I had the priviledge of hosting a webinar with the Pune PYP Network about local and global inquiry.  What an honor to meet with such passionate PYP educators from across the world.  I hope my few words helps others who are struggling to connect across country boundaries.  

I hope this helps you too.  They are my thoughts up to this moment.  I probably won't remember half of the things that I shared.  :)

​As I finish this series on local and global inquiry, I couldn’t forget my early years friends.  Oftentimes, there are many strategies presented that are beyond the scope of what our little people can do.  I wanted to honor your special role in making learning come alive too.

In connection to the Crafting Inquiry conference, I was inspired by the ideas of Kimberly Mitchell about asking deeper questions with our learners.  She posed this question that made me think.

Kimberly gave some concrete reasons for why educators do not ask a wider range of questions.  I’d like to explore further and apply them to making local and global connections.  Her ideas are…
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• Fear
• Apathy
• Ignorance
• Culture
• Time

One of the most crippling things that educators face is fear.  In the current political climate of many educational systems, particularly in my home country, there are many that oppose our learners from exploring the world around them.  As a result, many educators are afraid of going beyond the required curriculum.  To those in this situation, my heart is with you.  There are still ways to honor local and global inquiry within your context without upsetting the systems around you. 

Early years learners are naturally curious about the world and they are continuously seeking patterns to create generalizations in the world.  One way to explore the world around us is through, “What if” questions and the PZ visible thinking routine, “What makes you say that?”.  It allows for more depth of exploration and lets the learners come up with the ideas, instead of you. This opens up the conversation to connecting to other places in your home country and around the world.

​For some educators, there are no constraints in making local and global connections to their curriculum.  They just aren’t interested in doing it.  There is no sense of ownership of the process, so they just don’t do it.  I understand this feeling when there are no systems in place to make inquiry thrive in your current culture.  But, you can still be a shining light in a dark space.  It does require extra effort on your part, which is why so many feel apathy. 
How do we turn this around?  Find a thought partner within or outside of your community that you can bounce around ideas.  My people are Vidhya, Denise, Misty, and Mondrea.  They let me ramble on for hours about my thoughts and give me some critical feedback on how to improve.  In moments of stress or disconnect, these people help to reign me back into the light of what I am doing. Usually, I walk away with new ideas that I had not considered. 

Why is this so important for me as an early years teacher?  You are laying the foundation for all other knowledge that is acquired through elementary/primary school.  This is a huge mantle on your shoulders, but it’s also not celebrated enough.  When upper primary grades reach amazing scores on standardized tests/annual exams, it’s because of all the work that has been laid in early years.  Without you, it wouldn’t be possible. Remember this when you are feeling apathy when working with your littles. 

Something I do with early learners to get them out of apathy is build experiences that touch their hearts.  We all want to connect to our own experiences, so I allow them in a scaffolded, guided process. 

• Prompts:  I use a lot of prompts to provoke thinking and get learners talking.  These prompts come in the form of pictures, film clips, music, portion of a picture book, etc. 

• Model:  I model the language of thinking…I think, I connect, I infer, I wonder.

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• Reflect:  I ask learners to think about how the ideas we are exploring connect to their own world

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• Stretch:  I ask them to make predictions of how they think it looks in other parts of their country and the world.  We draw our predictions and take a look at real examples and compare. We look at examples that evoke an emotional response, so it inspires action.

​We’ve all had our fair share of experiences within the teaching field, even if this is our first year.  I can clearly picture colleagues who didn’t want to know about inquiry, because then they would have to change their practice.  No matter how much I tried to show them, they would turn their backs to best practice.  This prompted a question in my mind, “Why are they resisting good teaching practice?”  Every time, the answer would be the same, “If they learn about inquiry, they will have to change their practice and they don’t want to change.” 

Living in ignorance is something many teachers do well.  They blame it on availability of resources or access to quality professional development.  This might have been true prior to the pandemic, but now it’s a completely different story.  You can join virtual book clubs, webinars, courses, conferences, to name a few.  There are so many more options now that our argument of staying ignorant is invalid.

So how do we get out of our ignorance?  Consider joining online chats and forums like #pypchat on Twitter.  Every two weeks, a group of educators get together to chat about all things PYP, which includes local and global inquiry.  It’s free and only costs a bit of time to read and respond to question prompts.  It has been the singular best professional development I’ve participated in the past two years, because it requires me to reflect on my own practice and own where I am on my learning journey. 

No matter the setting, time is the number one issue for most teachers.  How do we battle the time crunch when there are so many expectations during the day? We bundle our time. 

Bundle our time?  What does this mean?  In the PYP. we embed the learner profile attributes, approaches to learning (ATL), and concepts within the content.  This is a more powerful way of teaching as learners are understanding ideas within context and replicating skills as they are demonstrated in the real world.  

Here’s an example in an early years classroom

Yesterday, we talked about what it means to be a risk-taker.  It’s a person who doesn’t stop doing things, because they are scary or too hard.  A risk-taker knows the scary and hard things will help them to come up with new ideas and help them to grow. 

Today, we are going to learn more about being a risk-taker when reading.  For some of us, reading is a scary thing, because we mix up ideas when telling what happened in the story.  To help us, we are going to learn a new thinking skill called sort and categorize. Does anyone know what it means to sort and categorize?  It means that we put them in order to make sense to our brain and put a title on it.  (I have already taught what a title means)

We are going to use picture cards and sort them in order.  Let’s do it together.  (Pictures are on the whiteboard with magnets)

• Which picture shows the beginning?  
• What comes next?  (repeat)
• What is the last picture?  

Once the picture cards are sorted, ask these questions.

• Who can tell me the story in their own words?  
• How did the characters show they were a risk-taker?  
• If we sort the pictures again, how will that change the story?

Next, we are going to finish looking at this story with our hearts.  We remember our learning if we connect it to ourselves, our community, and the world. 

• Who has made a connection to the story from something that has happened within their family, friends, or school? 
• How about in your community (sports teams, clubs, church, after-school program, friends outside of school)?  
• Do we know of another story that is similar to the one we just made? 
• Can we connect to a television show or move?
• What is something that has happened in the world that is the same?  (show an example)

Tomorrow, we are going to look at a new story and practice the same skills.  I wonder what story we could use in our class that talks about _________ (unit topic)?   Allow learners to choose from a variety of texts that you have displayed.   You will use pages from the picture book as sequence cards to scaffold the process of reading from a book. 

There are numerous ways to look at local and global inquiry.  It’s about exposing our young ones to different ways of thinking and doing. 

Thank you for participating in our local and global inquiry series.  To continue this path, we are going to focus on our next book club, The Expert Effect by Grayson McKinney and Zach Rondot.  Be sure to listen to this series for more ideas. 

At the Crafting Inquiry Conference, I had the chance to pal around with a new friend, Denise Kraft.  She is a PYP Coordinator in Middletown, CT, which is about 1.5 hours from New York City.  Denise and I met each other when I led a virtual PYP exhibition workshop for Rice University.  Over the past couple of months, we were reunited and she has become a thought partner. 

While reflecting on Day 2 of the Crafting Inquiry Conference, we began chatting about my podcast.  She told me how much her teachers appreciated the ATL series being separated into early years, primary, and specialist and supporting teachers.  She told me her specialist teachers rather appreciated the examples related to their roles, because they often feel left out of the planning and development experience when looking at available resources. This made me sad and more committed to specialist and support teachers for each of my series.  

From now on, I commit to always laying the foundation of the learning and then exploring from the lens of my specialist and support teachers.  I get distracted and sometimes forget to consider your role.  I’m sorry for providing support for some ideas and not others. 

To make up for the shortfall, I am going to have a podcast series just for specialists and supporting teachers.  Think about the topics we have already explored..  Were there ideas that interested you, but you needed more support in applying it to your practice?  Be sure to jot your ideas and questions as you think of them and send them to me at @thinkchat2020 on Twitter and Lu Gerlach on LinkedIn. 

For now, we are going to explore local and global inquiry from your roles and see how we can make deeper connections to what you do. Sounds like an awesome plan to me!

On the second day of the conference, I was able to spend most of the time with Trevor MacKenzie.  His unique focus was on inquiry and assessment, but I think it still applies to your roles.

Trevor asked, “How do we assess with optimal in mind?”  He provided some interesting things to consider when answering these questions: 

• Nurture assessment (inquiry) capable learners
• Value learning mode (learner ownership of the process)
• Honor the mess of the process
• Take risks to test failure (to learn from our mistakes)
• Recognize performance mode (assessment of learning)
• Explore a student-centered assessment practice

These ideas really made me think about how we are exploring inquiry in specialists and supporting classes with fidelity and nurturing these ideas above.

​Let’s deconstruct Trevor’s ideas and apply them to local and global inquiry in your context.  

Wondering:  How do we use local and global inquiry with optimal in mind? 

We nurture inquiry capable learners & learner mode
As teachers who support learners in short segments within a week, how can we honor inquiry capable learners?  Here are some possible suggestions. 

• Ask a variety of open and closed questions
• Allow for learner choice with the use of activities
• Encourage learners to manipulate materials to create something new

Example in action

• In an EAL pull out session, learners are asked a variety of questions to bring about their creative and critical thinking in the primary and second languages.  There are two activities planned and the learners are able to choose which one they would like to explore.  The teacher asks the learners to create a new activity with the same materials, so they can transfer their learning to a new situation. 

We honor the mess of the process
Due to the limited time period, we often want to create learning experiences that are short and contained within one session.  The problem with this mode is that learning is limited to short increments that don’t often connect together.  Checklist teaching, rather than making meaning and connections to other things.  Here are some possible suggestions: 

• Break apart different elements across several lessons
• Have learners to compare/contrast, sequence, or cause/effect of elements
• Think of connections between parts and how they work together as a whole
• Make connections to how ideas are expressed in the local culture and ways it looks the same/different around the world. 

Example in Action

• In Art, learners create pieces that indicate varying tone using light and dark colors 
• After creating several pieces, have learners examine them through the lens of patterns and relationships
• Highlight various artists within the local and global community who express themselves through a certain use of color
• Allow learners to express themselves through the same lens

We take risks to test failure (to learn from our mistakes) and explore student-centered inquiry practice
One of the most difficult things to do is allow our learners to make mistakes.  We take risks to test failure, so we can grow.  It’s through our mistakes that we learn the most.  Here is a way that we can put it into practice no matter how we support learners.

Example in Action

• Co-design a learning engagement with your learners, so they are clear of the expectations, but they have a say in the process and product.
• Allow learners to choose their own materials.  For this to happen, materials need to be organized for optimal usage, labeled, and a picture is on each container. 
• Encourage learners to test out their ideas without it being reflected in their grades, so they feel free to create without consequences.
• Showcase people who tested out their ideas expecting to fail and how they turned their journey into a success.  First highlight local and national individuals and then go globally. 

As you can see, there are many ways that you can make local and global connections within your curriculum.  Start small and work your way deeper.  Here are possible question starters to think about. 

• What events have occurred that humanizes the content? 
• Who are the people locally and globally that help to make the ideas relatable? 
• How can I go from a topic to something that my learners care about?
• How can we bridge the content to everyday life? 

I know you will take these ideas and give them new life in your practice.  Please share your ideas on Twitter @thinkchat2020 and LinkedIn @lugerlach

As I mentioned in my last episode, I was able to interact with many of my edu heroes last week, including Stephanie Harvey.  What a firecracker!  She is not only quite intelligent and articulate, but she has a fire within the language development for all learners.  Something that stayed with me was Writeacide; to die a death of writing worksheets.  

How do we get learners to write authentically from their hearts?  It’s certainly not from worksheets.  Steph shares that inquiry in literature comes from curiosity, comprehension, collaboration, and content.  Isn’t that just beautiful?  She continues to state that “Inquiry is not always about a final product at the end..it is living in a way that all questions matter…because the more you learn, the more you wonder…and our role is to fan the flame of curiosity.”

How do we fan the flame of curiosity?  We discover the commonality of the human experience within our curriculum.  I’ve been fortunate to have lived through so many experiences that have shaped who I am today.  Growing up in South Korea until I was school aged helped me to realize the importance of family and cultural identity.  

When I moved to America, my cultural identity shifted and I was no longer Korean.  I was a Korean-American with an emphasis on the American part.  I quickly learned the things I needed to survive in my new culture.  

As I grew into a young adult, I realized that all of my friends were either introverts like myself or foreign exchange students.  Why was I always drawn to others who were different from the norm? 

In adulthood, it was no surprise that I entered into the wider world to discover myself.  I went to Germany to discover my father’s culture and I’m still waiting for the chance to move to South Korea.  I need to discover and celebrate my mother’s culture that I lost along the way. 

Why am I sharing this?  All of our life events are intersected based on common story elements.  You may have lived in the same country your entire life, but you have experienced identity issues, growing pains of childhood to adulthood, and coming into your own as an adult.  

How are we preparing our young learners for this adventure ahead?  What are we putting into place to help them know about the greater world?  How are we showing them that cultures are more similar than different once you go below the surface of the cultural iceberg.  

I’ve often felt like a third culture kid, even more so as I’ve aged.  Although I live in the land of birth, I don’t feel like I belong here.  I belong to the world.  I have spent ⅓  of my life exploring and living in other countries and cultures.  It’s a part of who I am and how I look at issues facing humanity.

Many of our learners are in the same situation.  They have moved throughout their lives and dont’ feel that one place is quite home.  How are we feeding their need to express their ideas and experiences through our curriculum?  

Thinking about Steph’s advice of writeacide, I thought of some strategies that I learned while participating in the ECIS International Teacher Certificate program to help build communal identity while allowing for student voice in authentic writing.

Every year, we have learners who transfer into our school from another place.  This is normal.  For some, this move is across the city, state, or our country.  The move won’t feel as foreign if they are still residing in the same region, As we cross regions, this gets more complex.  I remember moving to Texas and learning so much about the kitschy culture that was influenced by Germany.  It’s Southern, but uniquely Texan. 

What about learners who are transferring countries?  With work being more fluid since the pandemic, many people are continuing to move and explore other places.  How do we help these learners to adjust to their new context? 

Something that I really like is creating a Welcome Book that reflects the flavor and uniqueness of our school, city, and community.  Inside, learners are able to see advice from their peers about best places to visit, things that are cool about their city, and how to navigate the school community. 

I’ve used a Welcome Book before and it helped newcomers feel like they already had a network of people that cared about them.  

To add the newcomer into the mix, there were areas in the book where they could describe where they came from, their experiences, and analyze the differences and similarities between both places.  This allows the newcomer to feel that many of the things they enjoyed in their prior home can be found in their new home.  This helps to calm fears and open to risk-taking.

Without fail, we begin the school year with a bang and then we lose students due to mobility, new jobs, and family changes.  This happens.  How do we support these learners as they begin their new adventure often in uncertain circumstances?  

A Farewell Book allows learners to reflect on their experiences in their present city and identify the things that make it special to them.  This is a way to honor the experiences as they move on.  

The Farewell Book also allows fellow learners to share their favorite experiences and messages of friendship.  This is important for the learner leaving the community, because they will struggle with the transition.  Oftentimes, they are leaving the only community they have ever known, even if it is just across town.  By providing the Farewell Book, it acts as a security blanket during the transition and allows the learner access to talking points to share with their new community. 

Something I really like about the Farewell Book is that it has space for the learner to connect their past experiences with their new ones.  They will have the opportunity to compare and contrast elements to see the commonality of the human experience. 

I remember being an adult that was continuously changing their living situation every 3-4 years.  There is a sense of loss and directionality when we move.  Yes, it’s all new and exciting, but nothing is familiar.  There is something to be said for familiarity.  It lets us know that we are safe and secure of our surroundings. 

Speaking to leadership, I would consider making a Welcome and Farewell book for your incoming staff.  I greatly appreciated the faculty binders and materials to help me navigate areas of town.  What would have helped even more was a book that helped me to understand the local experience from people who had lived there awhile and understood my hesitations.  A reflective journal would have helped me to better see the connections between where I am from and the new place I called home.  Something to consider. 

Some of you are shaking your head and thinking, “When am I going to have time to make this?”   Guess what, you don’t.  Have your learners create the welcome and farewell books during the first month while developing small group station routines.  This will allow them to demonstrate a wide variety of skills such as writing, collaboration, creative thinking, reflection, and generating novel ideas, to name a few.  

The only thing you need to do is co-create a success criteria of what should be in the Welcome and Farewell books, so everyone is working towards the same goal. This will allow your learners to stay on track while creating something unique for their peers. 

Notice, we didn’t explore writing strategies to bring about more voice, because you already have access to a wide variety of resources.  One person you might add to your list is Gretchen Bernabei, who has put in structures to make the writing process more scaffolded and learner driven.  You can find her work at Trail of Breadcrumbs. 

This week, I had the privilege to attend the Crafting Inquiry Conference with Kath Murdoch, Trevor MacKenzie, Kimberly Mitchell, and Stephanie Harvey.  This powerhouse group of inquiry leaders helped me to think about my practice and expand my thinking. 

Kath talked about the ten characteristics of a great inquiry.  On the top of her list was authenticity.  When I think of authentic learning, I picture children grappling with real issues that are happening in their everyday lives, not just in a word problem.  One way to do this is through stories.  They shape the mental movie reel in our minds of why the issue matters and what we can do to make it better or solve it.  

I hear you in the back of the room asking these questions as I shared this connection.   
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• Why do stories matter when exploring various content areas?
• How can storytelling help us to make deeper connections to ideas?
• How do stories humanize the experiences being faced in this world?
• What stories do you have to tell that you have kept to yourself?
• How will your stories reshape our thinking? 

A few years ago, we were unpacking what it means to migrate from one place to another in fourth grade.  The learners were somewhat interested in the topic, but it sparked to life when one student shared her mother’s experience crossing the border into our country.  Her family was quite desperate to get the United States and they tried everything to do it legally.  With limited options, the family decided to try and cross the border with a group.  The stories that were shared involved barbed wire fences, border patrol with guns, and snarling dogs.  I could easily picture the event in my mind and my perspective about immigration policy quickly expanded.  In my classroom lived a child whose family had gone through unmentionable things in order to make it across the border.  It’s no longer an US versus THEM argument, because we have just humanized the experience. 

​How are we humanizing the local and global issues that we are teaching our learners?  We can easily do it by providing the back story to what we are learning.  It’s not that hard.  For every teacher, practice, or strategy is the story of who came up with it and how they made their discoveries.  You just need to find the stories that resonate with you, so they connect with your learners. 

When I was living in Dubai, our class went on a field trip to the Ibn Battuta Mall to watch an IMAX film about undersea life.  I remember walking around the mall totally confused, since each corridor represented a different country that was explored by Ibn Battuta.  There were actual artifacts such as pottery, papyrus, statues, clothing, to name a few. On that field trip, I learned so much about this explorer and how he helped to build relationships between all the nations of Islam and the surrounding regions.  

Why had I not heard of Ibn Battuta in America?  One possible reason is our definition of explorer.  We usually attribute them to European countries who went out in search of unknown lands.  Technically, they were already known, but that’s another story. Since Ibn Battuta’s mission was not out to conquer and claim lands, his exploration is hardly mentioned. For this reason, I include him as part of my inquiry materials and use him as an example in most of my workshops.  ​

​As an upper elementary/ primary teacher, I was always looking for ways to connect the abstract science content through stories.  One of my favorites came when I was looking for examples of how to make properties of matter connect to real-life.  It’s not easy. 

One unique story that I uncovered was about Albert Einstein.  Did you know that Albert discovered the fifth state of a matter, which is an expanded version of plasma?  Say what?  As a young scientist, he made this unique discovery and presented it to the scientific community.  The community refuted his findings and began making personal attacks about his capabilities.  This impacted Albert so much that he retracted his findings, until another team repeated the experiment 20 years later and proved he was correct.  In recent years, a team won the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering the seventh state of matter.  Yikes! 

One way to get the learners hooked even further is by posing this question:  How would you feel if you presented your ideas to the world and people wrote about you in a negative way on social media?  What would you do?  Could you handle the pressure or would you retract your ideas like Albert did? Now we are making this story relevant to our modern-day. 

​FInd something you are crazy about exploring with your learners and research the backstory of the theory, the struggle to make the discovery, the people behind it, and how they overcame their personal, social, and mental obstacles to make it happen.  Everyone loves a a good story. 

There is a story in every subject area.  How can I say this? Every topic, science, art, innovation, and creation that we know of has come about through human interaction of some kind.  These people who made, discovered, and innovated have a story of their process, their obstacles, their successes, and their journey.  Take a moment to find out, so the learning becomes more real to the lives of your learners. Better yet, hook them into a question about a person and have your learners inquire for themselves. 

​Wahoo!  The moment has finally come.  We get to merge the local inquiry with a global context.  I’m physically and metaphorically rubbing my hands together with glee.  I can’t wait to put these ideas together to create something meaningful. 

When I think of the relationship between the local and global inquiry, the first thing that pops into my mind is the PZ visible thinking routine, Projecting Across Distance.  This amazing thinking routine helps learners to stretch their understanding about local or isolated content and make relevant and significant connections. It has become one of my favorite routines to use to explore more complex issues that humanity is universally experiencing at the same time.  In some small way, it makes it easier to realize that you are not the only one. 

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Projecting%20Across%20Distance.pdf

Pick a topic, event, or issue that might be approached differently in different parts of the world or even your own country, such as food security, population growth, or marriage practices. Then, consider it from the following perspectives. 

How is the topic, event, or issue playing out or viewed in... 
your community?
another city or town in your country?
a country east or west of your country, where people may think differently about the theme, event, or issue?
a country north or south of your country, where people may think differently about the theme, event, or issue? 

What might account for the similarities and/or differences between and within the communities and countries?

To apply this visible thinking routine, I am going to conduct a research project based on places that have a special place in my heart through personal travel and living in the country.  Sorry if I geek out, but you will get a bigger picture at the end.  I just love this stuff. 

What might account for the similarities and/or differences between and within the communities and countries?

The commonality between all the countries explored is that there is disparity of access to clean water and balanced eating opportunities based on your income level.  As expected, the majority of the issues occurred in rural areas outside of big cities due to infrastructure or easy access. 

​​In the United States and Australia, the highest population that did not have access to balanced diets were people of color.  Although, Australia is trying to put forward initiatives to teach people living in poorer conditions how to source and prepare healthy meals. 

Although India has clean water access in rural areas, most of the people do have access.  There was limited data to support unbalanced diets, rather, there was more research to support healthier eating systems. 

​Now that we have stretched our learning to think a bit deeper about our standards, let’s think about how we are going to leverage the local community and beyond to add value to the learning and teaching.  There are many people within our local community that want to give back, but don’t know how to do it.  They are a valuable resource to adding a richness to the learning and teaching. 

​Let’s take a look at our information from our last episode and build onto it by finding some experts at the local level and planning for action to occur. 

​As you can see, when we think from the lens of making local connections, it naturally blends into taking action.  How could it not?  We are trying to solve real world problems with resources in our local area.  

The main objective of a local-based inquiry is to help our learners to recognize that there are resources locally that can solve most of our problems. They might require a lot of planning, time, energy, and resources, but it can be done.  It won’t be instant, but it can be done. 

For children who live in lower income areas, this demonstrates that there are people within the local community that care and want to help where they can.  It’s about building awareness of systems and tools to leverage in order to maximize the support.  I learned a lot about this when I was working in my last school.  I was always impressed how our counselor, wrap around specialist, and Community in Schools representative gathered resources from local community members and sponsors to better the life of our community. 

For children who live in other areas of the city, it helps them to see a broader range of living conditions and issues within society.  They actively take part in making a difference for someone else.  This is powerful in getting these learners to recognize that not all of the world lives like them and to learn some gratitude, while serving others. 

In my book, it’s a win-win.  All people walk away better through local inquiries. 

​In the last episode, we ended with the idea of connecting our local issue to our curriculum and standards.  So, I’d like to dedicate this episode to examining possible ways to explore this.  I am providing some tips, but you and your team must decide what best fits for your school and learners.  I love challenging myself in creating curriculum connections that are not so blatant or that we haven’t seen.  Isn’t this the purpose of inquiry?  See, you are making deeper connections already!

Oftentimes, we create curriculum that is segmented by subject areas, even if we are not intentional about it.  It just happens.  Here’s something to consider when looking at your curriculum.  We will examine one content standard, so you can truly examine how it’s being explored deeper and where you can connect to other content that you must teach. Let’s begin by defining each category heading. 

Content Standard: the standard(s) that must be taught that is determined by a governing body, board, or head of school

Issue: the possible ways we can explore the content standard and connect it to other ideas being explored.  

Local Evidence:  the different ways that we see the issue being demonstrated in our local community.  

Resolution:  the ways the local issue is being addressed and the people who are helping to make a difference. 

We looked at a social studies example of how this might be solved.  Now, let’s apply our learning to science. ​

​Once you unpack one issue, you are able to bring in your other curriculum to support through the issue, local evidence, and resolution.  I would choose a content standard that is centered on the concept from your transdisciplinary theme descriptor for the unit.  Then, make the natural connections across your content areas as a means of support.  This might add some richness to an existing unit in a way that you may not have considered. 

I would love your thoughts on this idea @thinkchat2020  @lugerlach

Welcome to our new series on local and global inquiry.  After the book club on “Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning” by Kath Murdoch, I wanted to extend my thinking towards making local and global connections to our inquiry.  This seemed like the natural next step.  

When I think of local inquiry, my mind immediately shifts towards place-based learning.  There are numerous definitions of what it is.  I have two favorites from Edutopia and University of Liggett School: Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. ​

​“Place-based learning engages students in their community, including their physical environment, local culture, history, or people. With place-based learning, students get to see the results of their work in their community. They build communication and inquiry skills, learn how to interact with any environment, and gain a better understanding of themselves, as well as their place in the world.”  

I’m immediately hooked into the notion of connecting our local physical environment to its culture, history and people.  Can you imagine how much that would open up the minds of our young learners?  It makes learning relevant to their personal lives and inspires action.  
 
In my current city of Houston, Texas.  I can see so many options of exploration through the lens of the founding of America, Mexican-American interaction, migration, industry, identity, and truth to name a few.  
 
As a teacher, I tried to expand my learners' thinking about historical events.  Instead of learning about the Battle of the Alamo as a right of taking America.  I had my learners explore this singular event from various lenses:  the Americans, the Tejanos (Mexicans),and the Native Americans. I would ask my learners these types of questions: 
 

• Who was the true winner of the Battle of the Alamo? 
• Who was the ultimate loser? 
• How do history books shape our understanding of our past? 
• How can we get a more broad understanding of past events?
• How do these events influence our culture today? 

​“The goal of place-based humanities is to allow students to explore their locality in order to understand the trends that are going on at a larger level.  Place-based humanities, you might look at the stories of your locality and draw greater trends in history; what’s going on in the nation; the world; and how does your place fit into that?”  
 
Hemler continues, “So they (teachers) are learning about the stories that have been forgotten, purposefully or unintentionally buried and we’re helping teachers to uncover those and more importantly learn how to uncover those and what community partnerships to create in order to help to bring those stories back to the surface and bring them back to life.”

​​I immediately zoomed into the notion that certain stories have been buried purposefully and unintentionally.  This matters.  If there are hidden stories, it changes the narrative of our history and identity when they come to light.
 
For example, being in Houston for the past 8 years, I have a fascination with all things NASA and space.  Like most people, I had the misconception that mission control was full of male engineers who guided our astronauts on their first landing on the moon.  Since the book and film, “Hidden Figures” has come to light.  It changes the narrative that women, especially black women, were involved in this endeavor. Just like “Hidden Figures”, what other stories have not come to light of events that really happened to shape our local, national, and global history? 
 
The next challenge is to identify resources within our local area that will shape the narrative for us.  Some educators who are listening right now are under control of what and how they can teach.  By partnering with our community resources, they are taking on the burden of providing the information, not you.  Consider this as a viable option. 

As I get started in uncovering local inquiry, here are some questions that percolate in my mind.  This will help you to know where you want to go with the inquiry. 
 

• What is inquiry at the “local” level?
• What knowledge and skills do we need?
• How do I actively connect with my local community?
• Where do I find the necessary resources?
• How do I know if there is an inquiry opportunity within my local community? 

Here are some practical tips that were suggested about Edutopia

• Pay attention to local events and places that impact your students.
• Celebrate unsung heroes in your community.
• Reach out to your community.
• Search the internet for ideas.
• Connect place-based learning curriculum to standards

  
Edutopia:  Place-Based Learning: A Multi-faceted Approach
CITL:  Placed-Based Learning Workshop and Video Overview