Big Change for Education
My adventure philanthropy trip isn’t just a badass expedition, super crazy physical effort and seeing the world… it’s to raise funds and awareness for a wonderful charity called Big Change. This global organization is shining a bright light at how today’s education system is not setup to allow every young person to thrive and excel. Not every person is book smart or can ace tests, but that doesn’t mean they should be labeled or made to feel different.
What I love about Big Change is their mission is to help young people…
“Thrive in Life, not just exams”
The education system should focus on the whole person and celebrate how different brains work. we see growing numbers of reported children with diagnosed ADHD and Dyslexia for example, both of which my son has been diagnosed with in the past few years which made us adjust as a family. While he got good grades the school we were attending at the time of diagnosis would send home DAILY behavior reports color coded red, yellow, green days and it literally gave me anxiety to pick him up and then I would get upset at him for Red days! (I hate this looking back, but I didn’t have the tools or knowledge to support him better).
But those failed behavior reports (mind you, sometimes it was that he needed to stand up in class and was not anything bad like kicking the teacher LOL) started to impact my child’s confidence in school and making him “feel different.”
So, the work Big Change does hits home for me. Check out some of the stats they’ve shared:
Source: Big Change Charity, 2023
We had multiple big education discussions while in Bhutan (at altitude!) and had a lot of similar themes come up across small groups. That current school systems are not supporting the whole child and setting up individuals to shine in the way their brains might want to learn therefore could be stifling a passion for learning as it isn’t fun not does it build confidence if a child isnt learning in a way that aligns with them. Education systems need be more agile OR there should be a variety of education system types to choose from that supports a variety of learning types.
Big Education Discussion - Photo by Adam Slama
Big Education Discussion - Photo by Adam Slama
