I’m inspired by the work of so many people that I have come across in my life. Many of these are colleagues who live a life true to their life mission to make the world a better place. My previous school was chock a block full of them. I could name them but they would probably be embarrassed.
When struggling to find my part to play in this, I often forget that every teacher already plays a role. We could potentially come in contact with up to a hundred (or even more) young minds every single day.
Zoe Weil is someone who is inspiring a generation of teachers to help create a generation of solutionaries from the students that we teach. Her book,’ The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries’’ should be required reading for all teachers.
What is a solutionary you may ask? Is that even a real word? Grammarly doesn’t seem to think so. But funnily enough Chat GPT now recognises it. I’m not sure if Zoe invented it. But I like it.
A solutionary is a person who identifies inhumane, unsustainable, and unjust systems and then develops solutions that are healthy and equitable for people, animals, and the environment. In Zoe’s now famous Ted Talk she explains that though it may seem unfair to burden our children with the task of solving the world’s problems, it is actually a necessity. And also, kids are actually pretty good at coming up with solutions to problems.
Not really knowing how to go about this mission of creating solutionaries, I just decided to write a unit for my Grade 10 class called ‘Becoming Solutionaries’. I pretty much went rogue on this, threw out an old unit that I didn’t like and developed a new unit before really getting it approved by anyone. Attaching this to a professional development goal that I set earlier in the year did help me to justify it though.
Using some of Zoe’s resources from www.humaneeducation.org I am now teaching the unit. Unit writing is not really my thing. In fact, I pretty much hate it. It’s a close second behind marking assignments. These are two pretty big reasons why I probably shouldn’t even be a teacher.
What I do enjoy though, is seeing students motivated by doing something new, exciting and challenging. It started out positively. Fingers crossed that this unit works and continues in my school.
Teaching a unit about solving some of the world’s biggest problems requires one to acknowledge that there are already many people who are taking action to address inhumane or unjust systems. As an expat, it is nice to see when fellow expats are giving back to their adopted homes.
One Hong Kong expat who is doing just that and is truly inspiring is Jeff Rotmeyer. Jeff founded and runs a non-profit called ImpactHK as well as another called Love 21 Foundation. He has been described as a ‘Hero to the homeless’. Jeff had a huge impact on some of my previous students. I used Jeff as my example of a solutionary for my first week of the current Grade 10 unit.
Here is a small part of his story:
After coming to Hong Kong as a teacher, Jeff accidentally found himself setting up and running what is now one of Hong Kong’s highest-profile charitable organisations. ImpactHK offers a range of services to people experiencing homelessness, and Love 21 Foundation supports the down syndrome and autistic community with health and nutritional programmes.
He identified a major problem of homelessness in a place that most people consider extremely wealthy. He also saw that rather than helping the homeless, in many ways the government was actually making life even more difficult for them.
In an interview with TatlerAsia last year he said “I didn’t know anything about that community, but I tried it, and it just became the highlight of my week. It’s a community that really changed my life, with its ability to bring the best out of people. They showed me true kindness, without expecting anything back. It changed my priorities. I don’t think I’d be doing ImpactHK without them.”
The genesis of what became ImpactHK began in 2014, when a friend invited him to visit Tung Chau Street Park in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, which has a sizeable homeless community, an experience he describes as “a real eye-opener”. He went back with friends to give out food, initially once a month, but it snowballed; more people kept volunteering to help out, and that soon became twice a month, then four times, then eight.
With the slogan “kindness matters”, ImpactHK is driven by a philosophy of putting people in need first. It employs more than 50 people, many of whom have experienced homelessness themselves.
Its services include Kindness Walks, where essentials are given to homeless people; help applying for welfare and accommodation; housing, from emergency shelters to a co-living scheme; assistance with employment and training; and health and fitness services. It has its own centres in Tai Kok Tsui: 29, a community centre, and 100, a sports and counselling centre.
“It’s sometimes a little bit lonely, and you do feel pressure,” he says. “But the key for me is that I’m always on the streets with the homeless community. When you’re that close to the community, it’s easier to come up with better strategies. My favourite part of the job is just having conversations with people outside.”
When teaching students, we often ask them to analyse problems and investigate the cause of problems. We sometimes ask them to evaluate proposed solutions to problems. But we rarely ask them to solve the problems themselves. The approach to becoming a solutionary is to identify problems and investigate causes that are often related to systems and to create strategies to actually solve these problems.
Some of these are likely to require significant changes to the way that the world operates. These challenges can only be overcome if we have a whole generation who have considered their role in causing the problem and are able to propose practical solutions that can be embraced by society.
Having role models like Jeff Rotmeyer as well as the great teacher role models out there along with a new approach to education, can I believe, create positive change and address some of the world’s biggest problems.
We consider our education systems to be effective if they lead to knowledgeable, skilful and effective employees. Our students go on to become CEO’s, politicians, teachers and lawyers. They also become consumers and voters.
If we introduce more ‘solutionary’ units into our curricula those same students will still go on to fill the same roles. But they will fulfil those roles as problem solvers rather than problem creators. They will be ‘solutionaries’. And surely that can’t be a bad thing. And if we’re lucky the world will have more people like Jeff.
