In our tenth #21for21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom, we interview Vickie Morgado, who has spent 21 years working in education (how fitting) and currently works with grade 7 and 8 students in 11 different schools as an elementary Guidance & Experiential Learning Teacher.
Global Goals With Vickie Morgado
In Vickie Morgado’s classroom, she is putting together core competencies and technology, all while helping students tackle important issues that the world faces today. How you may ask?
By taking part in the micro: bit and UN Global Goals ‘do your:bit' challenge! Open globally to people aged 8-18, this challenge combines real-world problems with technology to promote problem-solving and digital skills. But the 21st-century skills don’t stop there.
Back in 2015, world leaders came together to come up with 17 Global Goals, setting a goal to solve issues like addressing climate change, world inequality, and fighting against poverty by the year 2030. The challenge has students take a real-world issue impacting today’s global society and use micro:bit to design and put together a prototype to attempt to do their part in solving it. By allowing students to take a try at solving these world issues, they are gaining a diversity of exposure and practicing their problem solving, communication, and empathy skills, all while making a difference.
By working to achieve these global goals, students develop core competencies and are fueled by their passion to make a difference in the world around them.
Reflection Prompts for Your Students
Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Vickie Morgado’s advice can be applied to them.
- In this episode, Vickie Morgado highlights the importance of giving back and helping others through service to become more driven, happier, and successful. How can community service allow you to find purpose in the work you are doing? What other core competencies are you working on in doing so?
- Damian and Vickie Morgado also emphasize the importance of taking part in mindfulness exercises to deal with strong emotions. How do you practice mindfulness in your day-to-day life, what have you found works best for you? Set 1-3 goals for yourself related to taking care of your mind and well-being.
- In this episode, we chat about the importance of failure and learning from our mistakes. Think about a time you experienced any form of failure. Describe your experience. What did you learn and how did you grow from it?
- Take a look through the list of UN Global Goals and pick one that you align with most. What drove you to choose this goal? What steps would you take to learn more about your chosen goal, and begin making your plans to ‘do your bit’?
Yearning for more? You’re in luck! We’ll be speaking to educators all month long about #21for21 and the development of 21st-century skills in the classroom. Join the fun and head over to futurereadyclassroom.com to sign up for episode recaps, lesson plans, and chances to win some awesome prizes.
HELPFUL LINKS
Did we mention something in this episode that you're struggling to find? Not to worry, all of the listed resources are linked below.
- Follow Vickie on Twitter
- Read more from Vickie on her blog
- Learn more about the do your :bit challenge
- Enter the challenge today!
- Learn more about micro:bit and the activities they make available
- Read and learn more about the UN Global Goals
- Check out the MSBR course with Mindfulness Everyday
- Learn more about Ship 30 for 30
- Read Ungrading by Alfie Kohn
