Students, schools learn to solve local issues with broader thinking

This article was written for our sponsor, Participate Learning

It’s every teacher’s dream for students to grasp, and be excited about, a classroom lesson. For Ana Herrera, that dream has come true while teaching her students about how being a globally-minded citizen can help find solutions to local issues.

Herrera has seen this happen with lessons on how to recycle paper to nurturing freshly planted seeds to collecting socks to share at the community shelter. In each case, studying ways to address a global issue led students to find solutions to a local issue by using critical thinking and problem solving skills.

This sort of global thinking once only applied to students considering careers such as international business or joining the diplomatic corps. Today, the global economy impacts everyone, with local implications for every community. As such, global learning is more likely to be about local concerns - how to collaborate, communicate, create, and think critically about local issues and their broader impact. All students will need these skills to compete for the jobs of the future.

For example, when students in North Carolina consider the impact of conserving water in school and their homes by drinking from reusable cups or water bottles, they make the connection that water is a global resource. Conserving water in their own community serves and benefits the world as a whole. With one small change, students can feel a sense of accomplishment and impact beyond their own backyard.

"All it takes is one person to start doing something, and others will join," said Herrara, a fourth grade teacher at Bethany Elementary School in Reidsville. "I have witnessed how small actions turn into transformative projects because of this one person that believed they could change something and acted on it."

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

One resource for teaching this valuable perspective is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During these project-based, globally-focused lessons, Herrera describes the student enthusiasm for the lessons as ‘contagious.’

As part of their 2030 plan for sustainable development, the United Nations adopted 17 goals focused on different areas to address in which to create a more equitable Earth. The goals include everything from addressing hunger to providing quality education. From a teaching perspective, these topics can be incorporated into a school’s overall curriculum with lessons that challenge and encourage students to see the world that exists outside their four walls. More importantly, focusing on the ties between local and global challenges prepares them to succeed in the global workforce.

Herrera learned about the SDGs as an Ambassador Teacher with Participate Learning, a North Carolina based company that supports K-12 schools and districts to implement global learning initiatives. These initiatives include Global Leaders, a framework that enhances and amplifies schools’ existing approach and better prepares students to become globally competitive and succeed in their future careers.

The SDGs are one of the resources that Global Leaders schools and districts can combine with their overall curriculum to prepare students to thrive in the global workplace. That’s because a central theme in addressing SDGs is the combination of understanding how local challenges tie to global issues – and vice versa – and then working to find solutions starting at the local level.

"The SDGs are important for a student's education and growth because they develop and strengthen students' skills to become critically informed global citizens," Herrera said. "Working with the SDGs shows students that there are connections between local, national, and global realities even though they may seem very different."

Herrera went on to explain that SDGs also show students that even little actions count. "It gives them the confidence to know they are strong and powerful enough to face challenges and act in an unequal situation," she said.

Maria Phillips, a Participate Learning dual language teacher at South Elementary School in Roxboro, said the goals can have an incredible impact on a student’s educational journey.

"They are wonderful goals," she said. "I introduce them to students the first week of school through a book we read about sustainability goals, what they are and how they work and we work on connecting every little single thing in the class to those goals."

Fostering understanding and encouraging action

The goals are written and communicated in a way that is simple and approachable, helping students understand how they can effect change, Phillips said, who teaches third grade.

One example is the challenge of ensuring people have access to clean water. Every community worldwide – whether on an arid plain or in the flood zone of a river delta – must focus on ensuring a steady supply of clean water. By understanding the challenges faced in different parts of the world, students learn to identify solutions that apply to their home community.

"You have to be very intentional about how you teach the topics but it does help them become more aware of what is happening around them and how they can make a difference," she said.

Last year, Herrerra’s students created a campaign to invite families and the community to learn about the SDGs through class projects, including:

• Making recycled paper
• Building robots with recycled materials to teach others about 3D shapes
• Initiating a school-wide campaign to donate socks to a shelter in their community
• Challenging others to follow a healthy habit for 10 days
• Placing extra food in a bin to share with those who do not have snacks
• Planting seeds in the soil and taking care of them
• Using tote bags when going to the grocery store to avoid the use of plastic bags
• Building shelters for animals to be covered in rainy or cold weather

"This year, I had the same group of students I had in 2020-2021 and we continued our work of exploring the SDGs by using the book they wrote in 2021," Herrera said. "Now they are creating a campaign to teach other classes how to make recycled paper."

The class has created 20 sheets of recycled paper so far and also made Valentine's Day cards for local veterans.

Herrera, a Participate Learning Ambassador Teacher from Colombia, said there are a variety of programs that support school districts in North Carolina and Virginia that strive to unite the world through global learning—a lofty, but important goal.

She said the Global Leaders framework has a structure for how lessons and projects are taught.

"Within this framework, we are invited to pay attention to what is happening inside and around us, explore the connections with other people and places, and act," she said.

Phillips, a Participate Learning Ambassador Teacher from Costa Rica, has taken steps to make the goals a focal point in her classroom by hanging posters she can refer to as she teaches the goals.

"Students often point to the posters when we’re talking about topics," she said. "They are able to identify the goal and then name a related topic which we have been talking about in class."

For Herrera, SDGs have helped her engage her students between what they are learning at school and real-life issues. "We intentionally connect the academic standards with the local realities of our students, allowing them to reflect on what is happening around them, relate it to global issues, and have the chance to think of an action they can do to turn issues into a commonly desired reality," she said.

A big part of the program revolves around empathy and the idea that compassion is something that should be a centerpiece around the actions we all take on a regular basis.

"We need to be aware that there are others around us with different histories, perspectives, and emotions," Herrera said. "Students being able to imagine themselves in someone else's situation helps them understand their reasoning, and allows them to be open-minded and reflective about how others feel and act."

More info

You can get more information about the SDG goals here:

https://sdgs.un.org/goals

This article was written for our sponsor, Participate Learning