Ethical Thinking - A Conversation with Sara Khan and Meredith Harbord

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

The ethical dilemmas and ethical values allow us to have that framework grounding everything, grounding the whole curriculum.

So I think if you're trying to engage kids and give them those really rich experiences, thinking like a designer, it's like a pattern for life.

Hi, thanks for joining me for another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you with the generous support of Notosh. This week I'm really happy to be speaking with Meredith Harbord and Sara Khan, both teachers of design and technology previously working at ABA Oman International School in Muscat. In their teaching, they took a focus on students learning about and engaging with real-world issues and the ethical challenges that arise. From their teaching collaboration, they established Harvard and Kahn Educational Consultants. Meredith and Sarah are curious about what it is to be human from a personal, community, and global perspective, and how this impacts student learning. Their unique approach embeds ethical dilemmas in curriculum, encouraging deep inquiry about DEIJ and promoting empathy and expansive thinking, while being fun for students. Their model is grounded in ethical approaches, drives inquiry, and has covered areas such as sustainability, community building, and biomimicry. Their recent projects include a PBL inquiry-based summer school project for SBARC Fort Worth and STEM curriculum and resources for the Design and Technologies Teacher Association in Victoria, Australia. Their publications include Interdisciplinary Thinking for Schools: Ethical Dilemmas for MYP 1-3 and another volume for MYP 4-5. You can find contacts for Meredith and Sarah in the show notes, and I'm sure they'd be very happy to hear from you.

Hi, Sara. Hi, Meredith.

Hello, how are you?

Very good. How are you?

Yeah, good, good, good.

Firstly, I'd just love to welcome you to the podcast.

Yeah, thank you for inviting us.

So if we can start first with thinking about where you have come to your practice of integrating some of these big ideas of design and ethics and interdisciplinary, but because you are both, as I understand it, kind of creative practitioners as well as very experienced teachers. So maybe, maybe we could just spend a little bit of time talking about where you've come from in terms of your own personal practice and professional practice. What's your story, if you like, and how have you begun to fuse those things together?

Okay, well, I started— I'm based in Melbourne originally and I was a high school teacher. I did art and design, which in, in Melbourne or in Australia at that time, unlike the UK or other places where you have like art and a method, we were trained quite extensively. So it was expected you teach ceramics and printmaking and drawing and woodwork and, and that kind of thing. So it was considered a double method. Well, I started with that. I was really lucky in my first year that I ended up in a school where the teacher who was head of art was working in curriculum, and that was what got me started. And I got involved in— it was project-based learning, which was unheard of in the '80s. And we designed a— it was a Year 12. The students would make a contract with the teacher. They could do anything they wanted. It could be art history or it could be practical. And they kept a journal and drawing books. I mean, this sounds like nothing, it's what we do now all the time, but in the '80s— this was '81— it was unheard of. And so that was my introduction to curriculum. Then I had two children who ended up at Montessori kindergarten, and they ended up getting me on the board, and then I ended up being fascinated and I trained as a Montessori teacher. And I also worked aligning Montessori curriculum with the Victorian state curriculum. So that was my next kind of curriculum thing. Then I was working for the Education Department here putting art onto distance education. So I was doing like online learning. Again, this was like '86, '87. And so when our kids were 6 and 8, we went to Brunei and I taught at ISB, which was an international school there. So I'm unusual in that I've worked in basically all areas of the school. When I got to Muscat, where I met Sarah, I ended up in middle years, which was like horror for me because I just— and now I adore it. I just love middle years.

And that was MYP Design, was it, you were doing with the middle years? Yeah. Brilliant. And Sarah, vinu as well, you've got also your own creative practice, as I understand.

Yes, so I've come to this collaboration with Meredith from a different path. I have my visual arts practice and also I was doing educational art workshops and working in different areas of the art field, but it was when I came to Oman and I was invited to be the artist in residence working with the primary years program to develop some projects with those kids, and we were doing some group projects using recycled materials and being inspired by ideas like these big figures from the Persian Book of Kings, and struck me that this way of working with curriculum was something that I just loved in this kind of formal work. And through the school, then I was invited to come in and teach MYP Design. And as an artist, my own interests are very much nature-based. I was inspired by this book, Last Child in the Woods, which was the first time I started thinking about the impact of what was going on with the environment on kids and young people. So from there, my interest in sustainability and design, it all came together. And I was just very lucky to collaborate with Meredith. I was interested in the idea of what does responsible design look like, you know, what does that mean? What could kids do with that? And just had a lot of fun. We just really enjoyed working together. We had a lot of support from our admin, and that's how we got to this point of our consultancy.

Great. And obviously out of that grew these amazing books that you've written with these amazing resources of unit plans, which I'd love to talk about, but maybe we could just pick up on the design point there. So how have you seen design and used design not only for a creative practice, but also as a way of approaching a problem or a way of thinking, you know, using the design cycle perhaps, or the fact that you were both design teachers. Was that an important part of your kind of approach to these, as we'll talk about in a moment, the ethical dilemmas and the interdisciplinary aspect?

I think for me, the fact that was really important was being able to accept getting it wrong, especially not just as a teacher, but as an artist, the fact that, you know, this hasn't worked out, let's try again, let's make something else. Let's see how this goes. So I think that was probably in terms of my own personal practice, and to be able to accept that it's okay, you know, and if you're showing that to kids as well, I don't know this, it's all right, let's find out. I think that's been a—

Yeah, I think too, I mean, design is so important and is hugely underestimated because if you create good designers, they're great thinkers because it's problem solving, it's having an idea and developing it and then going, well, that didn't work, let's do another iteration. And as Sarah said, you know, failure is such an important part of success in the sense of you have to be able to fail and realize that that's not a bad thing. But our education system isn't worked like that. Although people talk about this in rhetoric, It's not the reality, unfortunately. And I think, you know, for us, one of the most incredible experiences was I used to do a design trip to Milan every year. And so we would go to various places such as Alessi Design, Lamborghini, Ferrari, and you're talking to these people and they have the most incredibly forward views. In terms of creation and design. You know, Alberto Alessi's situation, they really foster failure in the sense that they had a whole exhibition that was just all impossible things that went wrong.

Nice.

And I mean, how many big companies go, this is how we work? And it's this thinking, getting kids to realize critical thinking involves this kind of practice of going, okay, that didn't work well. When do we keep going? When do we stop? You know, how do we actually achieve things? And so this for me is a model for thinking. It's not just about design, it's about life. And it's about having a learning environment where kids can really engage, have fun. Like they're there 'cause they wanna be there. Our room was heaving from 6:30 in the morning until 6 o'clock at night. And we were the crazy teachers who never took lunch. And if we ever closed it, apartment, the kids would just, "What do you mean?" Because that was our philosophy, that if we were going to have a vibrant learning space, we couldn't go, "Oh, well, it stops at 12 till 1." Now, maybe we should have, but that was not how we worked. And so I think if you're trying to engage kids and give them those really rich experiences, designers everywhere around us. And design thinking— forget design thinking, the cycle from Stanford, I just mean thinking like a designer. It's like a pattern for life.

So obviously, you'd have some students coming to you and just, you know, thriving in that environment. But, but also equally, the flip side of that is that many students are less comfortable in that kind of environment because they're so used to in the rest of school, you know, what are the expectations? What does the teacher want? Let's get the right answer. And so I wondered, obviously once you scratch at the layers, probably every child wants to explore and play in that environment, but you have to kind of extract the inner child from these layers of socialized conformity that come with school, right?

But I think that's where the opportunities for reflection also really make a difference. So we had designed these process journals for kids and, you know, for them to have the opportunity to sit back and think, okay, how did this go for me? And we had through the design cycle. So they had this awareness that this is the stage I'm at, and I can go back and forth and flip through the cycle as I need to. And the MYP design cycle was very much a living cycle for us. We had a student draw it for us on the walls. It was always there. Once they got used to that, as you're saying, getting used to that freedom is not easy for everybody, but they were quite quick to be comfortable.

I think we were very rigorous on safety, and so the kids were trained quite extensively on being safe because we had this enormous space. One end was a Mac lab, in the center were huge tables which was like the drawing area, and then we had a workshop. Well, the kids could do Photoshop, Illustrator, all that stuff. They had robotics, they did gaming, they did drawing, they did computer graphics. They could work in the workshop. But, you know, if you can't engage everybody in grades 7, 8, 9, 10 in some aspect of that room, you shouldn't be in a classroom. Because, you know, there would be the kids that didn't want to do woodwork, but, you know, they'd love to do some coding. So it's about being flexible enough as educators to go, all right, this is what we're doing, this is our outline, but Why does the modality matter if they get to that learning objective that you're after? Whether they do that as a physical 3D object or they do that as a film or a game, it doesn't really matter as long as they're showing skills, they're showing development of ideas, blah blah blah. So do you know what I mean? Like, it's a matter of actually grasping their interest and showing them a way to express themselves.

But also showing them that that space is theirs and it's for them to also create the space. We had kids making pallets for planting vegetables because we had the environmental society was living in out of the design lab as well. So there were vegetables being grown. They built some benches on the side as well. It was very much a feeling of community. We wanted the kids to feel that this is your space and you are building it alongside us.

Yeah, very nice. And so that was your home, if you like, the Design Lab sounds like a lovely home that everybody was enjoying being in. What about the other teachers that you were working with, your colleagues? Because obviously at a certain point you started inviting in other disciplines to then branch away from design into an interdisciplinary approach. Does that mean the other colleagues and teachers were also coming into the Design Lab and sharing ideas and you sparking off each other, or, you know, how intentional was the interdisciplinary part that you then moved into?

Well, very intentional. Like the Grade 9 biology teacher, we used to do an interdisciplinary unit because we realized fairly early on, although initially IB was saying, you know, have many subjects in an interdisciplinary unit, it's really tricky with timetabling. So we ended up working with one other discipline or 2 at the most. And so this was arthropods and the joint that an arthropod has. And then I got them to create that as a robotic arm in design. So we had, you know, they had some lessons in biology, then some in design, and then we'd come together, both teachers, and they'd bring their working drawings to the design lab. And we'd have probably about 2 or 3 lessons not together, and then we were lucky we could timetable the shared space.

We also had the Grade 2s coming in to do some after-school projects and things with their teachers and making bookends and painting, and dowel rods were being put in and hammering was being done. And it was just lovely to be able to, to be that central point, you know, be MYP Design, be that middle point that was connecting everybody.

Yeah, that's an interesting platform, isn't it, to then be inviting different people in. So, I mean, just from a curriculum design point of view, because I think there's lots of interesting discussion around and quite a lot of misunderstanding around multidisciplinary curriculum, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, you know, and these, all these different potentially jargony words thrown around, but they are, there was one particular visualization of it, which I really enjoyed, which was that the multidisciplinary is like a salad. The interdisciplinary is like a stew. And then the transdisciplinary is like a cake. So, you know, increasing invisibility of the different elements, right? Within the salad, all the elements are just mixed together, and then in the stew, you kind of got some mixing of the elements, but you can still discern the different ingredients. And then the cake, they're just all— everything's all kind of integrated into one. So I think it's a really interesting way of visualizing it. But I think there are diff— there are important differences in the way that you approach. So, so you were very clearly an interdisciplinary approach to the curriculum design, were you?

Yes, that was what we had to do in any case. But when we were— when we left, before we left school and we wanted to write the book, I think at that point the IB just wanted one unit per year at that time. We decided that we were going to write all of them as interdisciplinary units because we felt this— there was such a need for help on this.

And I think it— once you actually start really trying to change students' learning experiences, the more you delve, the more you realise we are— everything is so interconnected and we create these silos of learning that are really false in the real world. I mean, currently Sarah and I are working on a PBL version of our book for the States and we've done it as stream because, you know, it started off as STEM, then it was STEAM. And of course people realized you need the reading and the English if you're going to be truly creative. So what is that that's interdisciplinary?

Yeah, it's— there's something I've kind of grappled with is that idea, because they are somewhat artificial silos. You know, they don't necessarily reflect the real world because everything's interconnected in the real world, which we understand. But I think obviously there's, there's the structural need in education to retain and understand those boundaries because, you know, children are having different lessons in those different things, or they're being examined in different subjects. But I think personally, I think there's also some value in having this kind of metacognitive awareness of the important concepts that frame a particular discipline and the way that you might think in a particular discipline using those concepts like a scientist or like a mathematician. So I think, you know, for me, that's why I like the interdisciplinary idea, because I think there is value in understanding the boundaries between those disciplines, as well as the interconnections between them, right?

Yeah, there have to be. And like, I haven't got a clue. Well, I have a slight knowledge of biology, but it was the biology teacher who was using that particular language, those concepts. And it was the same for design. And I don't think working in an interdisciplinary manner means you don't have that because there's certain, as you say, there's certain parts of every subject that you really need that specialist knowledge. But where the learning becomes really rich is when you can interconnect some of that stuff and the kids then go, "Oh, I get it." Yeah.

Right now we're working on a unit which is to do with packaging and we are, we're looking at the chemistry component of it. Now we're going to need some expert feedback. We have some ideas, but we're reaching out to colleagues that this is our idea. It's got to do with substances and how they change. You know, could we use this in terms of when we look at what happens to food packaging in the different ways it's processed? So we're not experts. We, we love to learn and we, we love to ask for help when we need it.

But I think that's, that's also such an important thing, isn't it? Because the whole project of interdisciplinary learning requires collaboration between those experts. And I think that's what's so interesting about it is because it, and, and as you said, Meredith, there is there is a structural constraint around how easy that collaboration is or how difficult in different schools, right? And you've ended up working with the biology teacher because it might be the timetable affords that, but actually, you know, it's more difficult to find time with the maths teacher or the, or the English department. And so it, there is an important structural constraint that school leaders, I think, need to be aware of, that teachers will be as imaginative and collaborative as they possibly can within the gaps and around the flexibility of what they can, but actually there is this thing called the master schedule which really allows them or disables a lot of that collaboration.

Yeah, and this is where I think you have to realise you can't do this kind of work and go, oh, next term I'm going to do this. This required a hell of a lot of conversations with the timetabler going, this is what we want, we want to try and get a lesson at each level with another subject, and then we had to negotiate with that teacher You know, not all teachers wanted to come into our crazy space and work in this way. So it takes great negotiating with your admin. And we were really lucky. Our admin was so supportive of what we were doing. We've just very, very lucky in that direction. Also, you know, it's having good communication with teachers and explaining what it doesn't mean we have to work together 24/7. You know, sometimes if people haven't worked in this way, they're a bit frightened of it. And again, teachers can sometimes get, you know, they work alone and some teachers are a bit frightened of collaborating. They—

we were really lucky that we were able to collaborate for all these years that we were in the classroom. We were able to work with our 6s and 7s very closely as well, and just to develop those ideas that we hope would give kids the best learning experience. And as you said, we had a lot of emergence, we had a lot of support from admin to be able to do that and be comfortable about experimenting.

Yeah.

And also, we, you know, like at one stage we had grade 6 and grade 10 on at the same time, and our first reaction was, oh God, we're going to have, you know, 48 kids in this space. And then we went, oh, what a fantastic opportunity. And so we turned that right around, so we had the 10s mentoring the 6s. So also, it's like thinking a little more creatively with what you sometimes get given to deal with in school.

That's great. So, all right, so let's move then into the vehicle that you're using. So we've kind of got this, the design as your home base, this amazing lab that you're then inviting people in and inviting collaboration. And that affords the interdisciplinary aspect. But obviously with the MYP, you might be using key concepts as your vehicle for making those connections between subjects. But for you guys, it was more the ethical dilemmas and ethical thinking that, that kind of became your main connecting point in your units, right? Maybe you could just give a little bit of an explanation as to why ethical thinking. I mean, where did that come from for you? And what, how does that afford that interdisciplinary connection?

I was lucky I had the opportunity to do my doctorate while I was in Oman, and actually my thesis was around looking at the MIP design program, which had a very strong ethical base, and looking, was that message actually being translated into what was being produced in the classroom? And from that, during my doctorate, I did a lot on working on ethical professional ethics and personal ethics, and Sarah and I just, we agreed it was a really interesting way to go. Now we're not ethicists at all, but we use ethical dilemmas as the centre for whatever we are using. So of course we use the IB structures, so if it's middle years, it's always IB learner profile, key concepts, all that stuff. But we've added another layer, which is the ethical dilemma. Maybe Sarah, you might want to say something about that.

Yeah, but I mean, what we found was that the kids were responding very deeply and powerfully when it came to ethical issues and thinking about justice and injustice and how could design promote things like social justice, wellbeing, health, all these things that are in the world. And so we realized that we were incorporating it into our units, but when we wrote our books, we were able to be much, much more intentional about the whole ethical dilemma. So you've got the kids engaging with the content, you're engaging them with real life issues as well. And the whole eco-anxiety that's out there, the Ethical Dilemma gives a framework for kids to think through and navigate lots of challenging ideas and issues. So there are lots of opportunities for growth and self-awareness. And just to think from that, that idea of a personal and then a local and a global outreach.

Yeah. And you've kind of provided a bit of a structure, you know, a framework for thinking through some of those things, right. And structuring young people's reflection in the books.

Yes. We've actually gone on to develop our model. There's the structure is ethical dilemmas and ethical values. You then have the learning systems and the cycles that are going to be working together. And then you've got the impact and the values themselves. So we created that framework after we left the classroom and we're using that as a way of integrating the interdisciplinary learning as well.

I like the way you've got different provoking questions for framing their thinking, like such as, am I mindful of the task at hand? Or why do I believe this? Am I making assumptions? Am I biased? I thought that was really interesting just in the way that you are explicitly drawing out some of the important reflection that needs to happen in relation to an ethical dilemma, because obviously we're all bringing our own baggage and our own preconceptions, our own biases to that. And so that needs some teasing out as well. That isn't necessarily diving into the design project or the whatever project, you know, you're doing in the lab, but it's actually stepping back from it and really self-reflecting on your own thinking.

Yeah, you're referring to the Thinking Generator, which is a graphic that when we were designing, we were working on a Respect Unit for advertising and packaging, and we were looking at stereotypes and bias and assumptions. And I wanted to find a way where kids could be supported to think about how they're thinking, to think about their own biases and beliefs in a very sort of logical way that you could take it in many different directions. And so the Thinking Generator can be used with any topic. It's really very a versatile tool, and you're looking at, you know, why am I— why do I believe this? And, you know, with your IB background, you'll also appreciate, is it based on emotion or fact? The ways of knowing also comes into that. So we decided to use it in all of our units because we felt that it was a great way to, to support kids in thinking about these things.

And also a really wonderful thing for teachers because, you know, teachers have such a hard road. They've got so many different areas they're meant to address, and you know, one of the big things is critical thinking. We've got to have critical thinkers in our classrooms, but people don't take the time, you know, to actually go, well, here's the way of doing that. And so this is something we've tried to do all through our book. It's not just the thinking generator, but there's lots of other graphic devices that again, coming back to what would we have wanted in our classroom, you know, what would have helped us? Because frequently, even the thinking generator, these are all kind of questions that you would probably get around to in a class, but maybe you'd run out of time or maybe you'd forget one aspect. And this is just a really good way to help both teachers and students. And I've also used this when I've been doing sessions with admin. And they've used it as a way to problem solve problems they've had with faculty. And so it's a really versatile device.

Yeah, that's good. And I mean, it's, as you said, explicitly scaffolding some of that thinking that might implicitly happen or it might just come in a conversation, but just to be a bit more intentional, a bit more explicit about some of those things, a little bit like the design cycle. You know, you use it as a structure and you might with certain classes or with certain groups of admin, you might be more explicit and structured in it and others you may be less, but at least it's there as a resource to dip into as and when.

And I think developing these resources is something that's really exciting, you know, being able to come up with something unique that you can get feedback on and then refine it. And you were asking earlier about using the design cycle. Well, this is one way, is creating these graphics, refining these graphics, looking at what the feedback is. That's, I think, part of what makes this job so much fun.

So you're getting feedback from people using these in the classroom now and seeing how they're going and then iterating. That's good. One thing I was thinking was in relation to— because obviously, you know, you've done this incredible amount of work in pulling these really rich detailed unit plans and, you know, thinking tools, etc., together into the book. How do you balance the fact that that has been written based on particular contexts, but, but obviously it becomes a little bit context-free because it's in a book and it's been published, but then people are using these unit plans in particular contexts. So just thinking about the idea of ethical dilemmas, you know, what, what's the kind of rich and interesting ethical dilemma in one context may be less resonant in a different context. So I just wondered maybe you could speak to that a little bit. How do you balance that idea of that kind of process of responsive curriculum design in a particular school, in a particular place, with suggesting and supporting with unit plans?

Well, the first thing I think it always comes back to, what do you have to teach? Like, what are the skills and the concepts and the philosophy, whether you're teaching in an IB world or American Common Core or your local whatever curriculum, what has to be done that is uncontested? And then it's how do you create an ethical dilemma that is going to meet those learning needs, that's going to inject— I mean, it's all about injecting like empathy and trying to get kids to think in different ways. So you can either make a very precise, exact kind of ethical dilemma, or you can keep them very open. And I think where Sarah and I, we're getting more and more open. You know, if I look at what we were writing, you know, 5 years ago, I think we try to be far more open because we have to go, ah, if I was teaching chemistry, how would that work? If I was teaching maths, how's that work? And we have to be able to make some kind of connection or else the teachers are not going to be able to.

I wanted to talk about the ethical equation because it's something we developed that we found is really very useful when we're working with teachers and training teachers. So you may have seen it in the book. We have our ethical value, we have the real-world issue, then you have the, the skills, the subject skills, and then you have how it promotes a positive impact. For example, on our unit on architecture, we've used the value of kindness. So it's kindness plus vulnerable communities plus architecture and measurement, and this equals promoting community building. And what we say to teachers is that you can interchange different ethical values into this. You can swap things around again where very interested in offering teachers choices and flexible resources.

And I think, you know, it's very much a situation where you've got to make sure whatever you're doing with this, it's going to be engaging the kids and getting them interested, because we all know if they're not interested, it's not going to happen.

Yeah, and I suppose the, the things that are really engaging to all of us are the things that are directly relevant to us now in our particular local context, right? I mean, of course, the big ideas, climate emergency, you know, the big challenges facing us are important and resonant, but even then what's particularly engaging is the thing that's happening here now. Like for me, for example, we were just talking about the forest fires recently in Bordeaux. That's a manifestation of the climate emergency, but it's directly engaging and relevant to me because it's where I live. And so there's that dimension to taking these big ideas and pulling them right down into the local, which in some ways can't be done in a book or by people outside of that context. It has to be done by the teacher in that local context, right?

Yeah. But look, I think that all the kind of dilemmas that we used in the books would be able to translate to a a local situation because you picked up that we've looked at different cultures. Now that was very deliberate. We didn't want anyone to pick up that book and not see themselves in it because this is a huge problem with resources.

Yeah, very good.

And that's the beauty of going with ethical value. So you're saying, what is wisdom? What does it mean to me? What does it mean when I think about growing food? What does it mean somewhere else? That is the ethical dilemmas and ethical values allow us to have that framework grounding everything, grounding the whole curriculum.

Yeah. And just maybe finally, if we can finish on the, the way that we can support teachers better in these, right? Because there's a huge curriculum design is a huge piece of work that I feel is constantly happening in schools. And, you know, in some ways that's right. It should be constantly happening because it's never finished and it's constantly responding to new events or the new children that you're teaching that year. So that it's a constantly evolving process, but at the same time it's a huge amount of work for busy teachers who are already looking after wellbeing and pastoral support. They're doing— they're communicating with parents. I mean, you know what it's like, we've all been teachers, it's a phenomenally busy load. And then you have this huge piece of work of curriculum design as well. And I wonder what your reflections were, just to finish on that, the way that teachers have to navigate that busy space, and then also how external people like yourselves can kind of support with some of that work.

I was just thinking that that's one of the reasons why we have developed so many of these tools for teachers, so that they can use them to think about their curriculum. We've given them samples of student work as well. We have rubrics We've got the criteria, it's shown in the books. In these books, we have shown it in different ways, so you've got the rubrics and then you have the content shown visually. So we've used a lot of differentiation specifically to support the teachers in this work, to make it very clear so that they can choose what they want to take away from it.

I think too, what we love doing is going into schools and, and not getting teachers to redo everything they've got, but we work with what they have. Because, you know, we can put ethical dilemmas into anything, really. It's just, I think teachers so often get demoralized because it's like, oh, the next new thing. And nobody ever says, what do we throw out? What do we get rid of? It's just another thing, another thing, another thing. And you know, what we love doing is working with schools and with teachers. And I mean, we're crazy about curriculum. We love writing it. And we have a lot of fun with teachers. And, you know, you always go into a session initially and you can see teachers are like, oh God, here we go again, another thing. But we tend to turn them around very fast because you've got to give teachers something they can take into the classroom tomorrow and use. Because we're so newly out of the classroom, we know how vital it is for teachers. They have so many stresses. So many demands, and we haven't even talked about COVID and online learning, but that's a whole other issue. But, you know, we want to support teachers to do the very best they can so they can enjoy their classrooms and have really meaningful interactions with their kids, and that their students see there's an impact and there's something that comes out of what they do. Yeah, because this of being told it's tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you know.

I just wanted to give that example. We were doing a teacher workshop and I was on a screen. It was 4 in the morning for me and Meredith was in Melbourne and she was in the space itself. And I could tell when we started talking about the ethical dilemmas from being on a screen billions of miles away, I could see the body language of the teachers in that space change. I could feel it because they understood the power of the ethical dilemma and what it could do for their students and how it could help them reframe their units of work.

And it was very interesting seeing the choices they then made because we made them partner up. They all had to bring in an existing bit of work and then we put them together depending on connections they made. And one that really fascinated me was the religious studies sector actually ended up teaming up with the mathematics and science, and it was like a Year 10. So I found that a very interesting combination because initially they were quite resistant about working with anybody. But after our session, it was really fabulous because at the end we had so many people come up and go, 'And now I understand it. I understand how we can do it,' because I think Having the Ethical Dilemma as a conduit to that whole IB structure, it just makes— it's like a missing piece. And I mean, I love IB curriculum, don't get me wrong, but it just makes it far more powerful.

Yeah, yeah, no, I can see that because it's very tangible, right? And things like writing a statement of inquiry in an IB unit can feel a little bit detached from the classroom because you're trying to, you know, you're weaving in It's almost like you're following the recipe of weaving in particular key concepts and related concepts and have I got everything in there in the global context for MYP? And it can feel a little bit formulaic sometimes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. It's taken us quite a long time also to work some of those out, as you were saying.

No, interesting stuff. Thank you so much. I mean, really important work that you're doing in terms of supporting teachers with this. So thank you for telling me more about it. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. The thing is that whenever you— when I listen to your podcast, you're always interested in the human being behind what they do. And I think that's what makes it so special.

Oh, thank you. No, I appreciate that. I mean, I'm genuinely interested. I realized that I use the word interesting more than any other word as I've listened to myself back. But I am— I'm an anthropologist by trade, right? That's that before I was a teacher. And I was a a budding anthropologist, and that's— I think I am just interested in the human story.

So, well, thanks a lot. It's been great talking to you, and take care.

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