Episode 2: 2 Vertically Aligned Paths of Education

Amy Yardley: Hi, I'm Amy Yardley. After 25 years as an elementary school teacher, I'm now on a mission to evolve our education system to one which is racially equitable, climate responsive, and supportive of students with trauma, ADHD, and autism. This can be done by properly weaving together Indigenous education, outdoor education, and indoor education. Join us at EducateUs to learn how we can use education as a tool to not only evolve society, but to prepare for our changing world. Let's get learning! Hello and welcome back to Educate Us, where we explore ideas to evolve our education system. And thank you for being here today. I'm excited for us to explore a question that is both urgent and overdue. How can we evolve our education system toward growth and change as well as prepare for a future which will look very different from today? In this episode, we explore a new model of education built around two vertically aligned learning paths, beginning in elementary and continuing all the way into young adulthood. And we'll walk through a real example of a predictable problem resulting from climate change to show how experts in science and experts in education can work together to build a generation ready to solve the problems they will inherit. If you've listened to me before, you know I'm an advocate for weaving together Indigenous, outdoor, and indoor education. If this was intentionally done, then all learning would be connected. If all learning is connected, then we can use our learning to follow both educational paths we're exploring today simultaneously. By the end of this episode, you'll understand how education can be used as a tool to evolve society itself and why this shift is not just helpful, but absolutely crucial. Let's get into it. One of the two learning paths for education to follow is that toward growth and change. This is where we evolve our system into one which is racially equitable, climate responsive, and supportive of students with trauma, ADHD, and autism, producing a society that is reflecting those values. And this is what we explored in episode one. The second path for education to follow is what I'm bringing to the conversation. Proactive prevention of predictable problems. I'll say that again. Proactive prevention of predictable problems. Because you know as well as I do, many of tomorrow's problems are not surprises. They're predictable, they're measurable, they're already unfolding. So if we know what's coming, why aren't we preparing for it? The children sitting in our classrooms today are not living in the same world they will live in as adults. They deserve to learn the knowledge and skills necessary to live in a changing world. Today's students will face rising sea levels, extreme weather, resource scarcity, ocean acidification, and complex social problems or challenges. These problems and many of their consequences are predictable. We can track them, we can prepare for them. So then the question becomes: how can we use the information scientists are giving us to prepare for the future? I'll walk us through this model of education following two learning paths by using a predictable problem, let's say sea level rising. There are, of course, many consequences of sea level rising, so we'll focus on the problem of displaced people. As sea levels rise, coastlines deteriorate, and more flooding occurs, causing one's habitable land to become uninhabitable. This means we need young adults leaving our education system with skills and abilities to relocate large populations of people into sustainable communities and people with skills to turn uninhabitable land into habitable spaces. In order to determine what those skills and abilities may be, we need a team of specialists with expertise associated with the problem. In this case of displaced people due to sea level rising, we'll need a team of climate scientists, urban planners, economists, sociologists mapping out the predictable problems. Now we do not currently have one of those, so for the sake of explaining this process, I'm going to offer the ideas of our society needing skills in agricultural design to be able to feed new and fast growing communities. Environmental engineers to create spaces without damaging the land. We'll need community and systems design skills along with analytical skills. Strong communication and social skills will be impaired. Imperative since we're dealing with people in distress. Once a team of experts associated with the problem have determined the skills and abilities needed upon leaving our educational system, the torches then pass to education. Experts in education can take that information using it to create two vertically aligned paths which provide the acquisition of those skills. Can you picture what life would be like? Having a society where people have the skills to be prepared for world problems and evolve our way of life to prevent their recurrence? What would that be like to transition from our reactive state of responding to catastrophes after the fact to a proactive state in which we plan in advance for what we know is coming thanks to scientists? This is where I'm going to interject a personal perspective. This is something that has weighed on me heavily in recent years. I often wonder why I worked so hard to provide quality science lessons for my students when we don't use the information scientists give us. I mean, what was the point? But That's why we're here. We are here to make changes. Circling back to educators, creating learning that provides the acquisition of known needed skills in a vertically aligned plan, or in other words, a series of intentional steps that send young adults into the world with skills to address the world's problems. As an educator, this is the part I love to do: taking a large, open-ended idea and breaking it down into specific steps for everyone to go from their point A to their point B. Be. Something I've noticed though when advanced words are used, like agricultural design, analytical skills, and environmental engineering are used, people tend to associate them with secondary learning, the older kids or young adults, when truly the base knowledge needed to grow and apply these skills is better learned at the elementary age. Let's go through an example of a learning experience or lesson activity, however you choose to define it, to see how beginning with our youngest learners provides us with young adults who are innovative with advanced skills in the areas society needs. One example of a learning experience would be exploring how different natural materials, including local natural materials and mamma materials and objects, interact with seawater. So exploring how different materials and objects interact with seawater. Following indigenous format, the teacher would begin by storytelling relatable information. Now I'm from the Pacific Northwest or Co Sealish territory, so I might read or tell a story involving cedar trees or seaweed, something to activate students' knowledge of materials and their uses. The purpose is set, meaning students understand the purpose of learning is to make observations about materials and their uses. The reflection following the story leads into a student discussion. About what materials they would like to explore, things they may try, how they can use what they learn, and how they'll record and share their findings. This is what we refer to as student-led learning. Students generating their own curiosities and ideas to try, guided by an intentional teacher set purpose or goal. While students are exploring how different materials and objects interact with seawater, aka working, playing, hands-on learning, they're not only gaining an understanding of their local natural materials and uses, but since they're young, their explorations intertwined fiction and reality, therefore include novel ideas. This is why we need to begin vertical alignment, our series of intentional steps, beginning at these young ages where innovation is far more easily achieved. Moving through the grades, this knowledge becomes a solidified base of which upon higher-level concepts can be built. The solidification of knowledge and concepts is something our current system struggles with due to the lack of vertical alignment. There are a lot of incredible science lessons and science units being taught in classrooms. But that's just it. There are lessons and units that simply end. Concepts are frequently returned to in later grades, however, it's not usually connected or even referenced how it was learned in a previous grade. And our system doesn't structure itself in a way in which teachers are working in vertically aligned teams or working with teachers in other grades. So in general, teachers are unassociated. with the science units and teachers who taught them from previous grades. Without this connectivity, some of the learning is lost or students don't know how to transfer the learning to other situations. Evolving our system would allow the concepts to solidify. They'll solidify because they would be gained in a well-planned, developmentally appropriate way. They'll solidify because inquiry-based hands-on learning is engaging, which creates strong emotions, which create memory, which creates learning. That is the actual formula for learning. Emotion plus memory equals learning. The concepts will solidify because the learning is collaborative, which allows for a lot of talking. We call this narrative. Kids saying out loud what they're doing, what they figured out, what they think should be tried. All of these things are a child's way of making sense of an idea so their brains know how to store it. Each time a child narrates their findings or tells their friends what happened, they are creating the repetition needed for. Long-term memory storage. In this case, for of preparing for displaced people, as students move up to the grades, they would use their knowledge of local and man-made materials and objects interacting with seawater to extend both educational paths. That toward growth and change, as well as proactively preventing a predictable problem from becoming catastrophic. Remember, the problem is relocating populations to new or existing sustainable communities. We're not preventing sea level rising. We're proactively preparing for a situation, a problem we know is coming. In this system, students practice solving real problems before they are adults in the midst of a crisis. They don't just know about climate change, they've practiced addressing it. Young adults will know how to enter society ready to address the world's needs or society's needs. I want us to pause here for a moment to think about what happens if we do not prepare for these predictable problems? What happens if we do not prepare for displaced people? What happens if we don't plan for loss of shelter, food, and water? People are biologically designed to both protect their offspring and go into survival mode when our brain detects threat. There'll be considerably more families without basic needs. What is that going to look like? Let's give a quick recap of the process we've explored. Education follows two vertically aligned paths. One toward growth and change, the second toward proactive prevention of predictable problems. These predicted problems are then analyzed by specialized teams who determine what skills are needed to address them. Then educators work their magic to provide learnings that produce these skills. More professionally put, educators create a series of intentional steps. From elementary school age through young adults that provide them with the experiences necessary to live in a changing world. Together, these two paths create a society capable of both understanding problems and solving them. In other words, society has the skills and abilities to address world problems. Now let's go one step further. And try to repeat a successful part of history, utilize knowledge from indigenous history. Systems need to outlive us in order to evolve enough to advance society. The reason indigenous education and other knowledge systems were so successful is because they continued and evolved for thousands and thousands of years. If this system that we explore today were put into place and continued after we're gone, our world's biggest problems would be reduced generation after generation because the knowledge would become more advanced generation after generation. Not to sound too teetery, but I would like to compliment you on going through this idea of two paths for education to follow, because it is a brand new concept and it is abstract at this point. I appreciate you taking the time to really think about it and invite you to share the concept with others. You can continue to follow along on this evolution of education journey, as well as tangent topics about missing history, child development, and social change. by following my podcast on Apple or Spotify or subscribing to my YouTube channel as well as getting extra tidbits on Instagram. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you again very soon. Bye!