One of our IB Learner Profile traits is to be courageous. I know many adults who would not even contemplate standing up in a hall full of adults and children and talk, let alone sing and dance! And yet our youngest students are able to do this with ease.
This is about preparing our children for their future. We know that many of them will enter into careers that have not even been invented yet. Who would ever have contemplated 'blogger' as a profession 10 years ago? While we do not have a clear understanding of the knowledge they will need for their future (think about how emails have changed the need for knowledge around how to correctly format a letter) we do know that skills such as cooperation, collaboration, problems solving, and conceptual thinking will form a big part of the requisite skills. Along with this is the need for resilience and the ability to see things as a possibility, rather than a limitation.
How does this relate to class assemblies? Each small aspect of life that we teach to our students builds for them a strong future. This morning, our students told us about how they see our world in 2038. They told us that the oceans would be clean because of our actions today in 2018- no more single use plastic! They told us landfill would be reduced because we would need less clothing.
This tells me that maybe the most important thing that we are teaching our children is a sense of optimism and hope...based on our actions, no matter how small today. So... maybe
no need to use that green plastic stirring stick at Starbucks!