When a Learner's Question Leaves the Classroom

​In one of my school's we taught about the impact of coal, oil, and gas on the environment.  As we progressed through the unit, we discussed how people either harvested rainforests for their resources and burned them down to graze cattle.  We researched that the land that was once lush rainforest became a desert within five years due poor soil composition. 

This broke my little 4th graders hearts.  They couldn't believe that people would cut down beautiful rainforests to graise cattle.  When we explored the impact of methane gas, this took them over the edge.  

Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by an irate parent.  They did not appreciate that I told their daughter to become a vegitarian.  This comment stopped me in my tracks.  When had I ever advised anyone on their dietary requirements?  I was puzzled. 

The parent relayed a story where the young girl was so impacted by our learning that she made a personal boycott of all beef products.  When the family went through the McDonald's drive-thru, she refused to order anything.  She was becoming a vegetarian, because of the harm cows were putting onto the environment. 

This is the power of inquiry.  It provokes us to feel something to make lasting change that goes beyond the classroom.  This is what we hope will happen as learners leave our doors. 

How do we create these situations to naturally occur? 

We provoke.  We  compel.  We make our learners feel something so big that it cannot be contained.  Then, we go within and beyond our borders.  

As we are learning content, how do we get our learners to think about the issue or idea within their local community?  How do we take something like poetry and give it relevance to a third grader?  We get them to see where poetry lives in the world through songs, jingles, and other uses of figurative language.  We expose them to multiple versions of the same poem from people with different life stories and cultural backgrounds. This is where the voice of the poetry comes to life.  

Providing a single story of an issue, problem, situation, or viewpoint is boring.  The depth of learning comes when we are seeking out patterns. 

• How do others see this idea who are just like me?
• How do others that live in the same region as me express it?
• How do others who live in my same country feel about it? 
• How do others in neighboring countries show it?
• How do others in faraway places do it similiarly?
• How do multiple points of view help us to see it differently?

Now we are bridging from just my point of view to our shared perspective.  What will you do to invite local and global connections into your teaching?  Are you reading for an irate parent to call you to respond to your teaching? 

To be honest, it was a bit shocking, but afterwards it made me smile.  I had provoked a child to think and act on their own.  This is what teaching is all about.