Ripples of Change

“Just a pebble in the water can set the sea in motion. A simple act of kindness can stir the wildest ocean. If we show a little love, heaven knows what we can change.” These words are lyrics to a song I vividly remember listening to over and over again on Disney Channel as I was growing up. The words of this song always seemed so powerful to me, and relate perfectly to this key insight I call, Ripples of Change. Never did I imagine a song would impact my career path as well as my calling to teach, but this song changed my perspective completely. The small moments in my future classroom, where I am able to teach beyond the content, can make a big change in the way I impact my students’ lives.

During the fall of my sophomore year, I was enrolled in a class called “Learners and the Diversity of Learning” (EDPY 401). In this course, one of the main takeaways I had was the concept of teaching beyond your content. For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a teacher and everyone around me knew that. In my senior year of high school, I was given an interesting piece of advice from a mentor. She told me, “Sometimes it is more important to love our students, than to teach them content.” From that day on, my perspective changed on how I defined a successful teacher. I realized how important the service component was in teaching by learning to serve the needs of my future students. While I continued to believe in my mentor’s philosophy, I had never heard a professor in college talk about that as a good teaching practice from a theoretical standpoint. I was taking EDPY 401 in 2020 and the idea of teaching beyond your content became even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was seeing teachers go beyond their basic job descriptions to help students transition smoothly. Learning during the pandemic was diverse because students were having to learn both content and how to adjust their everyday life to the “new normal.” The pandemic challenged schools to change the way they thought about teaching and EDPY 401 was the place where I was able to come to terms with those changes. My professor educated me on how classrooms were shifting and encouraged me to be willing to accept that change. Most of these changes were necessary to still make a positive impact while serving students. Our final project in this course was creating a video that described the changes in education during the pandemic and what the lasting impact the pandemic would have on teaching as a profession. If I am honest, at the beginning of EDPY 401, I lacked any hope that the changes caused by the pandemic could ever be positive for students or teachers. As the semester continued, I was able to gain more hope that good can come from all the change. Attached is that final project video, which you are more than welcome to watch if you would like, but the part that stuck out the most to me was when I concluded saying, “I hope you advocate for education and remember that although some of the changes that happened during the pandemic were not fun for us, some of those changes were completely necessary for our students.” This shows learning and growth in me as a future educator by recognizing the idea that change is sometimes good. One of those positive changes in education was the resurface of the idea of teaching beyond your content. Without the pandemic, that would have never become as widespread in education systems as it is today. Classrooms everywhere had to adjust to the diverse needs of their students. Teaching beyond the content looks different for everyone, but one way I saw this concept being incorporated was having less tests and doing more projects. Some projects I saw being implemented into the classroom were community service projects. Because of the pandemic, many people’s eyes, including my own, were opened to see the needs of the communities that surrounded schools. Teachers started realizing that their communities were struggling and wanted to empower students to assist those in need. Although the pandemic caused a lot of hard changes, it did remind teachers of the important role they play in teaching students how to be good humans. In my opinion, part of being a good person is learning how to serve your community.

For those of you reading this that are far removed from education, you might have not seen the positive impact of the changes happening in school systems. Luckily, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Shandon Presbyterian Church’s afterschool Ripples of Change program. This program was designed to inform young students on the importance of kindness in the world, and then to empower them to create their very own community service project. I had the opportunity to work with 2^nd graders, and at first, I underestimated their ability to serve people well. I started the semester with getting the students to create a list of people they see in their community who are in need. My class decided to act by donating gloves and socks to people who experience homelessness. I made a connection with a local homeless shelter, Transitions, to learn about ways they already impact the Columbia community. I made sure my students were not trying to create a temporary band-aid solution; I wanted them to aid an existing resource by improving the work that is already being done. Over the next couple of weeks, my 13 students created posters and collected donations, and we ended our semester by donating 54 pairs of socks and 43 pairs of gloves. The kids were so proud that they were able to make a change in their community and learned the importance of service. After this experience, I wrote a reflection in my journal (the full entry is attached below) and my biggest learning came from when I said, “This experience opened my eyes to see that 2^nd graders are capable of so much more than I thought and that most of the time, they appreciate you and want to help others.” I underestimated the power of 2^nd graders, and this experience taught me to never discredit the change that young people can create. As a future teacher, it is crucial that I remember to never underestimate my students and what they can accomplish. In the end, seeing how proud these 2^nd graders were to see their hard work really impact people was the most rewarding part. As we all strive to be good human beings, I hope we can remember to lead our life in love as we empower the next generation of world changers.

This experience reinforced the idea of teaching beyond the content and showed the importance of teaching students to be civically engaged with their community. These types of projects help students identify a problem, and then think of ways they are uniquely gifted to aid in a solution. Once students start serving within my classroom walls, it will start a ripple of change. Students see other students serving people and be inspired to find their own way to serve their community. My hope will be to inspire students to work together to accomplish goals bigger than they could do alone. My hope will be for students to leave my classroom better people than when they entered. Because of my classroom learning, and my outside experience, community service projects will be a part of my future classroom. I am excited to empower my students to throw their pebble in the water and make a change.