Teacher Agency

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Paul Magnuson, Director of Educational Research, Leysin American School.

In the most recent issue of Teachers and Teaching, Tebeja Molla and Andrea Nolan (2020) report their findings on teacher agency and professional practice. They consider five different facets of professional practice that are associated with strong teacher agency.

 

I think school administrators could spend a productive hour or two discussing their school climate in relation to Molla and Nolan’s professional practices for two main reasons. (1) School climate is critical for good teaching, and therefore good learning, and (2) increasing teacher agency as a school seems like a very promising way through which to increase student agency, which for me is among the more neglected aspects of how we do school.

 

Here are their facets of teacher professional agency.

 

Inquisitive agency (specialist knowledge and skills). The more knowledgeable we are in our area of expertise, the more confident we are, and the more willing we are to explore what we don’t know. As Molla and Nolan put it, “…teacher confidence is closely aligned with having the necessary professional capital” (2020, p. 72). But don’t stop there. Subject matter knowledge and training are necessary, but not sufficient.

 

Deliberative agency (critical reflection on one’s practices, theories, and assumptions). As reflective practitioners we consider our teaching through multiple lenses and collaborate with our colleagues while balancing trust and doubt in oneself. That is, as professionals we know what we are doing and we doubt it at the same time. Our teaching lives are full of iterative action research cycles – even many in a single lesson, perhaps – in which we plan-act-reflect in order to constantly grow. Sharing these experiences with others, in a climate of trust and confidence, promotes agency.

 

Recognitive agency – teachers are valued and respected. It’s obvious to anyone who has ever been recognized with a metaphorical pat on the head that recognition is complex. Molla and Nolan highlight that to be recognized as a professional we have to have the freedom to form personal opinions and to make professional judgments. Cookie cutter curricula and overly defined instructional methodology can hamper a sense of recognitive agency and therefore teacher agency overall.

 

Responsive agency – sense of service, appropriately meeting the needs of children. As teachers, we like to think and act in ways that allow us to meet the needs of all children, or put more pragmatically, the greatest number of needs for the greatest number of children. Teacher professional agency therefore includes the ability and freedom to challenge practices that prevent us from that goal.

 

Moral agency – doing the right thing for the right reason. “Teachers should be able to make responsible choices” (Molla and Nolan, 2020, p. 77). Being a professional includes reacting to a range of situations – social, physical, psychological – as they arise, based on one’s best judgment in the moment, informed by one’s history of practice and reflection. Included here is the imperative to continue learning, which encompasses the previous four facets of professional agency.

 

So it’s all about … what? Culture, I think. A culture of trust, for one. Also a culture of high expectations, but only if we understand high expectations in a far more nuanced way than compliance with a mandate for, say, high test scores. High expectations are what we have for our own teaching, our own professionalism. Trust and high expectations are summarized by Molla and Nolan in two subsections: creating an empowering learning environment (for me, a culture of trust) and problematising professional practice (again for me, the freedom to take risks).

 

Now what about those administrators who have perhaps taken an hour or two to discuss the article. What concretely might they do next? Here’s my suggestion:

 

Make a scale for each of these five facets of teacher professional agency, starting with “not at all” and running to “very.” Predict how your faculty would rate your current school climate. Hand over the question of “where do we fall on these continua?” to the faculty. Let them create a measurement, a survey, whatever it takes to show their perceptions on the same five scales. Compare administrative and teaching faculty opinions. And then, together, identify the first small steps – little bets – to start shifting school culture where the culture needs to shift most.

 

Teachers stand to develop more professional agency. Students stand to follow their example.

 

BIOGRAPHY

Molla, T. & Nolan, A. (2020). Teacher agency and professional practice, Teachers and Teaching, 26(1), 67-87.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Magnuson is the director of Educational Research at Leysin American School and adjunct faculty for the International Education Program of Endicott College. His interests include student agency and self-regulated learning for students and teachers.
pmagnuson@las.ch

What does a modern mathematics classroom look like?

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Hannah Starbuck, Mathematics Teacher, Leysin American School.

 

The Mathematics department goal this year was communication. This was perfect because it tied into a large part of my vision of a modern classroom. The areas I mainly focused on this year were Problems of the Week, Socratic Seminars, and reading articles.

 

A Problem of the Week (POW), is a large, fairly open-ended maths problem, with an elegant solution or solutions. These questions encourage multiple pathways of thinking and provide students ample opportunity to look for and identify patterns and trends, a useful habit for mathematicians. I’ve given POWs the last three years I’ve been teaching. Students tend to enjoy them and enjoy collaborating with one another. The biggest pushback I get is my expectation that students produce a formal write-up of the problem.

 

Students are asked to explain in detail the problem and their process of solving the problem, convincing readers of their methods and solution(s) and reflecting on their learning and the task. The question I get: “Why do we have to write in maths class?”.

 

From the student’s perspective, the purpose of maths class is to “solve problems and get right answers.” But now I tell my students that we write in maths class because it is good for our communication skills, that mathematical writing is just as important as writing an essay on a novel or a lab report AND that it helps to articulate mathematical thinking that might be difficult to express orally.

 

Students will sometimes go out of their way to complain about writing, but their reflections and mathematical writing always amaze me. For starters, their reflections are insightful and honest. They provide evidence and defend their claims as to why they deserve a certain mark, or what should be changed about the problem. Their thoughts are generally mature, well thought-out, and genuine. Students go into detail as they describe how hard they worked on this problem, and discuss the different maths concepts they applied. It’s important students embrace the idea of convincing a skeptic. Students are very thoughtful in defending their processes and answers and have detailed work and proof to support their thoughts. Even if the solution isn’t correct, I don’t penalize students for trying to defend their work.

 

Additionally rewarding for me is to watch students interact with one another as they solve these questions. My role is to provide clarity or define words that might be confusing. The problem solving is left to the students. Naturally they want to work together and bounce ideas off each other. The resulting mathematical discussions are truly rich and exciting to listen to. My role is to be the skeptic, asking a lot of how and why questions, encouraging students to be more convincing, and to make strong arguments.

 

The resulting discussions are impressive. That is the exciting part of POWs. You have opportunities to listen to students from all over the world discuss and debate maths to solve these problems, as well as watch their confidence grow when they are successful.

 

The second focus area for me was Socratic Seminars centered on math education. I chose to do this because I had 12th graders who were experienced with debate, had good English levels, and I had small enough classes to make sure everyone’s voice was heard. Some of the ideas we discussed were student visions of a modern maths classroom, the necessity of homework, how students are assessed, theoretical and application maths, and mental maths, and many more. Students were expected to prepare questions and opinions to contribute to the discussion, demonstrate respectful and polite body language during the discussion, and reflect on the seminar after it concluded. The majority of the time, students were prepared and contributed interesting questions and thoughts. Students also demonstrated a genuine interest in what others had to say. They maintained eye contact, sat up straight, and showed appropriate signs when they were ready to contribute to the discussion.

 

What these seminars taught me is that our students are a lot more able than we sometimes give them credit for. The 12th graders I taught had been in school for 13-14 years; they’ve seen just about everything. “As an IB student, I find homework to be very burdensome”, “I strongly dislike routine”, “It is an effective way for students to make projects based on the topic passed, or to make a quiz right after you finished the topic”. These are direct quotes from my students discussing the seminar themes. Their language is honest and shows they’ve played the game of school for a long time and KNOW how to play the game. I try to incorporate a lot of their ideas. To me, this is an obvious motion to listen to students more than we do. Teachers definitely possess the training AND the experience of being both a student and a teacher, but let’s not forget we also had ideas on how to make school more fun for us. When given the opportunity for students to use their voices, they clearly can make educated and insightful observations.

 

The third item I focused on was having students read various articles on global maths education. This seemed appropriate because my students were from all around the world and could provide insight and perspective on each topic we read about. Some of the topics we read about were: counting on fingers, math anxiety, mathematical geniuses, and teaching math as a language. Similar to Socratic Seminars, I asked students to write their initial opinions based on the headline of the article and give an explanation on why they felt this way. Then they read the article and shared their opinions, touching on whether their previous ideas had changed, why or why not, and tried to connect the article back to their home country. Again, their responses are incredible to read. Students provide so much detail and perspective, and what’s even more interesting is that a lot of them had never thought about some of the topics we read about.

 

For example, we discussed the benefits of counting on one’s fingers and encouraging teachers to allow it. “Many people, especially children, are using the fingers for counting. The brain structure is working by counting fingers, it is such an instinct. I think that using fingers before school is fine, but step by step you need to get rid of it. I think that taking notes is more efficient”, “Most people, myself included, are visual and tactile learners to some extent. So using our fingers to count quickly is a good way to do mental calculations”. These quotes from my students confirm many things for me. The primary one is each student comes from a unique background and maths has its own identity and culture in their homeland.

 

Maths takes many shapes and forms depending on location and culture. And once again, students have shown me their strong abilities to read, interpret, and form a thoughtful and relevant opinion on a concept that might be unfamiliar. This is the power of giving students the opportunity to use their voices: they provide insight, perspective, and ideas to those around them, including their teachers.

 

Where do I go from here? There are a few areas I’d like to experiment with. The first is using a portfolio as a way to assess students. Ideally the portfolio would contain projects, reflections, assignments, and other pieces of “evidence” that students would use to show their development throughout the year. The second is to buy a class set of books and incorporate literature into maths class. I have a few titles I’d be interested in using. The next step is to discuss best practices with an English Literature teacher. I’ll also change some of the topics for the Socratic Seminars to be more mathematical. Zero is a popular choice, prime numbers, calculus, etc, all have potential for an interesting discussion. And finally, I’d like to incorporate more projects into maths class. Maths is not a one size fits all subject, it has so much room for creativity, problem-solving, and growth. Projects give students more choice and authenticity in their learning and what students create is truly interesting! The best thing we can do for our students is to empower them by giving them opportunities to speak, write, listen, read, and create pieces of work that demonstrate learning and also have meaning and personality.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fendel, D., Resek, D., Aler, L., Fraser, W. (1997). Integrated Mathematics Program (IMP) Curriculum. Integrated Mathematics Program (IMP) Curriculum, Key Curriculum Press: Emeryville, CA.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Starbuck is a maths teacher, volleyball coach and resident scholar at Leysin American School. She is originally from Colorado and is finishing her sixth year of teaching.

Kaizen

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Paul Magnuson, Director of Educational Research, Leysin American School.

 

Kaizen

 

As I understand it, kaizen is Japanese for improvement, but the use of the word in agile contexts has come to mean the type of gradual improvement that comes about when everyone keeps their eyes open for each little opportunity to make things just a little bit better. Crowdsourced improvement, more or less.

 

A few years ago we converted a run of the mill classroom located in the center of campus into a flexible meeting space for our research center. Café size tables, comfortable chairs, rugs, plants, a great view of the Alps. There is no projector, and originally, no whiteboard (though we later decided the utility of a whiteboard outweighed our goal to keep the room looking unschoolish).

 

We named the room Kaizen to emphasize that anybody can use the space and that any small improvement that comes out of that space helps the overall quality of the school.

 

A few months after naming the room, I got into the elevator directly across the hall and was greeted with a pleasant surprise. A professional looking set of stickers had been affixed next to the buttons marking each floor of the building. Kaizen Research Lounge jumped out at me immediately. Floor 1. Someone had improved the name of our room. A perfect example of the spirit of the room, baked right into its name. The Kaizen Research Lounge.

 

We probably all have our own examples of kaizen, if you stop to think about it a bit. I’ve seen our Head of School stoop to pick up a candy wrapper or piece of paper as he walks between buildings. I’m sure others have learned from him to do the same. The combined effort of many faculty ensures a clean campus.

 

Similarly, several years ago a few of us began helping the dining services staff clear the tables after school-wide banquets, instead of leaving directly after the closing words. Every banquet since there have been a few more of us. No one was ever told they must stay to help, but the combined small efforts of a few have created a new culture. I can guarantee that after the next banquet a large number of faculty will help clear tables. The work will be quick, distributed, satisfying, and in collegial collaboration with the non-academic staff working the dining hall. Kaizen.

 

You can see how this same principle applies to one’s personal life. Don’t fret about having to make major changes. Just make one small change, and one small change again after that. It adds up. You can also see how this principle encourages an increasingly professional teaching corps. If there is something to try that might be just a bit better, try it. If there are enough teachers making small improvements to their teaching, the overall teaching quality rises, and with it student learning. If teachers start to talk to each other about small improvements, sharing their successes, the effect is accelerated.

 

Kaizen creates a culture of improvement. One starts with oneself and it rubs off on others. People start noticing and join in, in small ways. Still others experience the positive modeling and they, too, shift their actions and thinking just a little bit. Change comes about, and continues coming about, because the culture is one of continuous improvement.

 

Students may notice, but even if they don’t, they are likely to benefit. It may be worthwhile, however, to make them aware of kaizen, to let them know that improvement is a distributed process, created through distributed leadership to which everyone has access and for which everyone is responsible.

 

Kaizen Research Lounge. Can you believe it? What a great name.

Paul

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Magnuson is the director of Educational Research at Leysin American School and adjunct faculty for the International Education Program of Endicott College. His interests include student agency and self-regulated learning for students and teachers.
pmagnuson@las.ch

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

What if?

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Paul Magnuson, Director of Educational Research, Leysin American School.

 

A student wrote to me yesterday with a request that has really got me thinking.

 

For some context: in the final weeks of our sudden shift to school online, I convened a group of a dozen eleventh grade students, twice, with the goal of talking through their remote learning experience and what we can learn from it moving forward.

 

The students reflected on their ability to self-manage and self-motivate, their established study practices, and how they might like to reorganize school in the future, based on our collective redo of how school works.

 

We called the two sessions blue sky thinking. As we wound up the second session, a group consensus emerged that the students would like to have more blue sky time next academic year – time to come together and talk creatively about academics, alternatives to how we do things now, and how they might learn best.

 

I suspect any educator’s heart should beat a little faster when students express interest in rethinking pedagogy. But perhaps in reality that faster heart rate is the realization that talking what ifs is the equivalent of a crack in the dam or a loose thread in the sweater. Something could burst or unravel pretty quickly.

 

So a student wrote to me. One of the blue sky thinkers. A smart, reflective, serious student. She asked me this:

 

I wanted to know … if I could have the option to not go to class and instead go to a supervised study place … where I could work alone like we did during the online schooling period … Maybe I would go to class at least 2 times a week … I would also agree to turn in everything on time … I think this would help me keep the efficiency that I had when I was forced into learning by myself. Do you think the school will let me do this? 

 

Blue sky, definitely, and not unreasonable. But the questions this request raises! Say the student did only go to class twice a week (that’s half the scheduled classes in this case) but turned in all her work on time and did well in class – and perhaps in less time. Is that an acceptable outcome for the school? It seems to be acceptable – preferable even – for the individual student.

 

I can hear the collective, hypothetical voices of my colleagues and I as we discuss the request: You can’t just skip class! (Knee jerk reaction). Who would supervise? (Practical constraints.) Wouldn’t this open the doors to other students asking for the same thing? (Are we talking about building a whole new program here?) What about students who wanted to do this but weren’t able to handle it? (Further administrative complications.) If it’s only necessary to attend half our classes to succeed, what will parents think? (Public relations.) 

 

And so on. 

 

I’ve heard colleagues talk about school reform in terms of aspirational goals, which feels a bit like code language for blue sky thinking that we know will never happen. I’ve also heard plenty of pundits say education will never be the same, post-Covid. But as I open the mail to respond to this student, I can’t think of any response that doesn’t cloud that blue sky. She is onto something, but I do not know how to support her thinking best.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Magnuson is the director of Educational Research at Leysin American School and adjunct faculty for the International Education Program of Endicott College. His interests include student agency and self-regulated learning for students and teachers.
pmagnuson@las.ch

The Ascending Cognition Principle

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Kevin Jennings, M. Ed., World History Teacher, Leysin American School.

Designing Units Systematically and Gradually Through Mastering Skills.

In my 10 years in education I’ve had the good fortune of teaching on three different continents, with colleagues from all over the world, and students from over 30 countries. In that time, I have found a few challenges to be both universal and recurring.  

These problems include: 

  1. I) How do we create a classroom environment that promotes higher-level thinking without overwhelming students?
  2. II) How do we make sure one class period, one week of classes, a 5-week unit aligns meaningfully with the next?

III) How do we create a classroom environment that promotes student leadership and independence?

  1. IV) How do we make sure we practice the skills and develop the understandings that are necessary for success?

 

Through trial and error, and through conversations  with colleagues, I created a standardized unit outline that helps to address the problems mentioned above. I call it The Ascending Cognition Principle. 

 


 An Educational Principle 

Think of skill development in the classroom in terms of the proverbs “you must learn to crawl before you can walk” and “you don’t need shoes to run, but it helps.” While developing units, It’s important to target specific skills necessary for student development. The first few units may require students to focus on the mastery of lower level, less cognitively demanding skills that are necessary for success, e.g. Cornell Notes, extracting information from a text, comparing and contrasting resources, etc. These foundational skills are our proverbial “shoes”, preparing students for their next challenge.  

 

In the beginning of the school year, a class may be asked to practice skills such as Cornell notes, summarize, and compare and contrast, in order to set a foundation of skills to build off in the lessons and units to come. As a student, a group, or a class is able to master these skills, they will then “graduate” to more cognitively demanding skills such as classify, predict, interpret, solve, analyze, cause and effect. Of course these skills are made easier by the use and implementation of earlier, foundational skills. 

 

As the year progresses, lower-level skills and activities will take less time to complete, allowing more time for higher-level, more cognitively demanding skills to be targeted. For example, while we may take 2 weeks to master Cornell notes in the beginning of the year, writing these notes will (hopefully) become second nature into the latter half of the school year, allowing more time for new exciting and challenging skills. In our case, the next two levels of thinking skills are Application and Analysis.  These two levels allow for students to solve problems, building prototypes, investigate, defend reasoning, develop a thesis with conclusion, etc.. The mixture of interesting and challenging material with constant practice and feedback will allow even these difficult skills to become natural as the school year progresses.  

 

As mentioned in the initial problems, the ultimate goal of my class is for students to be able to handle higher-level thinking tasks and skills, while becoming more independent and self-reliant. The ascent to the highest level thinking skills, Synthesize and Evaluate, encourage such behavior as they are meant to help students develop something new, or justify a position. Some students or classes may be ready to ascend quicker than their peers. In which case, it would be beneficial for educators to allow these students to embrace more cognitively demanding tasks and activities. Students, who are ready, will benefit from more challenging material as well as more opportunities for creative expression e.g.developing a song, creating a historical fiction, creating a political cartoon or meme, solving problems, etc. 

 

A unit lasts as long as time allows, or as you (or your school) see fit. The following unit will then build off the foundation of skills you have just developed in order to embrace more challenging material. The ascending complexity of tasks and activities over the course of the school year is represented by the gradual change from red to purple in the figure below.  

 

Preparing for a Successful Unit  

In order to figure out which activities are less or more cognitively demanding, you may want to use Bloom’s Taxonomy Teacher Planning Kit (Google it) as a guide, then use and/or add what makes sense for your classroom.[Text Wrapping Break] 

As you move from left to right on the Bloom’s scale, from “Knowledge” to “Evaluate” the keywords, actions, and skills will become ever more complex and cognitively demanding, as seen on the figure above. 

Download Bloom’s scale

 

Targeting Specific Skills 

As we prepare for a successful unit, one thing we should be cognizant of is the skills that you would like your students to practice and eventually master. If you are using The Bloom’s Taxonomy Planning Kit, these skills and command terms are located in the “keywords”, “actions” and “outcomes” section, and if they are not there, add your desired skills to the appropriate section of the unit. 

 

The location of the skills along the Bloom’s scale (e.g. under “Knowledge” or “Comprehension” etc.) determines when in the unit the skill will be practiced. For example, any desired skill that appears under “Knowledge” or “Comprehension”, which are the first two levels of Bloom’s, will likely be targeted earlier in the unit, while any skills that fall under “Synthesis” or “Evaluation”, the highest levels of the Bloom’s scale, will only be practiced once that individual, group, or class, is ready for the challenge, which may not be until the latter months into the school year. 

 

Once we know which skills we would like our students to master, and we know where in the unit the skill will fall, it’s now time to create activities allow students to master these skills. For example, if I want my students to learn how to take Cornell Notes, it’s up to the teacher to come up with an effective way for students to learn this process. This large task will be infinitely easier if the teacher has the ability to collaborate with other teachers of similar grades or subjects. 

 

Cycling Through the Units 

While the goal of a school year may be for students to master all of the skills necessary for their next year, teachers will also benefit from having a classroom which is (among other things) predictable, flows seamlessly from one lesson to the next, has a clear purpose, offers creative outlets for students, and guides students to higher-level thinking activities. The Ascending Cognition Principle was developed to allow teachers to produce units that do just that.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Jennings is a social studies teacher and resident scholar at Leysin American School in Switzerland. He is a native of the Washington DC area and is currently in his 10th year of teaching.

Helping Students Find Their GPS; Gifts, Passions, and Sense of Service.

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Jade Vidler, Deputy Housemistress, Sotogrande International School.

Helping Students Find Their GPS; Gifts, Passions, and Sense of Service.

In September 2019 we were reminded of the power of children and young people as millions of students forgave their education, using their voices to stand up against climate change. One student, Greta Thunburg, led this specific movement using her own GPS. This is a strong reminder that students already are agents of positive change and their capabilities should not be underestimated.  

Helping pupils find their gifts, passions and sense of service is arguably the most important thing a school can do. Encouraging students to uncover what they are passionate about; what they care about and ultimately how they want to shape their lives leads to well-rounded individuals who are equipped with direction for life post-education. However these factors have to be nurtured; there needs to be time and space for these gifts and passions to emerge, and students need to feel empowered. 

When students realise that their agency is entirely within their own power and not something they are born with or without, and they start to explore it and feel passionate and empowered by it, then the magic can really be unleashed. Poon (2018) in Education Reimagined explained student agency as having four components: 1) setting advantageous goals; 2) initiating action towards these goals; 3) reflecting on and regulating progress towards these goals and 4) a belief in self-efficacy. The fourth element is recognised as underpinning the first three and demonstrates the importance of students’ sense of self belief. This can be facilitated largely by educators as we provide tools for students and prove to them that they can do things and that their actions can make a difference.  

 

The founding of The Kindred Project 

At Sotogrande International School we strive to empower student agency. In 2010, through a deep process of reflection, we questioned the impact of the funds raised through events and in turn, the learning processes provided for our students. We looked into models that would enhance our social impact, but what intrigued us most was, how this would look if it were completely student-lead? This inspired the birth of The Kindred Project, or ‘KP’ – our student-lead NGO. It has been designed as a guarantor that student-led action has a real positive impact in the communities we work with, creating win-win situations for all involved. KP achieves this by using tried and tested models implemented by international development organizations, which allow for the monitoring of activities and funds, as well as evaluation. This enables action that, as a response to a genuine need, is mindful, appropriate, and sustainable. For our students, it’s all about experiential learning. In line with our partners’ needs, students come up with ideas, projects, inventions and products which help to address social or environmental issues. We then provide the platform for these dreams to become reality through our framework of student entrepreneurship. To deepen the learning and social impact, we offer students the opportunity to make direct connections by participating on incredible expeditions to our partners spanning over 4 continents. 

 

What does this really look like? 

We facilitate the majority of this learning and many of these experiences through the KP Club. This is an after school club that runs three times a week and currently engages over 70 students. Through structured but flexible and creative systems, students take the lead on all aspects of the projects from the initial ideas, to the running of an event or development of a product.

The students have complete control, coupled with careful guidance, and what they produce is truly outstanding. An example of one project is the Little Suns project, started by Max G, aged 15. Through curricular connections, Max understood that the community of one of our partners in Nabugabo, Uganda, struggle to carry out daily tasks after sunset without electricity. He had the idea to provide solar lamps to the people of Nabugabo. He researched, fundraised and sourced 60 Little Suns solar lamps which he had delivered to our school, ready to be taken on our next expedition to Uganda. These solar lamps were distributed amongst the community. Seeing the huge impact his project had had on people’s lives, Max was inspired to continue raising funds for more lamps and applied to take part in the next expedition to see it first-hand. His reaction on the ground in Uganda was profound and life shaping. However, KP also goes further than KP Club. The values, morals and passion of KP are also sewn into the curriculum at Sotogrande International School. Class projects begin in our youngest years and continue up through the school, with many students focusing their community and personal projects on addressing social and/or environmental issues, giving back to the community and cultural exchanges.  

Expeditions are an essential part of KP as they provide the rawest, realest experiential learning possible. They accommodate the opportunity for experiences of human connection and personal realisation, as well as skill development and intercultural understanding. The expeditions include working with our partners in Spain, Morocco, Uganda and Ecuador, and this summer saw our first expedition to the Himalayas. All of these trips are unique, with an individual sense of purpose that provide life shaping opportunities for our students, as well as the communities we work with.  

 

What does students finding their own GPS look like? 

For most students, experiential learning is what they remember. It’s most likely through experiential learning that they have their ´lightbulb moment´. It causes them to understand what is important to them, and that alone, can be life shaping. One example of a student experiencing this is Enola G, aged 16, who tells us “Through hands-on work in the community of Nabugabo, I realised that I am driven by helping others, and suddenly my career path became very clear. The day I came back from the trip, I was confident about studying politics and international relations at university, with the intention of making a difference for those who need it the most.” 

Another student, Nele W, aged 17, reflects “this expedition was completely different to anything I have ever experienced before. Following this trip I have come to the conclusion that anyone can make a difference. Over the coming months and years I will always continue to reflect on this journey. I have learned that when you take action by following what you love doing, you really develop a life-long passion.” 

These are just some examples of how students have been personally impacted after finding their GPS through experiential learning on one of our expeditions. Flora S, aged 17, reflects on her work with KP as she prepares to move on to higher education and summarises the importance of giving students opportunities to find their GPS’s. “What I have learnt, and what I continue to learn, can be taken with me wherever I go; it is a gift that I didn’t even realise I was being handed as I embarked on all those years of challenges and adventures. And it is one I will cherish for life.” 

 

And how can you replicate this in your school? 

There are three main factors in replicating this model within a school; passionate people, human connections and space for student agency. There are passionate people in every school, and bringing them together will help create the right environment for this type of model to flourish. This includes both staff and students.  

Another key factor in making this model sustainable is the human element. Human connection is what really fuels these projects and programs to run successfully. Making the programs real through relationships is invaluable. If this cannot be achieved through partnerships, human connections between staff and students can also evoke emotion. The key emotion to awaken through these projects is empowerment. Once the students feel empowered, their investment in the projects climbs, as does their self-esteem.  

Facilitating space for student agency is also imperative. Having a ‘yes’ culture, which is followed up with assistance, guidance and reflection is where the key lies. Letting them direct the project, event or idea is an essential factor in the development of their sense of agency. Being open-minded and allowing the roles to be reversed to some extent from student to teacher helps the opening up of projects and allows the model to run. The thing to remember above all else is that our youth are not the leaders of tomorrow, they are the changemakers of today. 

 

Bibliography: 

Poon, J. (2018). Part 1: What Do You Mean When You Say “Student Agency”? [online] Education Reimagined https://education-reimagined.org/what-do-you-mean-when-you-say-student-agency/ [Accessed 14th March 2020] 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jade has worked in Boarding schools for a number of yearsand developed a passion for giving students real-world experiences and helping them to navigate their path in life. She is currently Deputy Housemistress at Sotogrande International School and combines this with working as an Educational Specialist at The Kindred Project. Having been on leadership teams on expeditions to Uganda and Ecuador, and through running the KP Club, she has seen first hand the life-shaping impacts discussed in this article.