I was honoured to be a featured speaker at the IDEACon/TCEA conference last weekend. In one of my sessions, Empowering students to be digital leaders, I used my LEAD framework as an organizer, and I decided to use a sample activity: a four-hats approach for engaging in multiple perspectives. It’s an idea I first got from Julie Millan, an educator in Toronto, and which I shared in my book Social LEADia.
The example I used with participants was, coming back to in-person learning. I divided participants up into four different groups: a) Parent who is struggling to find care for their child; b) Student who is doing well in a virtual environment; c) Politician who is getting pressure to open schools d) Director who is seeing student failure rates go up.
Participants had to respond in role: I am a parent who…, and in my opinion… Many of the participants commented on how much they appreciated being able to engage in this activity. This is also a topic that is or has been on the minds of many of us as governments push to have students back in face to face learning.
It was something I thought about as I spoke to my mom and my sisters on FaceTime the other day. Both my sisters have been working this entire year (can you believe it’s been almost a whole year?). They work in the automotive industry, and strangely, that has been defined as essential here in Ontario. One of my sisters is a single mom, who has had a really tough time managing working full time with helping my niece with school work, while also managing all of the regular things she has to deal with that I never had to (shovelling the snow, making all meals, grocery shopping, etc…) While I try to quell the rising panic of going to school with increased PPE, their perspective was one of relief that their kids would be back at school and my nieces and nephews are excited to get out to see their friends. Some of my students, however, are not being allowed to go to school because their parents don’t feel comfortable or safe sending them.
There are no right answers in any of this. This week is going to be really tough, for everyone. As well, the experience of Covid and how it has impacted families will come into play here. Looking at the various perspectives helps to keep my own anxiety and fear in check as it allows me to empathize with others.
None of this is easy. When I have had my students use the 4 hats activity, they found it really tough to empathize with a position with which they actually didn’t agree. I feel like taking on multiple perspectives for a variety of topics, and often, will help our students to develop empathy skills. And I feel like in this case, so many of our kids will be pulled in a variety of ways.
Here’s a link to my Google Draw template in case you would like to modify this for your own context.
Good luck this week!