Beautiful quotes from brilliant minds have inspired me from the early days of my professional career. Motivation as lines from well known storytellers, messages from world leaders, ideas from scientists – ending up on posters on our classroom walls and as sign offs in our email signatures. Statements used as encouragement to remind me and my students to forge ahead…keep going…look for the good.
In my work today collaborating with global teams and schools around the world, I see that I now find inspiration from the everyday people I work with who believe in taking action for good and who demonstrate it both in practice and in communications. These days, I may scribble down a hurried note on the back of a paper or add a quick desktop “look here later” sticky on my computer screen, but the intention is still the same. Here are a few special individuals who recently have brought me inspiration to take action and stay the course.
“You set the pace, and I’ll keep up.”
As educators, we have a unique opportunity to collaborate with diverse educational teams – grade-level planning, committee work, campus duty assignments, new initiatives. For me, I find that the inspiration for the work can be in the work but also sometimes in the team doing the work. Recently, we had a creative project that we were planning out. During the early phases of roadmapping, our colleague Thomas Anthony Jones was guiding us on the production ideas for a video to spotlight student action. As we finished up our meeting, he told us, “You set the pace, and I’ll keep up.” I could envision T.J. (also an athlete in addition to his work as a creator) gearing us up for “a sprint.” As project managers, his words gave us space to stretch our vision but also safety to know we could keep within the limits of our capacity. But most of all, his message gave us the confidence to know we had a team member who would be ready to mobilize, we just needed to press go.
Take action: Today I wonder, what might be inspired if a message like this was shared by an edtech coach, a school leader, or even a teacher to a student? What impact or change may result? Please keep me posted if you test it out!
“The first thing you need to do when you are in a ditch is to stop digging.”
In my work committed to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with Take Action Global, I continue to take inspiration from the young people who are guiding conversations around progress and the work of change. This year at Global Goals Week in New York City, Vanessa Nakate, a young climate activist from Uganda, joined on a high-level climate panel to share her ideas for a path forward. “The first thing you need to do when you are in a ditch is to stop digging.” As an educator, this brought me to a moment of pause. In our schools and classrooms, we tend to move fast and keep moving – even when we feel we are going in the wrong direction. Vanessa reminded of the importance of committing to learning and unlearning, moving forward on what works but also moving away from what doesn’t.
Take action: Watch Vanessa sharing at our 2020 Climate Action Day event, and join us on November 2, 2023 for our 2023 Climate Action Day. Free and designed for K-12 classrooms!
“Climate is changing, why aren’t we.”
I always say, I place my greatest hope in our young people. As educators, I see our youth as our allies in both transforming education and in working toward solutions that will help us to care for our planet and its people. I feel excited by the work of climate education and the progress we are seeing month to month right now. Last year as part of our Climate Action Project, a young student from India remarked “Climate is changing, why aren’t we.” This was so simple and also so complex. Since that day, I have seen change. With states like New Jersey (and now others) mandating climate education for all to the establishment of grants supporting school tree plantings and student action, I see fast progress and new opportunities for classrooms that prioritize creativity, perspective taking, and joy and optimism. Young people and their teachers are ready for action!
Take action: Test out some of these LEGO Build the Change mini missions and engage your students in some quick, fun design challenges supporting learning through play to protect our planet (can be done with LEGO bricks or any available building materials/resources)
“Anything is possible. We just need to prioritize.”
This one stays as a permanent sticky note on my desk. “Anything is possible. We just need to prioritize.” I really love working with software engineers. Though I don’t have a lot of skills in computer science, I have such an appreciation for the process of creation and design within programming. In the early days of working with our “dev team,” I asked our lead developer Bram Vanbilsen about a big idea I had – a longshot, and I knew it was likely going to be a no. But, instead of saying no or shutting down my eagerness, Bram responded “Anything is possible.” And for him, it was. We just needed to better understand if it was a priority. Since then, I always try to start with “possible.” Everything after that is just steps in a process.
Take action: Check out the EarthProject app developed by our awesome dev team. Free on iOS and Android.