Empowerment Through Student Agency: Storytelling for a Better World

Guiding Question:

• How might we empower our students, beyond personal projects, to have a greater say in their learning through increased student agency.

Key Takeaways:

• Student agency and the importance of learning experiences, like personal projects, to create opportunities for students to explore different interests outside of the curriculum.
• Raising awareness of complex issues, like child labor, and child trafficking, that are difficult topics to navigate, but important to understand for even our youngest learners in school.
• Turning learning, research, storytelling and navigating the publishing process into a children’s book to educate children in our community.

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• At the time of publishing I don’t have information on how to purchase Kweku’s Brave Choice: A Story of Courage and Hope, but I will update here when it’s available. Stay tuned.
• Learn more about how Inspire Citizens co-designs customized student leadership and changemakers programs
• Connect with more stories from the Inspire Citizens network in our vignettes
• Measuring the IMPACT of Service Learning projects and initiatives 
• Access free resources for global citizenship education
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• Share on social media using #EmpathytoImpact

Episode Summary 

On this episode, I meet Maria Bella, a high school student from Lincoln Community School in Accra, Ghana. As part of her studies, Maria Bella learned about child trafficking, and child labor, a complex issue that impacts her local community. She is passionate about humanitarian work, and chose to dedicate her work for her personal project to creating a children’s book to educate local children about this important issue. Join me, as we explore her journey to becoming a published author and shall she use this opportunity to further her learning as a humanitarian and set her sites on a potential career path. 

Discover a transformative podcast on education and learning from a student perspective and student voice, exploring media, media literacy, and media production to inspire citizens in schools through a media lab focused on 21st-century learning, empathy to impact, Global citizenship, collaboration, systems thinking, service learning, PBL, CAS, MYP, PYP, DP, Service as Action, futures thinking, project-based learning, sustainability, well-being, harmony with nature, community engagement, experiential learning, and the role of teachers and teaching in fostering well-being and a better future.