This blog is about my Global Dignity Day experience at my old high school, R. H. King Academy, on October 20^th, 2011.

My 40-minute Global Dignity presentation was scheduled to be in the library with two classes of grade nine students.  Before jumping into anything, I took the advice of Mike Layton (whom I met just a few days earlier at a Civic Engagement Network conference) and tried to build a connection with the students first by telling them my life story; milestones that shaped who I am today.  I mentioned my grade six teacher who changed me for the better by showing me compassion instead of frustration (I was quite the trouble maker in elementary school!).  I also told them about my experience as a grade nine student; how I hated it because I was shy, had very few friends and was too nervous to talk to girls.  But then high school got better as I got more involved with clubs and student council.  It wasn’t because I had more friends but because I felt like I had a purpose at the school.  Then I told them about university at McMaster and how, if it wasn’t for peer support and group work, I might not have made it past 2^nd year in the Physics and Astronomy program.  I finished off my story with my experience at OISE and how it led me to TakingITGlobal.  Mike Layton was right!  By opening up and showing them that I was nothing special, just a regular person like them with passions and limitations, they felt comfortable doing the same and sharing their thoughts with me.

After this initial icebreaker, I jumped into a group activity.  The students were already seated in groups of 4-6 people so I handed out a piece of flip chart paper and markers for each group and asked them to work together and come up with two things:

1. What does dignity mean to your group?
2. Write down a story that you know of where a person did something to make someone else’s life better

I then had one person from each group (there were 11 groups in total) come up to the front to present their group’s work.  In the days leading up to Global Dignity Day, I was told by a couple of people that starting with this activity might be tough because, since dignity is a difficult word to define, the grade nine students might not be able to come up with much.  I decided to start with it anyways because I didn’t want to influence them by telling them my version of what dignity is first; I wanted to hear their fresh and objective thoughts and it turned out great!  The presentations were amazing!  A quote from Shunryu Suzuki’s book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” effectively captures the lesson I learned from this activity:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”

Had I discussed the concept of dignity and shown them the Global Dignity Day video before asking them to participate in this activity, I might have ended up with 11 similar responses.  Instead, allowing them to think for themselves and work together resulted in 11 significantly different definitions and stories.  This is an example of why I think it’s important to have faith in the potential of young minds (especially when they’re in groups); I ended up learned a lot today because I gave them the chance to speak their minds, rather than trying to get them to regurgitate something.

So I came to the school expecting to teach the students something but they ended up teaching me a lot too.  Here’s another example.  At some point in my talk I told them about how I feel sad and a bit hopeless sometimes because there are so many world issues that I care about that it makes the problems seem so large.  Sometimes I secretly question how much one person can do; it’s something I struggle with on and off.  After my presentation, a girl came up to me and told me “I totally know what you mean but you shouldn’t look at it that way.  Sure there are a lot of problems in the world but there are also a lot of good people who do good things too, you should focus on that.”  Her words had such a big impact on me.  It’s one of those things that you think you know but you never fully process; obviously I know that there are good people in the world and that it’s more productive to focus on them, but it just didn’t click until she pointed it out.

I also learned an important lesson about the process of teaching and learning.  Up until now, I had prepared for lessons by carefully creating lesson plans and practicing them at home so that I always knew what came next.  I tried a different approach on Global Dignity Day though.  During the student presentations, I glanced at my watch and noticed that they were taking up quite a bit of time and that I wouldn’t be able to show them the rest of the presentation that I prepared.  They were so engaged though!  So instead of rushing them for the sake of having the talk go the way I expected, I embraced what was happening and just had fun with them.  At the end I had students who shook my hand, asked the librarian to take a picture with me and stayed afterwards to talk to me (I was probably at the library for another 30 minutes!).  So, the other thing I realized today was that learning can never be fully planned for because it doesn’t always follow some predictable structure; learning unfolds in its own way.  This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a plan, but just that we should be prepared to throw it out the window once we step into the classroom. 

Since R. H. King was not able to organize an assembly for Global Dignity Day due to conflicting school events, the wonderful school librarian organized a poetry cafe after school that I wanted to stay for.  About 10 poems on the topic of dignity were read by students and once they were finished, something really interesting happened.  One of the students asked the group if they wanted to tell more dignity stories!  So, just as it happened in the morning, students were once again sharing stories of how people were making other people’s lives better.

I think that being present is such a simple yet important part of teaching.  Often times when we’re planning and thinking about our personal agendas, we miss out on the many opportunities and conversations that make life so rich.  Being present allows us to respond to the needs of the people we work with as well as truly hear what they have to say.  Although I only used about 60% of the presentation that I prepared, what resulted was 10 times more fun and inspirational than I had hoped.