Today we had our first lecture on the third part of Social Studies ‘People in Society, Economy and Business’ and focussed on the idea of what it is to be a ‘Global Citizen’.

To me, a global citizen is someone who is aware how their actions can impact other people and holds the values of respect and diversity.

As an activity we watched a clip from the Paddington movie where you see Paddington meeting the Brown family for the first time. We were then to pick a theme from this scene and develop an activity you could use in the classroom. Paddington has found himself homeless and is sitting in the train station wondering his next move when the Brown family get off their train. Mr Brown makes assumptions about Paddington straight away and says things such as ‘stranger danger’, ‘keep your eyes down’ ,’ he’s probably selling something’ and is not happy when his wife goes back to approach Paddington. He then continues to be hostile towards Paddington as he explain how he came to be homeless. Therefore I choose to look at the theme of making judgements and ignorance.

I brainstormed the various ways we can make judgements in society. For example about: homeless people, refugees, people of different nationalities and race, criminals, celebrities and politicians. I then began to think about why we may hold these judgements, for example influence from the media and our family. My activity idea involved presenting pupils with a photo of different people in society and get them to write down the words that come to mind. As a class we would then discuss, challenge and begin to explain where these ideas have come from. The main outcome of the lesson would be to encourage pupils to be critcal about what they are told by the media and other people in their lives before making up their own opinion with he values of respect and diversity in mind.

I took this further at home by watching a Ted talk about something called the ‘Ignorance Project’ conducted by GapMinder. The project conducted studies on peoples answers to stereotypical questions and then analysed why people were giving the stereotypical answers. They discussed how all we see on the news is the bad and we forget that the majority of the society/people/the world are not experiencing this ‘bad’. They suggested the way to lessen these judgements is to teach positively, that the ‘bad’ is getting better. For example poverty levels have reduced, defences against natural disasters are increasing and that refugees bring valuable skills.

Ted Talk: https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/ (Accessed 1/10/18).

Overall I found this lesson extremely motivating and helpful. I feel I have benefitted as learner by taking a minute to challenge the judgements I may personally make which will in-turn positively impact my professional values. While I have also developed an understand of how to teach a Global Citizenship lesson and have gathered some useful resources for this.