media. All of these can be a distraction from what we’re really feeling and, in the moment, preferable to confronting our pain.

But negative emotions like the ones listed above don’t simply go away if you ignore them. They demand to be worked through. By distracting ourselves, we ensure that they will come out at another time, probably when it’s less appropriate (for example, shouting at someone who doesn’t deserve it, or having a panic attack out of the blue).

Recognise when the emotion has become ‘too big’ to handle alone

Sometimes, we need help in order to work through a life event or a complex response. Recognising when we are at that stage and when we need to reach out for help is key.

Learn from the Experience

Ultimately, the reason we have emotions that don’t feel pleasant is because it’s our body’s attempt to teach us a lesson. Sometimes, this isn’t possible – the reasons we feel sad or angry are completely outside of our control. A bereavement, for example. Other times, though – and this is particularly true where guilt and shame are concerned – there is a learning opportunity. We can ask ourselves ‘how will I amend my attitude or behaviour so I can avoid feeling this way again?’

Move on in a Timely Fashion

Learning from the unpleasant experience is part of processing, which ultimately allows us to move forward and prevent dwelling.

I see my job – which involves visiting schools and colleges throughout the world delivering workshops and conducting research on issues related to mental wellbeing – as giving young people the tools they need to achieve these four things, where possible. I also hope the interactions we have allow them to make vital distinctions between difficult or challenging emotions and mental health issues that require professional support.

Here in the UK, the years 2010 to 2020 were ones of intense awareness-raising around mental health by charities and in media. Successive governments promised (but ultimately failed to deliver) ‘parity of esteem’ between physical and mental health – i.e. mental health issues should be treated with the same urgency and be given the same resources as their physical counterparts.

Unfortunately, this period coincided with the decision to impose austerity measures which meant mental health services were stripped back in most communities. This ultimately led to a ‘bottle necking’ effect, whereby everyone was talking about their mental health more but, unless they had the necessary wealth to access private care, they were unable to get support.

It also led to an unhelpful conflation of different phenomena. After all, mental health is an enormous umbrella term which can cover a huge range of issues – just as ‘physical health’ can apply to anything from a stubbed toe to cancer. Teachers began reporting that their pupils were refusing to do homework or exams because, they said, it negatively impacted their mental health. What they meant, usually, was that the prospect made them anxious. Without help from a qualified professional, however, there was no real way to tell whether this was symptomatic of an anxiety disorder or just the normal, everyday stress, which most people experience.

That is not to say that the latter doesn’t require attention. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to start wanging on about ‘resilience’ at this point and to label young people a generation of ‘snowflakes’ (which was, irritatingly, the path chosen by several prominent figures in our media). Children and teenagers need help to navigate so many unfamiliar experiences; whether that be advice, access to a creative or physical hobby which helps them work through gnarly emotions, or a community of people who share common interests. It is simply that not every challenge requires clinical intervention.

The future of the mental health conversation, I have believed for some time now, is one of greater specificity. After all, if I said I was having ‘problems with my physical health’ it would be ludicrous for me to expect the person on the receiving end to understand precisely what I meant by that, or how they could help. The same principle applies, here.

As educators or those with responsibility for young people, we can begin by seeing mental health disclosures as an opportunity for further investigation: As the beginning of a journey, rather than its end.

Natasha Devon MBE is a writer, activist and broadcaster. She tours schools and events throughout the UK and beyond, delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image, gender & equality. She presents on LBC (one of Britain’s most popular speech radio stations) every Saturday and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, as well as appearing on television. She has a monthly column in Teach Secondary magazine.

Natasha is a Fellow of The University of Wales: Aberystwyth. She is an ambassador for charities Glitch UK and The Reading Agency, as well as a patron for No Panic. She is a certified instructor for Mental Health First Aid England and eating disorder charity Beat.

She has written non-fiction titles ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental: An A-Z’ for adults and ‘Yes You Can: Ace School Without Losing Your Mind’ and ‘Clicks: How to Be Your Best Self Online’ for young people aged 12+. Her debut YA novel ‘Toxic’ was published in July 2022 and is about coercive control in friendship. The sequel ‘Babushka’ was published on 5^th October 2023.

Find out more at www.natashadevon.com.