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“Participants were able to advance their social emotional skills such as empathy, mindfulness, compassion and critical inquiry.”
Oshan Gunathilake is an educator and youth leader at the youth organization GCED Syndicate in Homagama, Sri Lanka. As part of The SDG Challenge: Advancing Global Citizenship Education Through The Power of Film in partnership with UNESCO-APCEIU, Oshan screened What About Our Future and Future Learning. Through the films, he encouraged students to connect with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Number 4: Quality Education and Number 13: Climate Action.
How did SIMA Academy films resonate with your students?
The film screening took place before the actual discussion happened so the participants had some time to think on what they wanted to discuss. At the start of the dialogue, I did a small session on SDGs and introduced SDG 13, the topic of the conversation. The conversation first took a very lively turn as we asked them how they felt after watching the film “What About Our Future”. Participants used words such as “angry, frustrated, relatable, inspired to take action” to explain their emotions. And they started to bring out how youth communities are becoming quite vulnerable to climate change and environmental pollution around the world. Some of them brought out their own experiences in this situation and some actions they are currently taking as others focused on current affairs in the country and how climate and environment protection is not seen as a state priority. We also discussed a lot of recent incidents that have brought severe impact to climate such as the X-press Pear vessel oil leakage close to the Sri Lankan coast, politically influenced deforestation campaigns, poaching of wild animals, human-elephant conflict, unsustainable garbage disposal mechanisms, etc. The participants also gave inputs on how climate change could also lead to human rights violations because of its influence on local agriculture, water supply and livelihood of the people – especially those who are representing marginalized communities. They also saw the connection between climate action and education and came to the conclusion that schools, educators and parents have a great responsibility to educate children from a very young age on the importance and value of the environment, teach them how to respect their surroundings and the global impact of climate change. At the very end, the participants shared their ideas on how they can – as global citizens – advocate for positive climate action as snippets on a Padlet board.
As many of the participants were interested in talking about Quality Education we decided to let them organize their own dialogue on SDG 4. For this we used the film”Future Education”. Participants from the first event divided the event responsibilities among themselves such as formulation of dialogue questions, moderating the discussion, and bringing their friends for the discussion. This was considered as their community advocacy action. Here also the dialogue was a very powerful one with many youth representing various professional, social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds bringing in various valid points that others may not have thought about. They discussed how the education system needs to be reformed and the state of the government school curricula is outdated and not serving the needs of the 21st century. Also, we managed to invite Ms. Anne Figurado, a local youth advocate for youth rights and education who spoke on the state of access to education within the marginalized areas (former armed conflict affected communities) and encouraged the participants to engage in a more in-depth discussion on their educational rights. There was a good conversation on the difference between adequate education and quality education as well as the state of education during the pandemic. Many agreed on the fact that quality education means not just STEM education but also the education for positive citizenship and social emotional learning. And they managed to showcase various examples and cases from different countries and how in Sri Lanka also we need to implement such novel and creative ideas imbued with new technology and focus.
How would you describe the learning experience for your students?
It was a good experiential learning engagement with a lot of freedom for self expression and interaction among the learners. The participants were a bit shy to engage openly at the very beginning but as the conversations took shape almost everyone of them were quite keen to share their thoughts and experiences. Both the topics discussed were equally found interesting. They were able to advance their social emotional skills such as empathy, mindfulness, compassion and critical inquiry as well during the process which can be seen as a very valuable outcome within the GCED domains.
Please tell us what you learned in the process of implementing this lesson with your classroom?
One important thing I learned is that it helps a lot to share a documentary or social impact film to lay the foundation of the issue that we are going to build the dialogue on. It creates much more clarity and confidence among the participants to effectively engage in the dialogue. People tend to be a bit shy and backwards in the beginning but with proper guidance and questions to engage them, they become very relaxed and comfortable to share their thoughts with everyone else. It is important to lay out some ground rules and encourage an open minded and respectful environment for all the participants during the dialogue. It is also useful to have some activities like breathing exercises, individual reflections and perhaps a small break if the dialogue tends to get prolonged to keep the learners engaged and active throughout. Also it is important to keep in mind that owing to the current pandemic situation, most of the learners are constantly engaging in online activities and it is really difficult to conduct such extra-curricular activities with their tight schedules. So finding enough participants and ensuring their participation can be very challenging. For my events, although I got close to 50 registrations every time, the actual number who turned up was around 15 – 20. Therefore, it’s best to make sure that you follow up with the registrants and pick interesting topics to talk about the narratives that you want to transform.
