Empowering Students to be Agents of Change - Battery Blitz

Yesterday, the Earth Rangers came to our school. It was an incredibly exciting presentation. It was also a call to action. Many of our students felt compelled to sign up with the Earth Rangers after seeing that presentation. The Earth Rangers are working hard to "Bring Back the Wild" and save our biodiversity.

The Earth Rangers  suggested that we can help our endangered species by protecting their habitats. They have a campaign on right now called the Battery Blitz Mission  to help dispose of batteries safely and keep them out of landfills.

Some of our Grade Six students were so empowered by this call to action, that they went home, created a flyer, and passed it out in their neighbourhood. They collected 159 batteries in less than 24hrs! Isn't it an amazing flyer?

We are learning to teach through inquiry in our school. But I think teaching through inquiry is just one thread in a much larger tapestry. I wish we were learning how to empower our students to have agency! Inquiry is one way to put our students in the driver's seat of their own learning. But it is not the only way. Some people feel the goal of teaching through inquiry is to keep students engaged in their learning. I don't think so, I think the goal of inquiry is to empower our students to recognize that they have power, or agency, that what they do and think matters, and that they can make a difference.

Students need to believe that when they don't understand something, or when they are stuck on a problem, there is something they can do about it. They are not helpless. They have the power to change their misunderstanding into understanding. They can get help or they can help themselves. There is always something they can do. We need to teach them that. We need to teach them how to be learners.

Once they recognize that they are in charge of their own learning, they become empowered to be agents of change in the world in which we live.

The Grade Six teacher was so excited when her students showed her their flyer. These students took what they have learned in school and applied it for a real purpose to solve an authentic problem in our world. And they did it on their own, not because someone told them they had to. They were autonomous, they had purpose, and they believed they could master the task. As Daniel Pink says, that is all they needed to feel the drive to get things done!

Inquiry is a powerful way to engage our students, but connecting an inquiry to a real-world problem that they can help solve empowers our students and provides purpose for the learning we ask them to do.