Scott Jamieson: There we go
Scott Jamieson: welcome to the empathy, to impact, podcast really excited, to be connecting with a student that I met recently at the beyond the future change. Mayor Conference at Aisb, in Budapest, to talk about her work as a changemaker.
Scott Jamieson: and learn a little bit more about her experience at the conference, and what has motivated her to be a change maker and on a change maker journey with the work she's doing at her school. So I'm going to introduce Ray and pass things over to her to say, Hi! Before we get started.
Shirley Winter: Hi! I'm Rae. I am a grade. 8 student.
Shirley Winter: I am 14, and I'm super super excited for this opportunity.
Scott Jamieson: Rae, tell us your personal change maker story. How did you get involved in being a change maker and doing this kind of work? What inspired you.
Shirley Winter: There's been just so many things I've been blessed enough to be able to have parents who have a job that allow us to travel all over the world. So I've been exposed to so many different perspectives and just ways of life that I feel like have really widened my perspectives about the world and has have just allowed me to gain more empathy and just
Shirley Winter: film.
Shirley Winter: Just want to be more inclusive and make the world better for each person here. I've had so many amazing schools that have allowed me to chase that dream, and I've
Shirley Winter: done it from so many different approaches. I've tried now I try to focus on more of an Lgbtq perspective as well as a mental health perspective. But I am open to all platforms, and have worked with almost all the platforms.
Scott Jamieson: I remember when we met, you talked about your passion for Lgbtq communities and your work at your own school to start a Pride club there. Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Shirley Winter: Well, I am a part of an Ib school, meaning that we have these huge projects. And for 8th grade we actually have a community project, and even in the 7th grade I knew what I really wanted to do was
Shirley Winter: start a Middle School Pride Club, because my school is blessed enough to have a High School Pride club, but we had a Middle School Pride club in the year that I started brainstorming, creating one. However, it went downhill, and I have had many meetings with the previous leader.
Shirley Winter: and we've discussed, and we think it would be a really cool thing to start it again. So in my 8th grade community project, when I was kindly given time in school, I just started workshopping the idea, planning some dates, some supervisors, and we have officially started it. We've had
Shirley Winter: 6 or 7 meetings so far. We do it during lunchtime in a rotation in our schedule, and we do some really cool stuff like we read news stories. We have some overall discussions about some big topics, and then we also have some fun stuff like we just made stickers in our last meeting, and we've shared music that we really love. And it's been so cool to see all these different perspectives.
Scott Jamieson: Can you repeat that last little part for me so cool to see all these different perspectives? My, my Internet legs.
Shirley Winter: That's okay. It has been so cool to see all these different perspectives from all these different kids with such cool backgrounds.
Scott Jamieson: It sounds like such an amazing community and a really safe space that you've created at your school.
Scott Jamieson: What were some things that you had to learn, as you're thinking about starting up this club to allow this to be successful.
Shirley Winter: There were a lot. We ran into a lot of challenges. But for me, specifically, I'm a very independent person.
Shirley Winter: and I like working on my own, and I've in the past felt as though some people have held me back from reaching my true potential of change making.
Shirley Winter: And that is the fault of my own. I
Shirley Winter: needed a lot of help to get this club running. I worked with 2 amazing teachers, and we have, and so many more on the side. And we've managed. And that was just a big challenge for me is learning how to work with other people to make my goal possible, and working with as well the students in the Pride Club. I've managed to work with them to make some stuff they would love and enjoy, and again to feel inclusive.
Scott Jamieson: Are these things that you see being beneficial as you move into high school.
Shirley Winter: Definitely. I've my older sister. I love her so much. Her name is Joy, and she has told me some great things about high school, and also some horror stories, and she said that the entire time she's had her friends by her side, and her teachers, and as well as her family, and I think
Shirley Winter: learning that I need as much help as I can get
Shirley Winter: has been really beneficial, and I think that will help me a lot in high school.
Scott Jamieson: So you're in grade 8 right now. And doing this, it's part of your community project, you know.
Scott Jamieson: obviously with the hope of living beyond the community project be something that continues in the middle school for students in your school community.
Scott Jamieson: How
Scott Jamieson: is this going to be sustainable? How are we going to pass the torch for this club as you move into grade 9.
Shirley Winter: I would love to continue hosting it. The community project has actually ended a couple months ago, and I've still been hosting it regularly. There's been some bumps in the road. There's been a lot of scheduling conflicts, but we've managed to keep it going, and I think that'll only increase with High school I've been discussing with teachers, and I've been discussing with the members of the Pride Club.
Shirley Winter: and I will continue to run it next year. I'll just work around my lunchtimes, and maybe have to skip a class or 2 to make it work. But I'm really excited, and I will actually be leaving the school at the end of 9th grade, and I've been discussing with some students who will be staying and are a part of the club right now who might want to take on the torch and continue running this awesome club.
Scott Jamieson: I hope so. That's often a challenge we face in schools as student leaders move from division to division, from grade level to grade level, and then ultimately graduate and thinking about how we cultivate leadership in schools and be able to kind of have those smooth transitions, I think, is something that's really important.
Scott Jamieson: When we met in Budapest you talked a lot about your passion for creating inclusive communities. What are some other things that you've been up to at your school. I remember there was fountain Fridays supporting people who are leaving, which is a big issue in international schools. Can you tell us about some of the other things you're involved with at your school. That kind of connect back to this importance of inclusive communities.
Shirley Winter: Definitely, I think inclusivity is one of the biggest problems in our world. We see so much issues with race, sexual orientation gender. And I just wish that our world could just be more peaceful and inclusive towards everyone, instead of just having this set goal and parameters for how somebody should be and act.
Shirley Winter: And I just. And I really want to make a change. So in school, specifically.
Shirley Winter: as you said I've been doing. I've been working with a teacher with Falcon Fridays. This teacher. She is a Spanish teacher at my school. Her name is Maesta Mariana, and I've been working with her for the past year, and over that she has started this I'm not totally sure when, but every
Shirley Winter: but it's called Falcon Fridays, and every Friday morning she
Shirley Winter: brings out a giant speaker, some candy, and our school mascot, Frankie the falcon.
Shirley Winter: to dance with younger students and to high 5 older ones.
Shirley Winter: give out candy we bring. We play some games this Friday. We actually brought out a cornhole, and we did some cornhole toss, and I've been lucky enough to be able to don the suit, suggest some ideas for holidays like Valentine's, and I've been able to work with her for this, but it's truly mostly her, and she's done a wonderful job, and I think it's so important to build school spirit and just have that one last
Shirley Winter: helping hand to get you through the end of the week, and I think that's super cool, that we are able to do that, and have been given permission to do that.
Scott Jamieson: I think that. Yeah, it does a lot. These small acts sometimes at the beginning of the school day or during your week, as the week's feeling long just to kind of re-energize and feel like we have this place of belonging in our school community, and these little things can often mean a lot to students, especially those who are maybe struggling to fit in a little bit at school and having a space to get together and build relationships and build school spirit. I love that.
Scott Jamieson: Talk to you about students who are leaving. This is an issue in all international schools. We have people who stay behind. We have people who leave. We have very transient communities in a lot of international schools around the world.
Scott Jamieson: How has this been an issue that you identified as someone who has moved a lot. And how is it? How are you helping your school community to navigate this challenge?
Shirley Winter: Well, leaving is such a difficult transition. I've been lucky enough to travel, and that's always been something. Adults have been sure to tell me that you're so lucky you get this opportunity to move, and of course, now that I'm older I can see that, however, I also can see
Shirley Winter: how detrimental it has been. It's impacted my mental health in a way I didn't think it could
Shirley Winter: and I really miss some of my old schools. But I'm also super happy to be in new schools, and this school specifically has been so supportive towards me, transitioning here.
Shirley Winter: Something I loved that my not last school. But the school before last did was give out water bottles and a lever just journal, and this little journal, it had a special customized logo and everything, and we'd get to write
Shirley Winter: special notes for levers, and I thought that was always so so special, and unfortunately due to Covid. There were some mishaps, and I did not get my journal, and I've always been so sad about that. But I really wanted to try to make something special like that for the school. Our school did something where they gave out a PE t-shirt, because we have special PE T-shirts
Shirley Winter: to leave your students and have them signed by everyone in the grade, and I thought that was really cool except
Shirley Winter: I've except they are a PE teacher. Everyone has a PE t-shirt, and I was lucky enough to join a school elective called Change Makers and school leaders, and
Shirley Winter: I've been able to work with these great students and our great counselor to create these new, really cool T-shirts
Shirley Winter: for specifically designed for levers, we've been able to contact the High School Division, the Middle School division and the primary school division, just to ask the students specifically to design the shirts. We haven't yet decided on designs for each of the divisions, but they've designed some really cool, inclusive things, and we're going to continue the signing shirt.
Shirley Winter: Tradition, just with a little more.
Shirley Winter: just in a more special way, in a more inclusive way to make sure. Students really know that they belong, and we are sorry to see them go.
Scott Jamieson: I love that. There's student voice in this in the design of the shirt. And this really is something that's for students. It's gonna be something that's really meaningful to them, something that's really cool. I'm going to give a quick shout out to one of our partners at inspire citizens. They're called span, which stands for safe passages across networks. So if you are listening and wondering about resources
Scott Jamieson: for transitions and navigating transitions in your school community, I would encourage you to reach out to them. I'm going to drop their link in the show notes so you can check them out. They do some really amazing work when we think about transitions for the people who are leaving, and also the people who are staying behind who are losing their friends as well. This is really a big issue and something the schools need to focus on.
Scott Jamieson: You talked about being in a Changemaker Club, and I want to shift gears a little bit to the conference that members of your Changemaker Club get to attend in Budapest back in March of 2025.
Scott Jamieson: Tell me a little bit about how your school got involved, and your experience when you went to the conference.
Shirley Winter: That is such a great question, because I love the Change Makers Conference. It truly just sparked so many ideas for me. I was luckily enough to go there last year as well where it was hosted in Munich, and that was the 1st time our school joined. It's had 3 meetings so far, I believe, and we were lucky enough to be able to join the second
Shirley Winter: and each time our school has brought a very small division of students who
Shirley Winter: are just really passionate about change making, and
Shirley Winter: both conferences have been so so cool.
Shirley Winter: I've been lucky enough to meet you at the conference, and it's been so so cool, and we've been able to just be so inspired by it. Our school has had a little difficulty organizing everything, but all the teachers and organizers have worked so hard to make it possible for us to go there.
Shirley Winter: and I am so grateful that we did. I got back and was telling everyone that it was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to meet some awesome people and be so inspired to make change. It was my favorite part specifically, was seeing all these different approaches to change. Because we in school.
Shirley Winter: if we are lucky enough to be an Ib school or a school that allows for change are given a specific structure. This is how to make change. Follow this. It'll help you. And of course it does help some students, and it's let so many different students that I know spark their spark and just fly.
Shirley Winter: However, I found it a little restricting, because I'm a very. I'm a person who needs to feel it out, but also be super organized. And this
Shirley Winter: structure that they gave didn't really help me. But I got to go to the conference and see so many people's change start in so many different ways. Some people were started by school structures and new school structures like smart goals. And some people just started something simply without change, without scheduling it out and thinking about it too much. And now it's some big corporation.
Shirley Winter: or they've raised so much money for such an important cause, and it's so so cool to see
Shirley Winter: how everybody can make change in their own way.
Scott Jamieson: Absolutely I. This is my 1st time attending the conference in person. I've been involved a little bit behind the scenes in the previous conferences in Frankfurt and Munich, and it was such an amazing experience to be there and feel the energy with so many students, and it was 10 different schools from around the region in Central Europe.
Scott Jamieson: and coming together with students who are passionate about making the world just a little bit better, and opportunities for workshops to build some skills and get some tools and frameworks to support that.
Scott Jamieson: but also just a space to connect with other students who are passionate about similar things and ideate around different ideas they could take back to their school.
Scott Jamieson: I really enjoy facilitating workshops there, but my favorite part of the conference was Saturday, when we're all together in the big space we're sitting at tables, we're talking. We're collaborating. Everyone's kind of coming up with their own action plans based on some of the inspirations they've had at the conference. It can be building on ideas they already had, or maybe sparking new ideas that you're talking about and just being able to go around and talking to different students about some of the work that they were aspiring to do was so so inspiring for me.
Scott Jamieson: What would you tell schools who maybe are thinking about? The next year's conference is going to be in March 2026 in Dusseldorf?
Scott Jamieson: What would you tell schools who maybe have not experienced the commerce before about maybe why, they might attend next year.
Shirley Winter: But I there's so many I have a I could write you an entire essay about you should. Why every school should come.
Shirley Winter: and
Shirley Winter: the main thing is just come. See for yourself, and it's been so so cool. We've been able to do accomplish so much through these conferences, and it's been able to foster such great change.
Shirley Winter: There have been kids that I talked to who had, who got inspired from the previous solutionary summit or change Maker conference. And then in this Changemaker conference, they were able to talk about how they accomplished it, and actually made that change that sparked there.
Shirley Winter: and our school started off with a small delegation, which I think is a good idea, because we were a little unorganized, but we managed to make it work, and all of us. Every single person in that delegation managed to create a really cool change maker project called Earth Week, which we are actually hosting.
Shirley Winter: Next week at our school where we're gonna help students throughout our school just learn how to heal the earth and just be a little inspired like we were at the Changemaker Conference.
Shirley Winter: and it's so so cool to just know that.
Shirley Winter: The Changemaker Conference last year sparked that, and that now I can spark new things and spark other minds, and I know I'm saying spark a lot. But truly that's the main goal of the solutionary summit to spark a flame. And that's what really happened for me.
Scott Jamieson: Absolutely I couldn't agree more. And I remember that was something we talked about at the conference as well. You're really passionate about the environment as well. And Earth week is coming up as we record this coming up next week. Tell me a little bit more about your Changemaker Club is involved in for that at your school.
Shirley Winter: Well, we have been working on it since last year. We've been coordinating a lot with our principal, and it's been me and another lovely girl named Millie, who've been working on it. We've also, of course, had help from our previous delegation, but
Shirley Winter: and also another lovely girl named Leila, and we've been all working together to create just a week's worth of activities. And it's fluctuated a lot we originally planned for just one day in the week. Then 2 days in the week. Then it changed a lot. And now we were given
Shirley Winter: about 20 min each day to
Shirley Winter: do some fun little activities, and then we've also been given about a half an hour in what we call a Cg. Which is a community gathering where the entire grade level, the middle school grade level comes together and just gets to talk and listen to the new things that are going on in our school, and we've been given some time in that to play some really fun games involving the Earth and
Shirley Winter: go over all our activities where we needed to start small. Our original goal was to celebrate Earth Week throughout the entire school. But that was a big project for less than a year. So we decided to scale it down to just have some 20 min in each of the mornings, and
Shirley Winter: to try to just get people to hear what's going on. We've had some really cool ideas. For example, we're doing a can you reach net 0 game to try and see, teach kids how hard it is to actually reach net 0 and get to this goal of 20 of the
Shirley Winter: of turning down global warming and climate change by 2050. But
Shirley Winter: and I really hope that it inspires some minds, and allows people to just learn what they can do, but also learn how hard it is, and why people are so passionate about making change.
Scott Jamieson: You're right. It's not easy to be a change maker, and we need to have resilience and perseverance when things get tough. I think that's why it's so important to connect to an issue you're passionate about. So that's what I love about this initiative where you're helping people to kind of find their passion, find something that they connect with around the theme of Earth Week.
Scott Jamieson: and helping them to become more deeply aware of that. We've got a planning tool called empathy to impact. Where we think about, what do we care about? How do we become more deeply aware? What skills, what knowledge do we need to be able
Scott Jamieson: to have a positive impact in the world. And this is exactly the flow of your week, like thinking about, how do we get people more aware of some of these issues and empower them to take action themselves and become change makers. So I think that's really really cool.
Scott Jamieson: I also love. How throughout this conversation you've really been focused on gratitude.
Scott Jamieson: whether it's for other students you're working with, or your teachers or your family. And looking at all these people that you have to be grateful to, and I'd love how you've been able to express that throughout our conversation.
Scott Jamieson: Ray, is there anything else you'd like to share that. I haven't asked the right question to allow you to share with our podcast listeners.
Shirley Winter: I think you've given me such a cool chance. And now I'm on my own to say something. And I was thinking about coming onto this podcast and what I really wanted to preach to the world and just get people to start thinking about. And I think the main thing. I want to just make sure. People know is that there's so many approaches to change, and there's so many different ways you can be inspired.
Shirley Winter: I was from a really young age. I was always thinking about change in other people.
Shirley Winter: There are 2 specific moments that sparked my change-making journey, and 1st was I was in a small kindergarten preschool in Brazil.
Shirley Winter: and I had a really awesome best friend named Mia, and we would hang out every day, and we were just sitting in a corner of the classroom, brainstorming what our future lives would be, and who we would marry, and as little kids do. And one of my amazing preschool teachers came up to me and was just like, Oh, you 2 could marry each other.
Shirley Winter: and that was the 1st time I was exposed to just the same gender being together in a relationship. And I
Shirley Winter: kind of grew up with that thought that oh, it was fine, and not until I got to different schools and different countries that I saw that
Shirley Winter: wait. This isn't too normal, and I just kind of saw that not everybody thinks that way. And I that kind of broke my heart.
Shirley Winter: I am a part of the queer community, and I try to make sure it's such an inclusive place, and I think it's so heartbreaking that not everybody thinks the same way. And I think if we are able to just be exactly like my preschool teacher, just let people know that it's okay. It's not hurting anybody, and it's certainly not hurting me.
Shirley Winter: And
Shirley Winter: that's really cool that she was able to teach me that. And I really want to help people know that the queer community we're not hurting anybody, and that we, if we are able to just raise every kid and even teach every elder that the queer community we're okay. And we're normal. We're just like everybody else. And I think
Shirley Winter: that's a really big thing. I want to say as well as just make change in your own way. I made change by through school projects, and I sparked change through some crazy thought I had, and now I'm running with it.
Shirley Winter: and I'm super excited that I was able to do that, and I hope that everyone is able to take something from what I say and take something from your awesome podcast to just realize I can make change. And it doesn't have to be big. And it definitely doesn't have to be small.
Scott Jamieson: Beautifully said. I think you're absolutely right. It is heartbreaking that people have to
Scott Jamieson: live in a place where they can't be themselves, and I think the more we can do to build inclusive communities and support people in our communities to understand that you're absolutely right, like no one's doing any harm here, and people are living their life as themselves, and that's what everyone should have the right to do.
Shirley Winter: Oh, I think.
Scott Jamieson: You articulated that so beautifully. Thank you so much, and thank you for being such an amazing guest on our podcast it's been so great to be able to connect with you at the conference, and then just be able to follow up with this conversation, and I'm excited to see what happens next, whether it's next year or your new school. I'm sure there's a lot of change ahead with you leading the way.
Shirley Winter: Thank you so much. This has been such a great opportunity. And you've sparked so much change. And I think your podcast is so incredible and just
Shirley Winter: your inspire citizens overall. And I only heard about it at the Change Makers Conference. And I've done more research into it to lead up to this podcast and it's so so cool. And it's such an awesome organization. And I hope I can accomplish as much as you and your team has as I grow older.
Scott Jamieson: Thank you for your kind words. We are definitely grateful for the opportunity that we have and our team. We all love what we do and love being able to inspire students and work with whole schools, to design whole school programs, to create a space for students, to to be the change that we want to see in the world. So thanks so much, I really appreciate having you on the podcast.
Shirley Winter: Thank you so much.
Scott Jamieson: And gonna turn off the recording.
Scott Jamieson: There we go.