social norms – Clover Hill Diaries – Join Me and Be the Change

Picture perfect in paradise this morning The cows, the ocean ,sunrise and the Chinese fringe flower in full bloom and no filter #lovewhereilive

I have always wanted to be a better person than the person I am. I have found I am not alone.

I am grateful to have found a tribe of young people who wanted to learn how to be the best version of themselves they can be and had the courage to start a movement to pay it forward.

One thing I have learnt is the importance of starting where people are at . If you want to have community impact then help them identify their wants and needs (collect data) go on a journey together, experiment, collect more data, tweak, experiment and signpost success.

Working with young Australians is a joy. Learning what they care about and what they want to learn about is something that will bring joy to everyone.

Each year young people’s desire to “Learn how we can all be kinder to each other” is moving closer to the top of the list.

To help teachers empower them to do this we reached out to our international brains trust.

This beautiful suggestion is inspired by Dale Carnegie

Supporting students in their drive to make the world a kinder place

Invite each student in the class to share a two-minute story of a time in their life they remember when some-one has been incredibly kind to them and how it had affected them.

Then ask the students to identify themes from the stories.

Follow this by asking them to identify the kindest person they know and what qualities/characteristics they think this person has that show they are kind.

Ask the students to share these qualities/characteristics on the whiteboard or similar.

Then ask the students

“Now that we have all been inspired by stories of kindness how can we as individuals bring more kindness into the world.”

Invite them to put forward their ideas

Our team is looking forward to the teachers and students feedback on this idea because we know the best way to drive change is to role model and signpost the behaviour you want to see

We can all be role models. I am personally looking forward to the day politicians become disciples to the theory of change and the concept of signposting the social norms we can all be proud of.

Footnote

My global tribe also recommended:

DailyGood for News that Inspires

Kindness which shares with us that we can all CHOOSE KINDNESS TODAY and every kind act matters. What impact will you have?

School today is a very different place to my recollection of the 60s and 70s where some-one like me who cant draw or paint could top art because we could learn all the theory off by heart.

Today school is an exciting place where young people are invited to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Schools do this by using the project based learning model and teachers ask their students BIG QUESTIONS

Big Questions are those that inspire students to explore all possibilities – there should be no easy answer!

Currently watching our political leaders make tough decisions to lock us all down because we stuggle as a cohort to do the right thing has me asking the big question

How do we make doing the right thing the social norm?

At Picture You in Agriculture we collect alot of data that helps us inform the way we design and deliver our school programs, helps teachers understand how they can be support their students and inform everyone what young Australians think about, talk about, care about, what they want to learn and how they want to learn and what inspires them to take action..

I dipped into our ten years of data to help me answer the big question I have posed this morning. The question we ask students that gives the widest diversity of answers year in year out is this one

Which of these environmental activities do you already do?

Please click the boxes for the ones you do now either at school or at home.

There are two answers under the HOME column that are consistently the same year in year out and a big diversity between schools under the SCHOOL column.

As you can see good habits learnt at home and at school are not automatically transferable. Our big question to the students this year will involve several HOW and WHAT questions around this conundrum, asking them about the barriers they face and what they see are the opportunities to make good behavoirs learnt at home and at school the social norm

For adults I imagine the first question might be. How do we define THE RIGHT THING There is certainly no shortage of diverse opionions in this space

A very good reason indeed I would think we should all be celebrating an education system committed to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians defined as:

Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence, and
All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.