It’s hard to believe, but Tilting Futures just wrapped up our fourth cycle of Foundations — the flagship virtual component of Take Action Lab that prepares students for their in-country immersion. This month-long course brings students from all over the world together virtually before they arrive and meet in person in South Africa and our aim is to create a strong sense of community and prepare them for the journey ahead.
The intricacy of how to deliver those aims is where things get exciting! Our cohorts consist of 50 students and in the August 2024 cohort there are young people from 27 different countries. While the practical things are important (time zone challenges!), it’s the pedagogy that’s critical. How do we help students open up, be vulnerable, share their perspectives, and learn how to have hard conversations across lines of difference? Here are a few of our key practices:
- Anchoring in our Curriculum Pillars: In the first two weeks there is a session on each of our Curriculum Pillars (self-awareness, wellbeing, agency, interrelatedness, global perspective taking and empathy). We introduce these pillars, create a shared understanding and language together, and think about how these have shown up in our lives up until this point. Then, we think forward about how these will show up in our time in Cape Town and each of the different learning components of Take Action Lab. There is carefully selected pre-work for each session and students do a reflective piece of writing at the end of each week, a practice that underpins our transformative pedagogy.
- Making Space for Courage: During the Foundations course, students begin to grapple with what it means to try and make change in social systems that are entwined and complex. Where a traditional school may have asked students to have a ‘right answer’, we ask them to recognize that there may not be clear answers and to be okay with that tension and discomfort. That requires creating a brave space where students can confidently share divergent opinions, experiences, and perspectives. Our wonderful instructors Heather Kertyzia and Hector Gomes de Suosa expertly foster that brave space online when participants are sitting and exploring these challenges. As our alumna Neža Račečič reflected:
“I don’t really know what I expected the Foundations course to be but it has exceeded all my expectations and I cannot wait to get up next Tuesday at 5 am (and I never thought I’d say that). I think everyone knows that awkward feeling when a teacher asks someone to speak up on a Zoom call and everyone just stays silent. I have not seen that happen on our calls and it has been mind blowing. People don’t just comment on the questions asked or ideas posed but go out of their way to share their thoughts or experiences. Everyone is just so happy to learn from each other and being a part of such a community is such a privilege and joy and I think this is exactly what education should be all about.” - Seeding Curiosity and Developing Questions: In the second two weeks our focus turns to learning more about Cape Town and South Africa. Needless to say, we can only just start to introduce the complex history of South Africa and how that history shows up in Cape Town today. We bring in our wonderful South Africa team to share their perspectives and answer questions and really emphasize the range of voices and stories that they will encounter in Cape Town in their apprenticeships, in the Learning Connect workshops each Friday, in the cultural series, and in their daily life. Most importantly, students start to develop their own lines of inquiry ready to explore in Cape Town.
- Transfer and Personal Connection: Students go to Cape Town to learn from the incredible experiences of people involved in social justice work. Through ensuring that we reflect deeply on what they are learning, students start cultivating the nature of their own contribution to a more just and regenerative future. Starting in Foundations, students are asked to make links to their own context, their own lives, their own goals and to the change they want to be part of. To use Otto Schamer’s wording, we emphasize eco over ego. Our systems transformation framework helps students understand the complexity in making change happen.
It is the people, the relationships, and the connections that really make the difference. I want to give a special shout out to Heather and Hector who really nurture students in this first stage of their transformational learning journey!