I heard about a great experience illustrating awe in learning that was shared by a group of middle school students and their teacher in Grand Island, New York. They joined me on this podcast sharing their reflections and insights. As you hear their story consider where these elements of Awe appeared:
- Awe occurs when we experience something much larger than ourselves
- Awe leads to the need to reframe one’s understanding of the world.
- Awe often brings forth emotions of humility, gratitude, and compassion.
- Awe is linked to prosocial behavior: people are more likely to help others after experiencing awe.
Connect with the teacher, Lora Randles: lorarandles@gicsd.org
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.540] – Steve
Find Leading Awe While Learning. While I’ve been involved in writing a chapter for a book about awe in learning, I heard about a great experience generated by a group of middle school students in Grand Island in New York and their teachers. Their superintendent posted about their work with a note that said, “The students were learning with heart and leading with purpose.” As you hear their story, consider where these elements of awe connect. Awe occurs when we experience something much larger than ourselves. Awe leads to the need to reframe one’s understanding of the world. Awe often brings forth emotions of humility, gratitude, and compassion. Lastly, awe is linked to pro-social behavior. People are more likely to help each other after experiencing awe. I’m excited to have Lora Randalls, an ELA middle school teacher, and her students, Fiona and Logan, sharing their stories with us today on the podcast.
[00:01:49.540] – Steve
Welcome, folks, and thanks so much for joining us.
[00:01:52.840] – Lora
Hi. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:55.220] – Steve
Lora, you shared with me earlier that this unit, built around the book, “A Long Walk to Water,” has been part of your instruction at the school for a few years. Would you share with us how it was selected and what you’ve learned about the power of the book across the years with students?
[00:02:16.540] – Lora
So it was about 16 years ago, and New York State had just started implementing this new curriculum and one of the books in their curriculum, they called them Modules – and they were leaning towards these four modules. And one of the books in a module was “A Long Walk to Water.” And I had never read the book before, but as I began delving into these new standards, I started by reading the book. And if you want to talk about an awe moment as an educator, it’s actually sitting in a staff development, probably should have been paying more attention to the speaker, but got caught up in this book, which is an appropriate middle school level. So I ended up finishing it in that setting and thinking to myself, I don’t love the module that New York State’s prepared, but this book’s a keeper. And I knew from that moment on that this book was going to be both changing in my life as an educator, but also for the lives of my students. But what it did is just so much more than I could have ever anticipated – this impact that it’s had on them and me personally in my life as well.
[00:03:30.000] – Steve
Logan, as you read the book, what impact did it have on you?
[00:03:38.620] – Logan
When I was reading the book, it was just very wild to think that kids my age were going through that stuff. I go to school, I go home, I have fun. And kids over in South Sudan were running from wars and stuff. And it was really wild to think about, but just hearing saw the story was so impactful. He’s just such a powerful person. He came from being in war, being in this war-set environment to now helping everyone in South Sudan and those places without water. It’s just super changing of what he’s done.
[00:04:23.280] – Steve
Fiona, talk about a piece that especially caught your attention.
[00:04:28.900] – Fiona
Just how lucky we are to have running power and electricity and heat and water and air conditioning because it never really occurred to me how lucky we are because these kids have to go and get a bucket and fetch water every single day for their village. And even when they go and walk the entire day to get the water, it’s filled with harmful bacterias and sicknesses. And so that’s just a really big struggle. And I didn’t really realize how lucky we are to have clean water and fresh water, and that we don’t have to spend our entire day walking to get water that’s just filled with bacteria and that’s going to make us sick anyways.
[00:05:13.600] – Steve
Lora, what led to the move from reading the book to the decision to engage in the Water for South Sudan project?
[00:05:23.520] – Lora
Well, I feel like I would be amiss if I didn’t say a little bit about the book.
[00:05:28.240] – Steve
Yeah, please.
[00:05:29.400] – Lora
Okay. The book itself was written by Linda Sue Park. Salva is a true person. He was a Sudanese refugee who became known as the Lost Boys back in the ’80s. When these boys from South Sudan were relocated to America, they began their lives here. As Logan said, Salva has now dedicated his life to bring water back to the people of his original country. Reading the book, Salva as a real person, and he speaks it like engagements, church, civic organizations, schools, and he had to gather a lot of money to get his project started. It just so happened that Newbury, a winning author, Linda Sue Park, was in the audience at a church in Rochester when Salva was speaking. She was so moved by his story that she decided she wanted to write a biography about him. But she wanted to write it for middle school students as that was Salva’s age when his journey began. So as Salva gets separated from his family at about 11 years old, he flees to what they call in Africa as the Bush, only to never return home. And Salva travels for 11 years over thousands of miles of the wild truck of Africa swamp lands, areas inhabited by dangerous lions, crossing rivers filled with crocodiles to different refugee camps, only to find life they’re not as much better than just his survival in the wild.
[00:07:16.320] – Lora
When the United States found out that this was happening in other countries around the world, they started to bring these Sudanese refugee kids over to America. But they couldn’t have been a soldier. They had to be orphans. And Salva met criteria, and they had to have a vision. They wanted to bring something to America. They wanted these people to come to get educated. And Salva learned English from one of the workers in the park. So he comes to America, and he’s relocated right here in Rochester. And the family that he lives with helps him adjust to life in America. He goes to Monroe Community College, graduates with a business degree. And then all of a sudden, after he’s lived in America about six, seven years, he checks his email. This is a fun point in our lesson when we’re like, How far Salva has come? Now that he’s checking his email.
[00:08:06.270] – Steve
[laughter]
[00:08:06.860] – Lora
He realizes that an old cousin from his back in Sudan says he thinks that he’s found his father at a clinic suffering from some waterborne illness from drinking the water. Salva and his new family in the United States help him get all the paperwork in order.
[00:08:24.410] – Lora
He travels back to South Sudan, finds out, yes, this, in fact, is his father. He gets spend a week with his father. It’s very moving. It’s a very powerful moment. And Salva then has to return to the United States, not knowing if he’ll ever see his father again. So at this point in Salva’s life, he realizes he wants to give back. He wants to do something. And his dream is he wants to bring water to the people of South Sudan. So things like that are happening to his father don’t happen to others. So to do this, Salva needs to start a nonprofit organization, and he needs to do it from scratch. He needs to start at the beginning. So he starts, as I started my story, by talking to civic organizations and schools. And it takes him a lot of years to raise enough money to bring his first well to South Sudan, which would be built in his original village of Lunarik, and where he was reunited with his mother and his sisters that he hadn’t seen at that point in over 20 years. So at this point now, after all these years have gone by, and Water for South Sudan has now been up and running for about 20 years, he’s brought more than 600 wells to South Sudan.
[00:09:41.980] – Lora
He teaches hygiene with water, planting crops with water, how to preserve water, how to maintain wells, and all of these components. And the well is never to be used just for one village, and they have to share it with anybody who comes. So Linda Sue Park writes this manuscript, and it’s 900 pages. She’s like, okay, this isn’t going to apply with middle schoolers.
[00:10:07.650] – Steve
[laughter]
[00:10:07.650] – Lora
This is a fabulous story of Salva’s life. She goes back to the drawing board, and I tell my students this, too, not once, not twice, nine times.
[00:10:17.260] – Steve
Oh, wow.
[00:10:18.050] – Lora
Nine times until she gets this version of Salva’s story that she’s satisfied with. So it’s condensed to about 120 pages. She’s still not satisfied. Linda Sue Park says there’s just something missing. She goes, yes, this is a story about Salva, about water. But when we’ve learned about the water in Africa, it’s really the girls whose lives revolve around the fetching, the gathering of water, the boiling of water, washing with water. The girls are the ones who have to transport using their lives. The boys hunt. They are more likely to get an education. So Linda Sue Park created a composite character. She created a fictional character, a girl about Salva’s age, and she named her Nia, which is just a popular name in South Sudan.
[00:11:07.960] – Lora
Nia’s story was told at the beginning of every chapter, much shorter, maybe a page to two pages, just telling about Nia’s very monotonous, very mundane life of gathering water, coming back for lunch, gathering water again, having to teach her little sister how to gather the water, her little sister becoming ill during the rainy sees in them having to move to an area closer to a lake bed. But then there’s tribal wars on top of the Civil War. So there’s all these components going into the story. So at the end of the book, When Salva is working on building his wells, Nia is from a rival tribe. So at the end of the book, the little girl Nia is asking her, Uncle, why did Salva bring the water to our village? Why would it Dinka to bring water to the newer tribe. Her uncle said, Well, he wants to bring water to all the people of South Sudan, not just to his own tribe, the Dinka. At the end of the book, Linda Sue Parks creates this very moving moment when Nia goes up to Salva and thanks him for bringing the water. I cry every year.
[00:12:20.040] – Lora
It’s just such a lovely full circle moment. At this point, these kids are engaged. They’re engaged in Nia’s story, even though it’s fictional, they can relate to this arduous task of having to gather water day in and day out, and they see what Salva has done in the world to make a difference. That is the story of why Linda Sue Park wrote the book. Now, her and Salva are very close. They do speaking engagements together. Prior to these students I have with me today, Logan and Fiona, we actually taken a group of students that we were able to see Linda Linda Sue Park and Salva together and talking about the creation of the book. I’m going to let Logan tell you a little bit about when we saw Salva this last time and how his message now has changed a little bit, if that’s appropriate for this point in the conversation?
[00:13:18.900] – Steve
Yeah, I have to tell you, I’m awed. I’m awed listening to the story from you, and I love the passing on of awe. Linda Sue Park gets odd the first time she hears Salva, and then she writes the book that puts you into awe, and now you’ve got this great opportunity sharing it with the kids. I’d love to hear Logan’s insights.
[00:13:44.600] – Lora
This year, Salva came – it was a Sunday, so we couldn’t take a field trip. So voluntarily, students were able to just go hear him speak at a local church. So Logan was one of the students who came out to meet Salva. So I’ll him tell you about that day.
[00:14:01.680] – Logan
So I remember going in there and then just actually seeing him in person was just like, wow. Because you think about all that he’s went through, and now he’s here in front of you, telling you about what he’s doing with the water for South Sudan and everything. Then after he was done explaining how he helps people and makes wells, he actually sat down and then he would sign books and meet people. There was a line to him because, of course, there’s a line. Then it was so big. To just think, when I was getting closer to it, I think, I’m going to meet him. It’s just so like, wow, like what I said before, of what he’s been through, and now I’m going to shake his hand and stuff.
[00:14:53.140] – Steve
You’ve given a great description of awe for our listeners.
[00:14:58.120] – Lora
Definitely. He’s very great gracious. One of my students who drew him a picture, and Salva was kind enough to let my student bring the picture up for him. He’s like, Salva, I drew this picture for you, and he was very gracious, and it was very sweet.
[00:15:16.120] – Steve
Fiona, I’m wondering, how did you get engaged with raising the funds that your class raised?
[00:15:25.340] – Fiona
I went home that day and I was telling my parents Salva’s story, and they were very touched by it. And so I also called up some of my relatives, and I told them Salva’s story and just how hard his life was and how hard life is still for people in Sudan. And they were crying on the phone. They were so touched and awed by his story. So they donated to the fundraiser. And we did a walk the entire seventh grade, our entire team. We did a walk around the track a few times. It was in the hot sun. And I couldn’t imagine walking in the hot sun every day to get water for your entire village because I was barely walking in the hot heat on our track because it was so hot. But we walked for water, and we did that all as a community. It was a really cool thing to just see so many people get together and actually care about his story and what it means.
[00:16:27.140] – Steve
I really hear the awe experience keeps rippling out to other people getting engaged in it.
[00:16:37.720] – Lora
One of the local Aquanis Club heard about the story, and then they donated a couple of thousand dollars to support the kids. So by the end of the walk, the kids had raised all of this money going towards a second well that we would bring to South Sudan. And so we were really proud of them.
[00:17:00.660] – Steve
Very cool. I’m wondering, Logan and Fiona, do other times at school and other projects that you’ve been engaged in, can you connect to another time that you got that awe experience? Anything come to mind?
[00:17:22.180] – Logan
It was actually in Mrs. Randall’s classroom again. At the beginning of the year, we were reading this book called “The Outsiders,” and It’s like the whole book’s made up, but it’s about the Greasers back in the ’60s. I did not expect it to turn out how it did. I love the book so much. I had to buy the copy of it. I’m actually going to see the Outsiders play this weekend.
[00:17:55.620] – Steve
Very cool.
[00:17:56.370] – Lora
The Outsiders, the Broadway musical is Buffalo this week.
[00:18:01.080] – Steve
Oh, wow.
[00:18:01.890] – Lora
The Outsiders’ book, I’ll let you, Fiona tell you a little about it, but it’s just a great novel in not judging a book by its cover. It’s these really poor, beat-up-looking kids, and the rich, popular kids taunt them and jump them and things. It’s just a really great book for the kids as well.
[00:18:26.660] – Steve
Fiona, I’m wondering what words of advice you might offer to teachers as well as students about the opportunities to be engaged in those kinds of learning experiences that create awe?
[00:18:45.700] – Fiona
Just that it’s very important to learn about other people’s stories and points of view because you don’t really know what others are going through because you can’t really tell until you read about it or they tell you about it. I feel like reading a story about somebody else’s life, it doesn’t even have to be “A Long Walk to Water.” Another book about somebody’s struggles during a hard time or some event in history can really help you open your eyes and see what’s going on in the world around you and what happened in the world around you. It can make us learn from that and move on from that.
[00:19:28.380] – Lora
I know in eighth grade, you’re going to read Diary of Anne Frank, so that might be impactful, too.
[00:19:33.240] – Steve
For sure. Fiona, I want to tell you, you just gave a great description that matches what the researchers are writing about awe, and that it gives you a perspective of the world around you that you didn’t have before. You clearly labeled that. Logan, any words of advice to teachers and students about these kinds of learning opportunities?
[00:20:04.900] – Logan
I mean, some of the most important things with teachers is the teachers have to… They cannot just read the book and be done with it. They have to incorporate some of the book with their classes, and they have to actually make the book fun. Because during “A Long Walk to Water,” when we first started reading it or we walked around the school with holding a water while walking.
[00:20:35.350] – Lora
We also made these hay canoe things, which it’s taking that stuff from the book and turning it into something that you could do in class just makes learning about it so much better.
[00:20:48.640] – Logan
So you’re not just sitting there bored out of your mind. You get to actually not experience it, but kind of experience it.
[00:20:57.220] – Steve
Well, Logan and Fiona, I I can tell you the two of you are ready to do a workshop for teachers. I’ll look to sign you up. I’ll tell you this, you’re giving your teacher awe as she gets to listen to you because I can sit here and watch it happening on the screen. Lora, I’m just wondering any closing thoughts of advice you’d give to teachers about stepping into these kinds of opportunities?
[00:21:28.740] – Lora
Well, I feel like this book really speaks for yourself itself, and it touches a lot of people. Taking that little extra step and connecting with Water for South Sudan network – they give a lot of educational opportunities communities, and they provide a lot of different ways for educators. So whether it be a walk for water, they have a literal walk for water, sorry. They have what’s called the Iron Draft Challenge. So schools are able to raise funds and if you raise a certain amount, you can win a visit with Salva, or you can win a visit with Linda Sue Park. So they offer incentives. Because of the popularity of the book, it’s really been the success of Water for South Sudan. And then they give other ideas just for curriculum, and they also give different ideas for fundraisers for kids to try to help, even if kids are… I mean, our fundraisers turned into something school-wide and something rather big. But even if it’s a small fundraiser where students are raising $20, it’s still showing the students the power of giving, the power of that they are able to do something, that this doesn’t have to happen. This is what’s happening in the world, and they can make a difference.
[00:22:48.850] – Lora
I tell them the story, I’m Salva’s age exactly. While I’m teaching the story, I refer to Salva as 11-year-old, and he’s escaping in the bush running for his life and finding water, finding food, hiding from soldiers, trying not to get kidnapped. So he has to fight. And I went to middle school like them. And the next year, when Salva lived in a refugee camp, I went to high school where they’re going to go. And I tell them this is the year that, to remember the song “We Are the World?” “We Are the World” gets released. So at this point, it was directly talking about the children of Ethiopia. But as middle school students ourselves, we didn’t know that there was a crisis in Africa, the same as these kids. And it wasn’t until that time in my life that I realized that there are people in the world that don’t have food, that don’t have water. Just from this song, “We are the World,” that brought a lot of awareness. I feel like the book brings a lot of awareness. The organization Water for South Sudan, it’s not just fundraising. When you’re walking around with a T-shirt on, you bring an awareness to these causes that are bigger than you and things that humble you and make you really appreciate what you have and the life that you’ve been given.
[00:24:13.160] – Steve
You’ve just labeled awe. Bigger than you. Appreciate. It’s very, very powerful. Lora, I’m wondering, is there a way that you’d be okay with any listeners touching base with you if they had questions and wanted to learn more you?
[00:24:30.940] – Lora
Sure, of course. They could email me right at my school email address, which is just my full name. Again, none of my name is spelled normal, so lorarandles@gicsd.org.
[00:24:57.160] – Steve
Thank you so much. And extend a thank you to your superintendent for putting the post on LinkedIn and allowing me to find out about it.
[00:25:04.800] – Lora
I will. Thank you so much.
[00:25:08.000] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
