Improve the World

My friend, Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning has a great project for students to get involved in called Improve the World.

“Next Vista for Learning invites students around the world to share ideas that can help others.”

The student needs to make a video for 90 seconds or less. On his page about the project, Rushton gives in great detail how to go about sharing your idea to improve the world.

“The video can be you explaining something to the camera, or a screencast with slides as visuals, or narrated artwork. The style and editing are not what is important; what is important is that you have and convey a compelling idea.”

The student would choose one of the following categories for the video:

1. Promoting peace
2. Fighting disease
3. Providing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
4. Saving mothers and children
5. Supporting education
6. Growing local economies
7. Protecting the environment

He encourages students to show others before submitting and get lots of feedback. Once it is refined, the student would upload the video to YouTube or something similar. Rushton also gives some recommendations for settings when doing this.

There is no deadline because this is not a contest. It is a project to help others improve our world. They will take the best ones in each category listed and share them with service organizations around the world who may decide to do that project.

What a great project that would incorporate all subject areas! It could be a month-long project or even a year-long project depending on the research and follow-up you would decide to do. This could be a class project or even a school project depending on how many teachers would want to get involved. It also would be great to make learning relevant to our students concerning the issues in their community and world.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

Safety in 3D

“The NVIV (Next Vista Inspiring Video) series of posts are written by Rushton Hurley and designed to provide students and teachers with fascinating discussion prompts.”

In An Illusion for Good, Rushton features two elementary school students who figure out a way to make roads safer for pedestrians.

He gives the following prompts to accompany this video:

“What if you were in charge of finding a way to get cars to drive more safely around your school?

Would you put up more signs?

Create an information campaign for parents?

What around you is so common that you don’t notice it? Is it trash on the campus grounds, or instructions given to you by a teacher, or perhaps something else?

If you can identify something (like the crosswalk) that isn’t doing its job, perhaps because it is too obvious, can you come up with a new way of making it achieve its purpose?"

What a great activity this would be for students! First, they would need to identify a community problem. Then they would need to brainstorm ideas on how to solve the problem. There might be several ideas that students like and can get into groups in order to work on that solution. This would enable them to use skills they learn in the classroom in a real-life situation.

Please check out the video and think of other prompts you might come up with. Please share.

The Teaching Community

Recently the pastor of my church (Trinity Lutheran Church) gave a children’s sermon called “Linked Together in Community”. She asked all of the children to hold on to a rope and talked about how when one person pulls on the rope, everyone is affected. She talked about how our whole community is affected by one person’s actions. When she talked about this, I was thinking about how this also applied to the teaching community.

My teaching community consists of other teachers, students, and parents.

When my student fails, I always wonder what else I could have done to help my student succeed. I look towards my teaching community to help me look for ways to help this student. Many times, my colleagues will give me helpful suggestions. Usually, the parents are supportive because they want to see their child succeed and may help me look for strategies that work for this student. Even the student’s peers are willing to help if they can because everyone in my class benefits when one person succeeds.

Whenever a teacher does something outstanding, I feel so proud to be a teacher. When I watch the news and there is something negative about a teacher, I feel it reflects on all teachers. If a teacher does something against the law, it makes all of us teachers look bad even if we haven’t done anything wrong. It seems like the negative stories stand out more than the positive stories. A friend of mine says that negative news stories sell easier than positive ones.

I wish when we see these negative stories about our school community, that we can get past the blame and the pointing fingers. I think we need to change our mindset and ask, “What can I do to help move in a positive direction?” I had a principal once that said I was either part of the solution or part of the problem. I think all people have to be one or the other. You can’t be “nothing” because by doing nothing, you become part of the problem.

When we see a story where a teacher broke the law, it doesn’t hurt to send a supportive message to the school. Letting them know that you don’t brand all of them because of what one person did can go a long way. That whole school is hurting because they are a family. If someone in your family does something wrong, your whole family hurts.

If there is a story about a local school not meeting the standards as expected, think of ways you can support them in order to help them. Contact them to see how you can help. You may feel that you can only help a little bit but all the little bits of help by others can add up to a big help. Remember that anything you do can affect the whole community, no matter how big or small.

What are ways that you help your teaching community? Please share.

Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash

Making a Difference

In I Want My Kids to be MAD for the rest of the year from Thoughts By Jen, Jennifer asks,

“Any other ideas on how I can encourage them to be Making A Difference?”

I thought this was a great thing to focus on for the end of the year and I started thinking of other ways (including myself) that would make a difference to others.

Here are some suggestions:

Take time to pick up trash in a specific area.

Make eye contact with others we see and smile. (I don’t think we do that enough.)

Compliment a complete stranger.

Make “Thinking of You” cards for people we haven’t seen in awhile.

Contact an elderly person to see if they need any help with anything (changing lightbulbs, picking weeds, or doing things that require a ladder or getting on knees.)

Bring canned food to a food pantry for the needy.

Donate old clothes or toys to Goodwill or Salvation Army.

Do a chore that you know a family member doesn’t like to do.

What are things you could suggest? Please share.