Our middle school students care about global sustainable development and they are acting upon it! While a group of students created an awareness campaign about how students can support refugees from Afghanistan, another group of students engaged in a global debate about good health and wellbeing.
 
Two grade 6 students watched a CNN10 segment on the withdrawal of the international community from Afghanistan at the end of August and shared that they wanted to learn more and take action.  They gathered three more students who wanted to participate, shared their ideas, and asked a teacher to help them organize a plan, locate reliable information sources, and keep to their chosen timeline.  Visit our Youtube channel to watch their video. 
 
“This student-developed video is the product of two interrelated initiatives at ASH, both stemming from the overall ASH mission and vision to "build a better world" and allow students to be "able to take control of their own learning". - Ms. Serene, teacher
 
“We decided to create the video because we researched a lot but we then thought that there were so many things that weren’t mentioned in the news sources that we wanted to find out about and we wanted others to know. This is something that is happening in the real world and it’s been going on for a long time now and people need to know all of the information on how to help.” - Pippa, student
 
ASH is a member of the Global Education Benchmark Group, allowing our students to participate in their activities. Recently, 13 ASH students joined a group of 90 students and 18 teachers worldwide in a virtual dialogue reflecting on how they can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goal #3 on Good Health and Well-being . Through this virtual  dialogue,  students learned how to engage in respectful dialogue, communicate across differences, and understand multiple perspectives around a complex global issue.
 
“Everyone shared their perspective on what each individual should do in order to reach the sustainable development goals, and also as a community. I saw a lot of people building on my comments and showing interest.” - Alex, student
 
“We talked about how we could help less fortunate people have access to important things. For example, we talked about how a lot of the developed countries are administering third shots of COVID vaccines while some other countries still have a very low percentage of vaccinated people.” - Audrey, student
 
“We also talked a lot about wellbeing and at some points we disagreed. But we respectfully shared our opinions and experiences. For example, I mentioned how we have wellbeing and mindfulness classes here at school.” - Paige, student

#LearningThatMatters
#ASHexperience