One of things I love about the work of the Cloud Institute is that it really emphasizes the importance of teaching about the world with a lens of possibility. The framing requires students to be critical thinkers, but with few boundaries and incredible optimism. With this, for my Curriculum Council work this year, I took a project that I have done for a handful of years and wanted to really look at it through an Education for Sustainability lens, reframe it so that students were energized about being change makers, but not discouraged about the problems of the world.

The project was designed in two parts. First: Envision. I asked the students to envision the word that they want, today, tomorrow in 50 years. Not “what are the problems?” but “what do you what to see?” How can we envision the future we want (for ourselves, our community, our world) and develop ways to make it happen? We started with structured word inquiry to examine the morphemes of the word <en+vis+ion>. Students shared things like “I want a world where every city has one of those neighborhoods like The Castro, where LGBTQ families can feel honored” to “I want a world where there are more ice cream shops … because ice cream makes everyone happy”. We looked at various categories - social, environmental and economic – and they came up with quite a list. While addressing similar topics to our "problems" list in past years, the discussion was upbeat, the kids were excited, and it really had an energized feel.

We then thought about the “now what?” If we envision a certain world, how do we get there? Innovation! We first thought about the question “Do words have the power to create change?" Based off the list of what they wanted for the world, we started to learn more about these topics through slam poetry performances and speeches. From climate change and deforestation to homelessness, war and food insecurity, we saw what people were feeling, saying and doing. There are some incredible examples of youth slam poets and the fourth graders were quickly inspired and convinced that words can create change. 

Final step in this part of the project - a community poetry slam! We combined learning about the issues to focusing on what makes great slam poetry. We learned about literary devices like rhyme, repetition, and vivid imagery, how to perform persuasively considering playing with speed, tone, mood, etc. In the culminating poetry slam, they all listened attentively to one another as each student performed an original piece. It was great to have some school community members in the audience as well.

The second part of this project moves further into innovation. We didn't get too far into it this year, but I've been working with Jaimie Cloud to design the curriculum for a Bio-Mimicry Design Challenge for next year. This will be a project-based experience where the fourth graders will explore how we can learn from the natural world, from things that already exist, to create innovations that support a healthier planet.  Looking forward to it!

(And there is always the residual action that kids want to take from learning about the world. As a class this year, they were motivated do something that supported more trees -- which led to Operation: Plant-a-Forest -- and more kindness -- which led to our kindness hearts project. Food sustainability, as well, was a theme carried through year using the Education for Sustainability framework.)