“Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Anne Frank – Civic Engagement

Transcript

Introduction: 0:00 

Hello, Steve and Dan Fouts here. We’re veteran educators from Illinois, who have created the Teach Different podcast to model how to have unforgettable conversations using a super simple three-step protocol, and quotes from some of the world’s great thinkers. This protocol works for students of all ages in all types of classrooms, and can be used in online or face-to-face environments. So, if you’re a teacher, administrator, social emotional learning specialist, or anybody who loves the art of conversations, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome.  

Dan Fouts: 0:37 – Claim

Welcome everybody to the Teach Different podcast. We’re very excited this week to share with our listeners a quote from Anne Frank on civic engagement. We have a few guests who will introduce themselves once they weigh in on the conversation. As always, we’ll follow the Teach Different protocol for conversations where we look at the claim of the quote, the counterclaim, and then we’ll discuss curriculum connections – how to bring this to students. We’ll end with an essential question that will keep you thinking about this moving forward. 

Anne Frank, a German Dutch diarist of Jewish heritage, known for her World War Two diary written from 1942 to 1944. She wrote it during the German occupation of the Netherlands during the war. It is an amazing piece of literature. Her quote is equally amazing as it relates to civic engagement. I’ll read it a couple of times, and then I’ll say it a few more times during the podcast so the listeners can follow along. “Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”  What does this claim mean to you? Anyone want to weigh in? 

Danielle Durbin: 2:14

My name is Danielle Durbin. I taught public school for three years, and am currently teaching at Christian Academy Louisville, which is a private Christian School. I teach World Civilizations and we actually just started learning about World War Two. I also teach Introduction to Business. When I teach civic engagement in my classrooms, my students feel like there’s not really anything they can do right now. This is particularly true for my business students who don’t actually own a business, but are training to one day own or manage a business of their own. 

One of the things we just did was we watched this documentary called Poverty, Inc., which looks at the way that NGOs are monopolizing on instances of poverty around the world. I asked my students, what would you do to change the system? A lot of them said that they couldn’t do anything right now. I think students don’t feel like they’re in a position to actually do anything about a situation. I think looking at Anne Frank’s diary with students can be really impactful because she was so young and able to do something that altered the way we see history, and also the way we see civic engagement. For me, this is kind of a call to arms for those students who feel like they don’t really have a place in this story yet, for them to realize that the time is now. 

Karina Isley: 3:47 

I really agree with Danielle. My name is Karina Isley, and I taught high school English for five years, and then college English for a year. I’ve done some freelance writing and curriculum writing with Teach Different, for an ELL conversation class, and some Bible curriculum. That’s kind of what I’m doing right now. 

I agree with Danny. Some students don’t feel as though they can make a difference in the world. How I broke this down, in my own thinking, was that we have influence in our inner sphere, and that’s really all Anne had while she was writing her diary, was her very small inner sphere. But her diary has changed the world. 

One thing we did years ago was talk about Invisible Children. We talked about how a small group of college students made a huge impact on refugee children and child soldiers. They did it without a plan, not that I recommend that, but they made a huge impact and they made it manageable. They made it something that you could share with friends and something that students could participate in, where you didn’t have to be an adult with a job. 

For me, this conversation will be a two-tier piece of what impact and what  improvement. How do you define improvement on the personal level with your family, with your friends, and with other students in the school? Apart  from what impact you think you could have, what is it that you care about? A small drop makes a ripple. I think, like Danny was saying, that students don’t often see that, yet I see them reaching out all the time to their smaller circles in the hallways, in the classroom, and on the sports fields. Engaging them by defining the word improvement and the different levels that it can take matters. 

Steve Fouts: 5:41 

I like that idea of defining the word improvement, because I think that perspective from the kids will be very eye opening. What does it mean to them? And also, what is the world to a fifth grader? What’s the world to a freshman in high school, or a middle schooler? I like the way you put it Karina, that your inner circle, the people that are influencing you, and that you feel like you can influence, is probably their world. They may not see beyond that, but that’s enough to make a change. To make a change in their inner circle gives them a model and confidence to do it in other  places. So I really liked the way you put it. 

Karina Isley: 6:37

You never know who you’re influencing, so it’s important to keep your influence consistent with your attitudes, your words, your thoughts, and the way you engage with people. You can change someone’s life and not even know it. That’s actually just as important as the things we like to rack up. I feel like when I was a high school student, I was always counting my volunteer hours. In some ways, I think that’s less important than the work we do that’s more hidden, less obvious, and isn’t done for show or for rewards. 

Danielle Durbin: 7:11 

You said you were writing Bible curriculum, too. We have a shared perspective there. My school does a lot of service hours, and that’s something a lot of the kid’s brush off because they don’t really know where to go. My school has started a series every Thursday where they review and highlight places around the city where students can volunteer. That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to drive via social studies classes. We’re trying to figure out what sparks students to want to make a change or a difference. 

I think my school is one of the few that has been in person the entire time (during COVID). We did a little bit of a hybrid where it was the student’s or the family’s choice. Otherwise, we’ve been at 80% or higher the entire school year. Hearing from students about engaging in the spheres that they’re already in can have such a massive influence. I’ve seen so much good change that’s happening with the kids, because they’re more intentionally reaching out to build bridges between each other, more than they had done previously. Students are much better about reaching out to the kids who have transferred into the school, or who normally sit alone at lunch. I think the pandemic has really shifted some of the culture at our school, which has been really nice to see. I don’t think, outside of this pandemic, that those small incremental changes in how students are acting in their small spheres would have had such an impact across the entire school culture. 

Steve Fouts: 8:49

Very interesting. 

Karina Isley: 8:50 

When I was teaching multicultural literature, we did a section talking about  people of all different walks of life. We did a section on homelessness because one of my students was interested in it. I took them down to the homeless shelter, and it was such a good experience, because some of them had never engaged on that level. We were meeting families, not just homeless men. They got to wash dishes alongside people, and not just serve soup. They were working alongside people. I don’t think it transformed every person’s life in my class, but I think it was good for them to be around people who are different from them, and who have a really different life experience than they do. It helped them to not keep their distance by thinking that just reading about this as an issue was enough. Now they can say, I’ve met homeless people and I’ve spent time with  them. These are real people. 

Danielle Durbin: 9:40 

Oh yeah. When we were discussing poverty, we watched this fantastic documentary, Poverty Inc. We talked a lot about whether any of them had ever seen or experienced poverty in their world experiences. Some of them had gone on mission trips to other places or a few of them had volunteered here. But the vast majority of them didn’t have any real understanding of what poverty looked like. I shared with them that a couple of students had been homeless and had things taken from them in homeless shelters, and things like that. I think that’s one of the things quotes like this, if you use them appropriately, can do to drive some deeper questioning in your classroom. It can open people’s eyes to opportunities to actually do something different, to actually get their hands dirty and see families who are in dire straits. 

I had students who did their own civic engagement project. They chose to talk about bullying in the school and wrote, directed, manufactured sets, created costumes, the whole nine yards, for this 45 minute production on bullying. It ended up being a super engaging moment, and one that was, I think, a breakthrough for a lot of those kids, because some had been a bully previously and made others feel bad about themselves. Others had been bullied and knew what it felt like. They got to open all these walls of communication, that, if you aren’t intentional in building, might not ever happen. If you give kids the opportunity to be civically engaged, you’ll find that most of them are civic minded, because they care about something. You just have to open up the opportunity for that to happen, which can be  terrifying, because that means your classroom is very noisy or gets out of your control, and you lose an entire day because they want to talk about bullying or poverty or they end up on a side topic that you didn’t plan for. But, it can also be the most beautiful and most authentic learning that actually happens within the classroom. 

Dan Fouts: 11:50 

Yeah, that’s really great, Danielle.  Kids have to have that awareness. They don’t have the awareness of the problem, and then to have the awareness that they can actually do something about it immediately.  As you said the word civic engagement a few times, being a government teacher I use  that word all the time. That word might intimidate certain kids. If we’re  having this conversation in class, I might withhold that word and just talk about how you impact a person in a positive way. Giving somebody a compliment in class can change their day, their life, and then the world.  It’s kind of like the more focused you get on what you can do to improve  something, then you can use that to build up to something like civic engagement. Some kids come into our classes ready for civic engagement. We don’t have to tell them anything; just give them the opportunity, and they’re ready to go. Others need that realization that it’s not as hard as they think. Talking about what improve means, what is it that you want to improve? Getting that from them would be a really good starting point. 

Karina Isley: 13:12

People will disagree on what improvement really is, or what needs to be improved, or how it needs to be improved. Maybe you agree on the goal, but you don’t agree on the process. That’s an important thing to define. 

Steve Fouts: 13:27 

Exactly. 

Dan Fouts: 

It’s when kids feel they don’t matter, that what they do doesn’t matter in the world, is what this is addressing. 

Karina Isley: 13:42 

I think the flipside of “what I do doesn’t matter” is that we have a responsibility towards other people, and sometimes we’d rather not have that responsibility. There’s murky water there. 

Danielle Durbin: 13:59 

I think that’s the biggest difference I’ve seen between the two experiences I’ve had as a teacher, thus far. The difference between working with students from a public school setting versus the ones in the private school setting has been interesting. Watching the development of some of my  Introduction to Business kids as I’m asking them about their social  responsibility or the responsibility they have as being leaders, eventually, in the world. Especially in the business world where it’s so competitive and they have to grapple with the questions of how can I make more profit, what can I do to increase my workers productivity without having to give too much away. It’s been interesting to see them beginning to shift their thinking from these conversations about what is your social responsibility? What do you need to do? 

Being in a Christian school, we talk a lot about your Christian duty for having a business one day and what does that look like. Should you conform to the, I have to make money hand over fist mentality, or should you be more willing to give extra incentives to your workers, so they’re genuinely happy. It’s been interesting to see the shift in their thinking to, I do have a responsibility to other people, and maybe their happiness hinges on jobs. It’s why the younger generations don’t stay as long in a job, because they’ve realized that they should be fulfilled in the work that they do. That is part of a managers or an owner’s responsibility, to figure out ways to increase someone’s desire to be in that job and feel fulfilled. That is probably going to cut into what your overall profit looks like. It’s been interesting watching them develop and really begin to think through  those kinds of questions. These are not questions that I think everyone  asks, and I don’t think they’re necessarily going to hear that in a lot of  business classes. Once they get to an MBA, then they’re getting into the nitty gritty of how to make money, or the legal work for the structure of the business.  I think it’s important, especially when we get them as young as they are, that we start asking those questions about, what does it look like to try and change the world? Is it something that you want to do? You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to; it’s a choice that you can make if you want to have a deep impact in the world. You can choose to act that way in your future, but start framing your thought process now, because if you don’t, it’s easy for that to slip through the cracks. You may forget that was something you cared about, or were passionate about, and wanted to do to make the world a better place. 

Karina Isley: 16:48 

I love that, because I think that has to do with knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. I would say too, when I was a young person among my peers, there was a lot of change going on with the world competition. Even five years back at a reunion people would say, this is how I change the world. For me, it was like, I teach high school. I didn’t save Tibet in my  spare time. I think sometimes we have to question not only do I want to  do it, but why do I want to do it? Is this to create an image for myself or to make myself feel like I did something to make other people feel like I did something? Or, is this truly for the benefit of others? I think these are the questions you have to ask yourself every day, but at the same time, these are good questions to ask students. There’s a lot of pressure to perform, especially at the secondary level. You’ve got to get that college application ready; you’ve got to get your resume ready. Students are right and left just doing stuff, and you have to ask, are you showing up to this because you care about it, or are you showing up to this to get something in return? Do you want people to think you’re a great person, or that you’re a great candidate for their university? I think these are important questions to raise too. 

Dan Fouts: 18:20 

Karina, you could land right into my philosophy class tomorrow and be right at home, because this is exactly what we talk about with ethics. Why are you acting the way you’re acting? Are you doing it for the greater good of society, or are you doing it just to satisfy your own selfish interests, or are you doing it because it’s your duty to do it regardless of what the outcomes are? Sometimes when you act in small ways, you don’t know what the impacts are going to be. If you give someone a compliment, they might not hear you, but does that make it wrong to do? Or was it your duty to do it? I totally agree with you on that. 

Danielle Durbin: 18:47 

I think this gets compounded in today’s world with social media. The ability for kids to virtually signal one another based on what they did or how much they gave. We’ve talked a lot about this, and I brought up an example from when I was young. I don’t know about your ages, but Toms Shoes was the hot thing to get involved with, because it was giving  back to third world countries. It was very altruistic, but it was also a status symbol to wear your Toms shoes to schooI, because you wanted people to know that you did this and cared about it enough.  We’ve gotten into that world, even a little bit past what it was like for me growing up, because we didn’t have social media where everyone was constantly connected. Now you have to ask those questions even more of yourself and of the people around you. What is the intention here? If I’m not making a tick tock about it, does it still matter? I think when you start diving into that with students, it gets difficult for them, because that’s a really hard mirror to look at. They may realize that the things they’re doing aren’t actually for the best intentions, even if they have a good outcome. Then you get into, is it wrong or Is it okay because it’s still a good outcome, even if my reasons for doing it are wrong. That’s a really dark rabbit hole for some kids to go down. 

Karina Isley: 20:15 

I read an article recently about how social media made it difficult for those girls to be rescued in 2014, the girls who were abducted in Africa by Boko Haram. The event was being so widely publicized on every social media outlet that they couldn’t send Special Forces in without risking informants. There was nothing they could do. Now there are still a lot of abductions going on, but nobody knows about them. Did just that one event matter, or do all of these abducted children matter?  Why was it so important for us all to jump on the social media bandwagon for that one instance? Was it actually helpful, or was it just a way to tell everybody in the world that this is the crusade that I stand for and that’s why I’m a good person?  I think that’s tricky ground. 

Steve Fouts: 21:10 

It’s a really good point. We don’t want to second guess people who want to change the world and do good; we don’t want to do that. Whatever the spirit of this quote is, there may be another way of looking at things that calls this quote into question. We call it the counterclaim within our 3-step protocol. Maybe this is a good time to go into that. Dan, why don’t you read the quote again and prime us?  

Dan Fouts: 21:49 – Counterclaim

Here’s the quote again, “Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” What’s a way against this?

Danielle Durbin: 22:02 

I think we’re getting into this with what Karina just talked about, where we picked a champion because we thought it was helping by drawing attention to it. But, it ended up being a hindrance to rescuing those girls, because everybody drew attention to it. I think sometimes due to a lack of planning, or when you’re underprepared to take on some sort of situation, you can actually be a hindrance to changing the world. One of my favorite quotes is that, “you can’t save someone else from drowning if you’re drowning.” So, if we’re going in foolhardy, or jumping into a situation that we don’t fully understand, we can inadvertently make it worse, or we can draw the wrong sort of attention. That means the problem doesn’t actually get solved. This was one of the things talked about in Poverty, Inc.. We thought we were making good decisions when the hurricane and earthquake happened in Haiti, but the aid we sent ended up really messing with their infrastructure and their economy in a way that’s having ramifications a decade  later. I think sometimes a willingness to help can be too enthusiastic that it creates more problems than we are ready to  handle. 

Karina Isley: 23:25 

Right. It can cause problems when you rush in without context, and without a deep multi-dimensional understanding of the person or people that you’re trying to help. My sister was telling me that doctors in Haiti have been put out of business, because there are so many people coming from foreign countries offering free health care. In similar situations around the World, Food Aid puts local farmers out of business or it de-incentivizes people to grow their own crops. So, they’re not actually getting back on their feet, and they’re not able to have a self-sustaining economy, because they’ve become reliant on things that aren’t helping them in the long term. Throughout the years we’ve seen the Peace Corps go into a country to build a new well, or they’re bringing in some new technology, and it wasn’t a sustainable solution for the people living there. I think that’s why the time isn’t always right now. It takes time to plan, to prepare, and investigate what has local influence. I think those things are important too. 

Dan Fouts: 24:32 

To go with your earlier idea, Karina, it takes a little soul searching to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. If your intentions are not in the right place, then maybe what you’re going into is not going to be worth it. At least know yourself before you jump in and try to change the world. 

Steve Fouts: 24:54 

That self-knowledge was how I was looking at it. I replaced the word world with person, and I thought about how sometimes we want to change other people, and we become impatient with them for not living up to our  standards or expectations. You have to be careful with things like that, because sometimes you’re doing it for reasons that aren’t sustainable. You’re doing it for selfish reasons. Maybe you need to understand yourself better before you go out and try to do well. It’s tough, because the sentiment to do well is so pure and you don’t want to put water on it. If you do something with good intentions, but it doesn’t work out, it can be hard to come back from that experience. It’s a balance in a way, planning it out, making sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, and then have that goodwill drive it. The kids are just learning how to balance those two things. We’re still learning ourselves. 

Danielle Durbin: 26:11 

I think that’s one of the important things about having educators who are  doing the work themselves. If you have the right people steering the ship, you can take all those good intentions… You don’t want to squish good intentions in a child or someone who is genuinely passionate about making a difference for something, for their community, for a cause, or whatever it is that they’re working towards. But, often they need the guidance to think through the ramifications of taking action. One of the things that I use to teach this with my students is the Kony 2012. I don’t know how familiar you guys are with that campaign, but it was to stop a warlord in Central Africa. It ended up not working, but it came from pure intentions. The man who headed the entire campaign went through some really bad press and a lot of negatives afterwards. The ramifications of him wanting to do something good, having steps that he thought were appropriate, and then those steps not working out ended up getting him hospitalized for mental instability.  I think it’s important to have teachers create opportunities for these conversations, so students can dive into what they’re actually passionate about, and figuring out what they want to change, and then helping guide them in ways to do it appropriately. What do I need to  know about this situation? Who could this potentially hurt? Are there people that I might not know about who would also benefit from this if I did it in a different way? Like with the NGOs, going in and offering free medical care. Maybe they could have cut costs with the medical systems that already existed in those places, or offered free medical supplies to the clinics that were already there, so they could provide subsidized or free health care to their own people. Which is trying to do something good, but through existing local systems so you’re not unintentionally harming the people you’re trying to help. 

Karina Isley: 28:27 

I think that’s where mentorships and apprenticeships come in. Spend time with people in the community who’ve been working through these issues for decades before you got there. That brings student passion under the guidance of wisdom and experience, which can go a really long way. 

Dan Fouts: 28:47

The lesson that it takes time. You might try something and think it’s a failure, but you’ve planted a seed in other people’s brains that will then grow into something later. That’s what I find is the hardest thing to  communicate to young people, because they haven’t had enough life experience to see things evolve over time. Even in teaching, this is my 29th year, I’ve seen all kinds of initiatives come into the school and leave. I have a perspective that young teachers don’t have. That’s a challenge, the patience aspect. 

Danielle Durbin: 29:31 

I think what we can do, if we choose to use this quote in our classrooms to drive civic engagement, is to talk about how action doesn’t necessarily have to be the first step in changing the world. Maybe it’s educating  yourself about what it’s like on the ground for those people who are in the places where you want to help. Maybe it’s having conversations about what you actually need. Students in particular, they decide what needs to be done before they realize what the problem actually is. So, they start taking action steps to solve something, but they haven’t boiled down what they’re trying to solve, and what the appropriate first steps would be. I think sometimes we forget that if it’s not visible action, it’s not action. Kids, especially when they’re fourteen or fifteen, they think if they’re not moving with their body, it doesn’t count as doing anything. 

Dan Fouts: 30:36 – Essential Question

That’s a great point. Well, we covered a lot of ground here. This is a  conversation with legs in English and social studies, or in any class where you want to help students realize the power of their actions, and what they can do to improve the world. It’s inspiring. 

We’d like to end the protocol with an essential question. There are a lot of them inspired by our conversation, but one that we created in advance is the one that I think is appropriate. Can we really make a difference in the world? Something to think about after the conversation with your students is over. 

We want to thank you both for being guests on the Teach Different Podcast.  Your perspectives were awesome, and you brought a lot of value to this conversation.  Danielle and Karina, thank you so much. We hope to have you back. It was so nice meeting you.  

Postscript: 31:49 

Thanks, everybody. We hope you’re walking away feeling energized by some great ideas, and are confident that conversations like this are possible. It only takes a little bit of planning and a three-step routine. Make sure you go to our Conversation Library to try out some conversations we have ready for you. Don’t forget to Teach Different with conversations and make a difference every day.