In June we partnered with Inspire Citizens to run their two-day Empathy to Impact Workshop in both Adelaide and Melbourne.
This was a practical and inspiring way for educators to build on previous professional learning experiences that we have offered such as Contemporary Learning Tours, Free to Flourish Immersions, PBL Workshops and Human centred Design Training.
We had 51 people attend across the 2 workshops and it was a thrill to see so many robust projects with clear curriculum outcomes and clear community impact being developed.
The Empathy to Impact Cycle can be used to overlay any existing experiential framework and when used in this way helps to deepen the action and reflection on the following questions:
- What do I care about and why?
- How am I becoming more credibly informed and personally aware?
- Why and how am I applying interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, strategies and processes?
- How am I making relevant, personal and community impact?
Feedback from the sessions was overwhelmingly positive, check out what people said:
- Fully engaging workshop with excellent resources and the time built in to apply knowledge
- I came looking for practical ways to launch service learning and expand our students’ outlook. I saw inspiring ideas in action and connected with like-minded educators. I left affirmed in our school’s direction and equipped with a toolkit of strategies and resources to bring our vision to life. It was a practical, thought-provoking, and collegial experience.
- My experience was amazing. As I am still new to PYP and how to make lessons rich, this was the most valuable experience I have has this far. It motivated me to see the bigger picture in teaching. Encouraging learners to focus on the bigger picture and encouraging them to want to make an impact in the real world. From the staff to the learning itself was exceptional!
Attending the Empathy to Impact workshop supported me to re-imagine a Unit of Inquiry to become more focused on engaging with community resources through an authentic context which sees learners actively caring for themselves, others and the environment. It's exciting to think about which Unit might get the Empathy to Impact treatment next; our Program of Inquiry will be evolving!
