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Empathy to Impact is a podcast designed for educators dedicated to global citizenship education. We explore themes of sustainability, service learning, student leadership, and community engagement, empowering students to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.
While educators grasp the “why” and “what” of global citizenship, this podcast delves into the “how”. Through engaging storytelling and student voices, we provide authentic connections to curriculum, and showcase practical tools and frameworks that you can implement in your classroom.
By viewing learning experiences through the lens of Empathy to Impact, we can inspire students to take meaningful steps toward becoming global citizens and transform the culture of education in our schools.
Join us as we amplify the voices and stories of students who take ownership of their learning and make a difference in their communities.
This podcast is brought to you by Inspire Citizens.
Scott Jamieson: Welcome to the Empathy to Impact Podcast.
Scott Jamieson: I am visiting a friend in Sharjah in the UAE today, and we're doing something on the podcast that we don't do very often. We are letting an adult be a guest on the Empathy to Impact podcast, which I am very excited about today to talk to Simon Lightman from the Flourish Project.
Scott Jamieson: A little bit of background, the Flourish Project is an international nonprofit initiative and systems thinking collective dedicated to transforming how society nurtures human potential and well-being from early childhood onward.
Scott Jamieson: I first discovered them through their dedicated early years adaptations of the UN Sustainability Development Goals and the Inner Development Goals. With these resources, the Flourish Project helps educators, families, and policymakers cultivate emotional security
Scott Jamieson: Relational intelligence and planetary stewardship in children from the very start of life.
Scott Jamieson: Its ultimate vision is to shift global priorities towards systemic ecological well-being and child flourishing. Simon, super excited to have you on the podcast today. Why don't you say a quick hello to our listeners, and introduce yourself.
Simon: Yeah, no, absolutely great to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation, Scott. I need to push back on one thing you said there at the beginning. You introduced me as an adult on the podcast. I'm sure there's a lot of people who, in my life, who… who might push back strongly against that framing, but I guess I… I guess I do fit that mold. Although, we did a project with the City of
Simon: London Youth Natural Environment Board.
Simon: Alongside the Commonwealth.
Simon: And it was a youth photography sustainability thing. And they, they, they measure youth as anyone up to the age of 30.
Simon: And I was like, okay, that's… that's quite a big stretch to call it youth, but these are all just terms, but no, absolutely, really, really happy to be here. You know, I just want to say something. I've been following your guys' work for a long time.
Simon: you know, you and Aaron and the rest of the team, you are doing amazing things, and, you know, I've got a lot of inspiration from following you guys on social media, I'm glad that we've actually been able to connect now, I'm looking forward to, kind of.
Simon: You know, the opportunity to potentially work with you guys a little bit more in the future, and learn more about what you're doing, but it's really, really a pleasure to be here on the podcast.
Scott Jamieson: Thank you so much for those kind words, and yeah, we've, I think, mutually been inspiring each other for some time now, and just recently kind of connected in person, and that's really exciting, and yeah, hopefully some cool collaborations moving forward.
Scott Jamieson: But Simon, what originally brought you to this work? What brought you to the Flourish Project and connecting these important topics to some of our youngest learners?
Simon: Yeah, so… so my background is in international education. I'm a, you know, a humanities, philosophy, politics, theory of knowledge IB teacher, but…
Simon: I guess through that lived practice, over time, my work has increasingly moved towards
Simon: A set of questions about the very nature and purpose of education.
Simon: As you said, I'm currently here, based in Sharjah, just moved here 3 weeks ago, and I'm head of humanities at an amazing international school called the Victoria International School of Sharjah. However, alongside that practice-focused work, I also…
Simon: More and more conduct work across global citizenship, sustainability, youth agency, educational transformation, etc.
Simon: And as part of that, a lot of my writing is starting to focus more and more on
Simon: The kinds of people and relationships education is helping to produce, particularly in the context of
Simon: the ecological crisis, the issues of inequality we see in our world, and the political uncertainty, you know? These things which are part of the wider systemic changes which, you know, all of us are starting to really notice.
Simon: At every level. So, a big part of that is the Flourish Project, where I'm the director of the Learning Lab.
Simon: you kind of hit the nail on the head on what we are. So, we are a UK-based, but globally focused social enterprise, working around the world on human and planetary flourishing.
Simon: The initiative, the Flourish Project, is founded in the work of my friend and colleague, Wendy, Wendy Elliott, who has been working within this area for many, many decades.
Simon: And… At the heart of it is the ESF, the Ecosystemic Flourishing Framework.
Simon: And… I guess…
Simon: the word flourishing is on lots of people's lips in education at the moment, you know? The IB's talking about it a lot,
Simon: You know, it's very much in vogue.
Simon: And that makes me happy, because I do think that it speaks to a shift in education where we're trying to kind of move forward a little bit and think about things differently.
Simon: But…
Simon: Our framework really tries to look at the idea of human flourishing as being inseparable from the systems and relationships
Simon: In which we are embedded.
Simon: I could go on, but I'm quite aware that I'm somebody who, if you ask me a question, I could just keep talking in a monologue, so I'm going to stop there for a second and just see if you've got anything to say.
Scott Jamieson: That's great, and I love that idea of just those connections between, like, humans and our planet, and those inseparable connections, and how do we…
Scott Jamieson: help people more deeply understand how that fits together and how that connects to flourishing. I think that's… I think that's a great work, and I think if we can find ways…
Scott Jamieson: to help us to flourish, and maybe that looks a little bit different for different people. I think that's what's kind of cool about that.
Simon: Yeah, 100%. And, you know, frameworks are our way… a lens. They're a lens to help us make sense of the world, right?
Simon: So our lens identifies four interconnected domains, so we talk about Human capacity and potential.
Simon: We talk about cultural values and identity.
Simon: We think about our relationship with the natural world and the idea of ecological belonging.
Simon: And… We think about the wider
Simon: kind of systems and conditions that shape people's lives. So, you know, we all sit within economic systems, social systems, various governance structures, etc. And all of these things are different lenses, which obviously are interconnected. So, we
Simon: this framework helps us to explore those through seven, different… well, once again, lenses, I guess. So we have the lens of security, so what makes you safe, and how do you understand that safety?
Simon: As a little aside, I'll just… just jump on that one, actually, because the word safe has been in my mind a lot yet, the last few days. I've had my first week at my new school.
Simon: And I was just chatting to a colleague yesterday.
Simon: And after my first week here, I said to her.
Simon: This school is wonderful because people feel safe.
Simon: like, the students clearly feel safe. They feel that the adults in the room have got their backs, and that's why
Simon: they are empowered to be the best they can be. The teachers clearly feel safe, because they know that the senior leadership team have got their backs.
Simon: And are doing the work.
Simon: And…
Simon: That, because the senior leadership team make the teachers feel safe, the teachers make the students feel safe, and then everybody can actually
Simon: you know, get on with the work that needs to be done. So that lens of security, you know, at the moment in my life, that's kind of, like, really…
Simon: Yeah, seems to be present.
Simon: So we talk about security.
Simon: Talk about relationships.
Simon: Talk about independence.
Simon: Engage…
Scott Jamieson: Sorry, Simon, you're breaking up a little bit.
Simon: filming…
Scott Jamieson: Can you go back to… I'm just gonna get you to restart that. You just kind of froze on me a little bit.
Simon: and growth. Oh, that's a shame. Should I turn off my camera?
Scott Jamieson: Let's see if it helps, and we'll go from there. I'm not sure.
Simon: Yeah, yeah.
Simon: Okay.
Scott Jamieson: Although, coming back.
Simon: What did you…
Scott Jamieson: Purity, like, feeling safe, and, like, picking up into those other.
Simon: Okay, yeah, so I was talking about this sense of, like, safety and security and stuff, and then we have the idea of relationship, how we engage with those around us, the idea of independence, so we are each
Simon: Each of us humans autonomous in our abilities.
Simon: but… and able to… to manifest those, and any system of flourishing needs to recognize individuality, but obviously individuality that's connected to the whole. So that kind of leads very nicely to the next one, which is engagement, because
Simon: We understand that when people are engaged in the world.
Simon: they are able to find that sense of meaning and purpose, which is so important. And then that leads to the next one, which is fulfillment.
Simon: You know, people feeling fulfilled in their lives. So important. And then we have contribution and growth. But all of this isn't meant to be, like, a rigid checklist, it's…
Simon: They're ways of asking questions
Simon: which allow people, communities, and wider systems to flourish, and we use that framework as a set of guiding principles across the wider work of the Flourish Project to understand how systems at different levels are
Simon: optimized, or not optimized, and what can be done, to
Simon: Create conditions that will allow for
Simon: All of these things to happen.
Scott Jamieson: So one of the things that I really like, I like how the framework helps to see how some of these pieces fit into the larger system, or fitting into the whole, and I think you guys do a really good job of sort of building that… the different pieces together, and seeing how everything is so interconnected.
Scott Jamieson: My first experience with the Flourish Project was through the resource, the Sustainable Development Goals, for early years. When I first started with Inspire Citizens, I came across this with some of the work we were doing, as we're designing learning for our youngest learners in school, and I was thinking, like, you know, the Sustainable Development Goals were not designed as a curriculum, and the language is pretty heavy, even for upper elementary
Scott Jamieson: students to manage, and so I was like, well, you know, what if there was a better way? And I love how the Flourish Project has made this so accessible. It's visual, it's really cool, like, the images are really engaging for students, but the language makes it so easy for them to connect on a developmental level that they're at.
Scott Jamieson: And I think that was really cool. And then the inner development goals came along, and I was like, wouldn't it be cool? And lo and behold, the Flourish Project puts out the IDGs for early years, and I was like, brilliant, thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for. Can you talk a little bit about those resources, kind of how they came together, and…
Scott Jamieson: Maybe how a teacher might use these in the classroom to connect to a deeper why with the unit they're teaching.
Simon: Yeah, so, first of all, those resources were created by Wendy.
Simon: at a time before I was actually working with her, so the best person to truly speak to the…
Simon: the actual, genesis of those resources, and how they came about, etc, would be her. But my role in the Learning Lab, which is one of the branches of the Flourish project, you know, we have the Elders Lab, etc. But the Learning Lab is very much the part at the moment which is going out into the world.
Simon: And what we try to do is, like you rightly said, we try to take a framework and bring it into dialogue with real educational practice and research. So.
Simon: I guess, interestingly, that kind of links a lot to…
Simon: A lot of the underlying themes in my own research.
Simon: And one of the reasons why, actually, Wendy and I came together in the first place. So, we met at the…
Simon: through the Harvard Flourish project, we stayed in touch. We both continue to contribute with colleagues across that network.
Simon: But…
Simon: we both have a strong background in sustainability education, ecological awareness, so we were both kind of motivated for perhaps something which goes beyond maybe the more human-centric framing, which the Harvard guys use. So coming back to your question, Scott.
Simon: Those resources, what I really like about them, is…
Simon: how they become something that you could actually use in a school. So… A lot of curriculum.
Simon: Even very forward-thinking curriculums, Are still very content heavy.
Simon: And they lose the aspect of how they can articulate questions around relationship, Perhaps consequence of action.
Simon: How you can bring in different perspectives, or systems-based work.
Simon: a lot of… Curriculums, because they have assessments at certain points, etc.
Simon: They struggle, maybe, to bring in the dialogue or inquiry-led approaches, which… students need.
Simon: But to encounter, kind of, complex ideas and uncertainty.
Simon: And… I guess there's also, coming back to that idea of assessment, those resources
Simon: even with little kids, there's a kind of drive in education towards quantification, right? Standardization.
Simon: Because in the… Okay, here's… I'm gonna get on my pulpit a little bit here.
Scott Jamieson: Alright, here we go.
Simon: A lot of education has, like, Just wholesale brought in Managerial language, business language, right?
Simon: Which makes sense, because there is the business of education going on, right? There is money that needs to come in to build schools, to get to da-da-da-da, you know, at the state, at the private level, and so I understand that, but…
Simon: The issue with that is, is when you try to take things which are… qualitative.
Simon: Orientated towards higher purpose, and quantify them.
Simon: And you make the system about that quantification, you create
Simon: like, conditions whereby you're going to get lots of people who are just gonna work towards the system. Does that make sense? They're just gonna find ways to be able to fill their spreadsheets with data points, right? So that they can then turn to the school inspectors, or the accreditors, or whatever, and say, hey, look.
Simon: This is great, right?
Simon: What that means in practice is that even little kids, even little kids in early years.
Simon: What becomes valued, what's worth learning, is stuff that can be
Simon: converted into individual measurable performance, right?
Simon: is little Janie able to do XYZ according to this? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, that means she's on this scale, that means we have this many learners, da-da-da.
Simon: The good thing about our resources is I think they remind educators, if you embed them in schools.
Simon: That not everything worth learning should be converted into a measurable performance goal.
Simon: In fact, Some stuff that's worth learning, you should actively say, this isn't going to be assessed.
Simon: Right?
Simon: like… Do you see what I'm coming… do you see where I'm coming from?
Scott Jamieson: Absolutely, yeah, no, I completely agree. I think it was… I'm gonna mess the quote up a little bit, but Will Richardson is someone I follow a lot.
Scott Jamieson: thinking about the future of education. And he said that it's really difficult to measure what's important in schools, so we took what's easy to measure and made that important when we think about our standardized tests and things like that. And I think this, thinking through the lens of the Flourish project, thinking about
Scott Jamieson: the why of what we're learning, and how this connects to this idea of flourishing, you know, with ourselves and our communities and our planet. And I think that really does come back to that deeper why, that deeper sense of purpose.
Scott Jamieson: And for us at Inspire Citizens, this strongly connects to our empathy-to-impact approach.
Scott Jamieson: Thinking about what it is in the world that we really care about. Thinking of engaging with inquiry, finding out, asking some good questions, becoming more deeply aware of these issues.
Scott Jamieson: And then applying all these cool things that we're learning in order to have a positive impact in the world. And yeah, performance-based assessment might be a little bit harder than a traditional assessment, like, with an essay or a test.
Scott Jamieson: But we're measuring stuff that really matters, and we're showing how we can apply our learning in a meaningful context, and have students be taking ownership of their learning, and having a positive impact on their community. I think that's where education gets really, really exciting for me.
Simon: 100%, and… Because of various social pressures, market pressures, whatever it might be, there is a tendency to…
Simon: Perhaps unnecessarily hold on to things, just because that's the way we always did it.
Simon: Right? And don't get me wrong, there is some stuff we want to hold onto, right? I'm old school when it comes to some stuff. I…
Simon: don't… I like kids having, like, planners to write down their homework, right? Like, it's good to just put a pen to paper and, like.
Simon: remind yourself that you've got to do your homework. Like, I'm old school when it comes to tech in the classroom, like, most of my lessons, the students don't use their laptops and stuff, like, they use them sometimes, right?
Simon: But, I'm also very progressive on the why are we doing this in the first place, right?
Simon: Because, you know, Inspired Citizen's all about global citizenship.
Simon: One framing of global citizenship, especially in the mouths of certain international schools, is about, let's be honest, creating
Simon: global citizens who are able to reap the benefits of a global economy, right? They speak the language of globalization, they know how to move fluidly between different cultural contexts.
Simon: They have the… the gravitas, and basically, it's a way of just continuing a… a kind of…
Simon: Production of hierarchy, right?
Simon: So…
Scott Jamieson: I think, yeah, I think when we're… especially in our international school communities, we are diverse culturally, but we're not often very diverse socioeconomically.
Scott Jamieson: And in a lot of cases, these are the students who are going to move on to be leaders in our communities, whether that's politics or business. And for me, it's thinking about how do we plant those seeds?
Scott Jamieson: How do we think about the bigger picture, thinking about those systems that you're talking about, and be able to make good ethical decisions for ourselves and with our planets?
Scott Jamieson: I think if we can help with mindset, especially with our youngest learners, to think about how our actions matter, and how we can be responsible citizens, I think this is a great opportunity for us as educators.
Simon: 100%, and that's why it's so important that global citizenship education isn't just a set of, kind of, capabilities that you can just tick off, because otherwise, it just becomes, like, another thing that's subsumed into the me, me, me way of thinking. But, coming back to what you were talking about, so…
Simon: we are doing a similar thing in the Flourish project as you guys are doing, with our framing of Flourishing. So.
Simon: The learning lab, in particular, is like the educational and research-facing part of the work.
Simon: And what we try to do is we try to think about
Simon: how schools and learning communities can rethink their curriculums, rethink their pedagogy, rethink their approach to leadership, rethink their ideas of student agency around this broader idea of what it would mean to flourish that's embedded in the ESF framework. And that means asking
Simon: hard questions. Really difficult questions, like, what would education look like if it wasn't only defined by attainment, or employability, or individual performance?
Simon: Right?
Simon: How do we help young people
Simon: Develop the capacity to live well with other people, and with the The more-than-human world, right?
Simon: How do we…
Simon: And this kind of links back to what I was just talking about. How do we move from, you know.
Simon: just teaching students about sustainability or global citizenship towards actually creating those educational environments in which they can, like you were saying, Scott, practice participation, practice responsibility, practice taking care, practice taking collective agency.
Simon: So… That's why I love this work, because…
Scott Jamieson: Absolutely.
Simon: For me, it's all about, like, I… I'm a teacher, right?
Simon: And I also like to think about the purpose of education. So I… it brings together a lot of the strands that have been running through my own life for many years, which is…
Simon: being a teacher, working with young people, youth participation work, but also these deeper questions around the philosophy of education, systems thinking, global citizenship, etc. And…
Simon: I genuinely think that… We are living in a moment where this work
Simon: is vitally important. It's always been important.
Simon: But… I do think the pace of change means that
Simon: Kind of, it's important that all of us who care work together.
Simon: you know, that's why I talked to you, that's why I want to work with you guys, because it's… we need to… to get this stuff moving for as many
Simon: People as possible, so that we can create the conditions for A better, healthier, happier.
Simon: more flourishing world. I know it sounds really cheesy, but it's kind of like…
Scott Jamieson: I love it! I think that's… if that's not the purpose of education, then what is? I think you're absolutely right. I think giving students opportunity to have agency and to take action in a safe space… I was having a conversation with some seniors from a school in Cartagena, Colombia that we work with called Cohoa, Collegio George Washington.
Scott Jamieson: And they were talking about how these opportunities they had through their service learning program gave them an opportunity to try on some of these real-world roles.
Scott Jamieson: And all of them said they chose their next step beyond high school, based not on the courses they were taking, but on the experiences they had through their service learning program. I think that's exactly what this is, is kind of coming back to this idea of
Scott Jamieson: You know, how do we create these opportunities for students to…
Scott Jamieson: be ready for a world that's rapidly evolving and changing at a really fast pace. I think that really does come back to this idea of the nature and purpose of education, and I think it's… we say this all the time, there's never been a more important time to be an educator.
Scott Jamieson: So, how does your work in the lab sort of connect to your vision for the future of education?
Simon: Oh, wow, that is a great question. Right.
Simon: So…
Simon: there's a kind of thread that goes through a lot of the stuff that I've been writing about at the moment. I write a lot about this idea of moving from what I call the egoic learner to the ecosystemic learner.
Simon: So… A lot of what we're talking about is this idea that
Simon: Modern education kind of imagines a learner to be this autonomous kind of bounded.
Simon: Agent who, like, maximizes themselves by acquiring knowledge, developing competencies, competing with others, performing this stuff out in the world to succeed in the system.
Simon: So
Simon: I kind of… my idea is that we need to shift from that egoic learner to what I call the ecosystemic learner.
Simon: And the ecosystemic learner Instead of thinking about
Simon: I don't know, the control they can have over the world. They think about, like, how can they pay attention?
Simon: Instead of trying to create the conditions where they feel like, oh, I'm certain about this, They're humble.
Simon: Or, rather than, I need to master this, how can I participate in something?
Simon: And…
Simon: that kind of links to this phrase, which I keep coming back to in a lot of the stuff that I'm writing.
Simon: is… How can we help?
Simon: education and learners to become otherwise. Otherwise to the way things are.
Simon: So… Without getting too deep and philosophical, it's a question of ontology. How do we see ourselves, right?
Simon: So, rather than kind of asking, what should students know, what skills do they need, what behaviors.
Simon: Do they need to demonstrate?
Simon: We ask, What are we inviting them to become?
Simon: And what type of relationships are we… Normalising through schooling, Relationships with themselves, Relationships with the living world.
Simon: And relationships with others.
Simon: And I guess, Scott, that's kind of…
Simon: I was talking about this idea of, like, global citizenship education, the danger of it becoming too individualistic.
Simon: Right? And you and I have probably seen it. Really well-meaning stuff, But… It lands badly.
Simon: Right?
Scott Jamieson: Absolutely. Everyone goes into, like, thinking about community engagement and service learning especially, everyone goes into those experiences with good intentions, but if we are not thinking about all the different angles, we often can not have the impact we're looking for, or in some cases, even do harm.
Scott Jamieson: And I think we're just being… getting into the systems thinking, working with and communicating clearly with our community partners, things like that can help us avoid these things and making sure our partnerships are successful. So yeah, I hear you 100%.
Simon: I was chatting to Karen Pashby, who's been a massive influence on my thinking.
Simon: And I've had the pleasure of actually meeting her recently. That was a bit of a bit of a fanboy moment, because it's kind of weird when you, like, read someone's stuff, and then you suddenly talk to them. But, she shared with me a paper that she wrote based on…
Simon: an example of this. So, I can't quite remember exactly where it was, but basically.
Simon: the crux of the matter was, it was meant to be this lovely thing where students went to a country in Africa from, I think it was the Netherlands, or somewhere in one of the Nordic countries. I think it was one of the Nordic countries. And it was meant to be this beautiful, sort of, like, we're gonna go and do this work.
Simon: What it turned out to be, Scott, was a group of 16-year-olds teaching grown adults
Simon: About the world, and about how they should think.
Simon: And I don't know about you, but…
Simon: if a bunch of kids were sent… not to say that kids can't teach adults stuff, but do you see what I mean? Like, it makes us uncomfortable, because…
Scott Jamieson: It does.
Simon: No, we're.
Scott Jamieson: And is that something that community was even really looking for?
Simon: Exactly. So, so, like…
Simon: when we're talking about the, you know, from the eco… egoic learner to the ecosystemic learner, and we're thinking about what that means for helping, you know, people to become global citizens, I guess it's just that thing of, like.
Simon: It's… We need to be…
Simon: Thinking about power and positionality and colonial inheritance and responsibility, and we need to try to be careful about this sort of, like, savorism.
Simon: idea, or even solutionism, you know? I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna come up with the solution for what I think is the problem you're facing, right?
Simon: like…
Simon: Because we're already implicated in the world, and we've got to help kids to see themselves as being implicated
Simon: in the world.
Scott Jamieson: It's interesting, though, yeah, because we teach kids to be problem solvers in school, so they want to jump right to solution, they want to jump right to action, before we really get into that finding out stage of the inquiry cycle. And so what we try to encourage students is to come to the table as listeners. Don't come to the table with all the answers.
Scott Jamieson: Because you might not have all the different perspectives. There was a project we… I was listening to some presentations on, it was a few years ago, and these students had identified this community way, way up north in Siberia.
Scott Jamieson: And they decided that their greatest need was keeping warm.
Scott Jamieson: And I'm sitting there in the audience, I'm thinking to myself, well, if I live way, way up north in Siberia, you know, maybe access to good work, access to fresh produce, you know, there might be a lot of things, but keeping warm is probably something I've got figured out.
Simon: I was about to say, they probably know how to do that, right?
Scott Jamieson: So, yeah, it's just that perceived need versus authentic need, and just making those genuine human connections is the best way to avoid some of these little shortfalls that we sometimes, with good intentions, fall into those traps of when we're thinking about engaging with communities.
Simon: And you've got to be so careful, because
Simon: What always worries me is that when you then come to challenge students on that stuff.
Simon: You need to be careful not to shame them.
Simon: Because it's not coming from a bad place, it's just coming.
Scott Jamieson: You're exactly right.
Simon: Like, this is… this is my experience, this is what I think.
Simon: you're asking me to do something to care about these other people, I'm guessing this is what they might think about, so it's just about…
Simon: Kind of slowing them down.
Simon: You know, we're very…
Simon: This is one of the themes, actually, that seems to be coming to my mind a lot, is the kind of production line mentality of all society, but then, like.
Simon: Transplanting that into education, Sometimes, you know, slowing it down's good.
Simon: Right? Slow it down.
Simon: there was a movement in I Like Food, and there was a movement called Slow Food back in the day. Do you ever hear about the Slow Food movement?
Scott Jamieson: Yes, yes.
Simon: antithesis of, like, fast food. It was, like, slow food. But, like, slow education.
Simon: And I've been thinking about this a bit, actually, and…
Simon: I'm thinking about maybe embarking on a PhD at some point, and one of the ideas I've got in the back of my mind for this work is an idea of pedagogies of handover.
Simon: So, what that means is, and I think it could be a way to kind of get schools to slow down.
Simon: So, rather than… for example.
Simon: we get students to, like, show that they've learned something, and that's cool, right? Of course, they still need to write essays, and, like, do a presentation, and make an artifact, or whatever, right? Like, that's not bad, right? People need to make stuff, like, producing stuff's okay, like, that… I'm not saying any of these things are bad.
Simon: But… I'm thinking, what if we integrated more
Simon: opportunities for students to pass things on across generations. So, for example, you start a project.
Simon: A group of students work on it.
Simon: And then part of that project is they produce certain things, but then part of it is they produce a handover document.
Simon: Which says, this is what we've done, this is what worked well, this is what needs to be done in the future. And then they pass it on to the next generation of students coming through the school.
Simon: And so the project process goes on.
Simon: And I reckon there's something…
Simon: It sounds really simple, but I reckon there's something really powerful in that, because you just very gently make it not all about you.
Simon: You make it about the next generation.
Simon: Right? You make it about the future you can't yet see. You make it about caring about
Simon: People who don't even exist yet, maybe, because if you're thinking 5, 10 generations ahead, or whatever.
Simon: And that… It's, like, ethical teaching, it's global citizenship.
Simon: You would have to obviously do partnership work, and it would have to be project-based, so it's like, it just…
Simon: kind of, I think, could be a way to, like, just bring it all together, like, in a really…
Simon: practical way, because, like, I'm still a teacher. Like, I can talk about all this philosophy, but…
Simon: That's all great, but you've got to show me how to use it in a classroom.
Simon: For sure.
Scott Jamieson: I think that's the big thing, right? It all sounds good. You know, we're talking about security, relationships, independence, engagement, fulfillment, contribution, and growth.
Scott Jamieson: what does that look like in my classroom? And yeah, until we can kind of bring it down. And that's why I think the resources do a great job. But yeah, I love that idea of passing things on, and having those long-term relationships with our community partner. It was actually a sixth grader from NIST in Bangkok who said, you know, it's not about me.
Scott Jamieson: it's about our action, it's about the work that we're doing in our community. You know, this is beyond me, and I thought, wow, in grade 6, or year 6, sorry, you know, talking about being able to kind of see that as something beyond themselves, I think it's just a…
Simon: Sin.
Scott Jamieson: Great mindset.
Scott Jamieson: So…
Simon: But do you know what the… sorry, just to interrupt.
Scott Jamieson: Yeah, yeah.
Simon: score.
Simon: In my experience, I don't know if you've had this experience, you might often hear that stuff from the younger students.
Simon: The challenge becomes when they hit those teenage years.
Simon: Right? When they start getting the pressures of the, sort of, like… the world… making money, being productive.
Scott Jamieson: The resume building.
Simon: pressures of, like, well, let's get into the dark stuff, when they have the pressures of the kind of, like.
Simon: I don't know, for the guys in particular, and for the, you know, the manosphere, kind of, gotta be a tough guy, make money.
Simon: you know, be the big dog type of stuff. That's where it gets really challenging to keep them to still care about that stuff, you know? When their innocence kind of gets…
Simon: attacked.
Scott Jamieson: I think for sure, I think there's definitely some creativity that we… that sort of disappears, and just the way… what we see is possible, and our ability to engage with our imagination. Rob Hopkins talks about imagination as such a big part of this work.
Scott Jamieson: And, yeah, I think somewhere along the line, that sort of disappears in school, we do a module talking about social justice through the lens of music, and how, sort of like Don McLean says, at some point beyond early childhood, the music sort of dies in school. We stop singing.
Simon: Oh, good.
Scott Jamieson: song for everything. And, you know, why not look at some of these successful models with our younger learners and see how we can learn from those to sort of keep these big ideas alive in our older students? I think that's a really good point.
Simon: 100%, I mean, like, look, a lot of schooling
Simon: The process of it becoming less fun.
Simon: Right?
Scott Jamieson: Say it, but yeah.
Simon: It's like, it's, like, all joyful, and then it's like, now the real stuff happens. The worst example of that I ever had was I went to a Montessori school many, many, many years ago in Chile.
Simon: And it was a beautiful school. It was my first time ever going to a Montessori school, and they told me all about, like, the Montessori practices, you know, the thing where they do the circle, and they talk to each other, and then the student said to me, yeah, but then we get to the senior years, and we have to prep for the university entrance exam, and all of that goes out the window.
Simon: And it's, like, shock to the system, just, like.
Simon: You know, open the book, learn this stuff.
Simon: And that's an extreme example, and obviously, good schools are trying to mitigate against that, right?
Simon: But we still live in the system where you've got to prove mastery, which is fine, like, don't get me wrong.
Simon: Mastery, ability.
Simon: Having some sort of way of being able to say, this person spent time and effort on learning something.
Simon: And they deserve to have this opportunity to go ahead and do the next thing, that's cool.
Simon: But… it can st… you can still do that stuff, I think.
Simon: If you're willing to put the work in, whilst…
Simon: not losing the sense of wonder, right? That you, like, you just.
Scott Jamieson: That's a great way to put it, yeah.
Simon: Like, you know?
Scott Jamieson: Sure, and so do we find that balance? Like, yes, knowledge and skills are still important, we're not throwing out our curriculum, but how might we look at that through a different lens of.
Simon: Yeah.
Scott Jamieson: finding ways to be able to flourish, to borrow that term, and I think that's really important.
Scott Jamieson: So I'm just watching the clock, it's been such a great conversation, I hate to cut it off, but I wonder if there's anything you'd like to share? Like, let us know, how do people get ahold of you, get ahold of the resources from the Flourish Project? Where can people find you? And is there any final thoughts you want to share with our audience?
Simon: Okay, so, please reach out to us. Please just Google, www.flourishproject.net, that's our core website. We are in the process of building out the Learning Lab, side of that. You can reach out to us via our contact form there.
Simon: Alternatively, you know, I invite everybody. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. I'm not a big social media guy, but a good friend of mine
Simon: a few years back said, you should get back on this, so, you know, anyone who's listening wants to hit me up on LinkedIn, that's always a good place to start. And also, if you Google my name, you might find
Simon: my website, but I think it's down at the moment, because I built it using one of these AI tools, and it's kind of gone bust. So, learning curve for me. Final thoughts, man, we've covered a lot of ground.
Scott Jamieson: We have…
Simon: My final thought, I guess, is…
Simon: Bringing it back to schools, bringing it back to that lived, tangible thing of actually seeing
Simon: Change in the world.
Simon: thinking about What schooling is for.
Simon: You know, schools have to transmit knowledge.
Simon: And skills. And I'm not interested, and the Learning Lab is not interested in abandoning that.
Simon: But… education, is… One of, if not perhaps the most important place where societies reproduce themselves.
Simon: And the school…
Simon: And the higher education institution and everything around these things, they shape people's assumptions and ideas about what it means to be successful, what it means to have relationships, what it means to value things, and the possibilities that life can bring them.
Simon: schools, have a duty, I would say, to help young people inherit the world Critically.
Simon: Participate in that world responsibly.
Simon: And develop the capacities to imagine and create the alternatives.
Simon: When what they're inheriting It's inadequate for the world there.
Simon: That's becoming.
Simon: And
Simon: It is our duty. I keep using that word. It's a very old-fashioned word duty. It's very Kanchian, but…
Simon: you know, It's our responsibility to ensure that
Simon: We are constantly holding that higher purpose, that higher framing, In our vision.
Simon: And critically assessing what we're doing, how we're doing it, in order to try to move towards
Simon: A more flourishing world.
Scott Jamieson: Beautiful.
Scott Jamieson: Alright, thank you so much. Simon Lightman from the Learning Lab at the Flourish Project. Contact info and resources you can find in our show notes.
Scott Jamieson: If you are working with our youngest learners, I would really encourage you to check out their amazing resources as a way to bring some of these big, big ideas down to a level that our youngest learners can engage with and become changemakers and take action for
Scott Jamieson: a flourishing future. Simon, thanks so much for being an awesome guest on the podcast, it was so great to connect, and I am really looking forward to an Inspire Citizens Flourish Project collaboration down the road. I think that could be really cool.
Simon: 100%. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Scott. I really appreciate it. Yeah, great to chat to you.
Scott Jamieson: And… there we.