In episode 193 we speak with Dr. Graeme Mitchell to learn about a program he runs at his school called the Institute for Global Solutions (IGS).
It’s a public school initiative designed to empower students to tackle global challenges through innovative, actionable solutions.
He also had the privilege of giving a TEDx Talk about their approach. We discuss the “hope gap” in education and how educators can inspire optimism and real-world problem-solving in students.
Hope you enjoy!
Find Graeme on Linkedin.
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Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/4G278/traffic.megaphone.fm/ESAIH7295172355.mp3?updated=1752688577
Mentioned in the episode:
- Sign up for 7 days of free access to Orchard
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- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
- Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth: Well, welcome everyone today we’re very excited to have Dr. Graham Mitchell with us. Welcome Graham.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Hi Elizabeth. It’s great to be here.
Elizabeth: Thanks so much for your time today, and we love to dive into these episodes by learning about your experience with education, what got you into teaching. Tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Sure. Yeah. So like many of your listeners, uh, I am an educator. I’ve had the great fortune of teaching now for nearly two decades. I teach at a wonderful public school on Vancouver Island in, uh, British Columbia, Canada. Called Claremont Secondary, and I also have the good fortune of teaching at the University of Victoria, where I work with pre-service teachers who are about to, to jump into the world of teaching.
And in 2013, alongside three amazing colleagues, we co-founded the Institute for Global Solutions for the IGS program. And the goal here was to develop a, a program to empower teenagers to make a, a difference in our world. And it started with just 18 kids, and in the last decade it has kind of exploded and we now have nearly 200 learners taking part every single year.
And so it’s been a, an amazing ride. We’ve gone coast to coast multiple times. We’ve met all sorts of leaders from prime ministers, politicians, entrepreneurs, and activists. And we’ve taken on some pretty audacious projects. So It’s been an adventure. That’s, that’s for sure.
Elizabeth: Well, I can’t wait to dive into that a bit more about the IGS and, what you’re working on there, but can you tell me a little bit about the age ranges of the students, uh, you were working at, at the secondary school and the school, the
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah, so we started our IGS program, just with our grade 11 cohort with like 16, 17 year olds. Um, but students soon began to kind of vote with their feet, and so we, we grew the program and we grew the program. So now it runs from, I. Grade nine to grade 12, and we have 50 kids per grade in our model.
So the interesting thing is our model is we, because we have so many students wanting to take part, we team teach it. So we combine social studies and science into an interdisciplinary offering, which is, a pretty great way for kids to learn about the defining challenges of our time. It means that there’s 50 kids in one class, which can be a bit of an adventure. The great thing about it is we have two teachers in the room at all times. So there’s four teachers in the program, which has been a game changer for us because, before this I taught in a classroom by myself like many of your listeners. And although there’s a lot of social activity happening throughout the day, Many teachers realize it can be kind of lonely. And so I was about to leave teaching in about 2010, uh, and my principal reached out and said, I think you should come to this, this school, Claremont, and, and meet this guy Mark. I think you guys would hit it off. And so I agreed to come and meet him, and we decided what if we created not just a standalone course, but a interdisciplinary offering that brought together.
Science and socials looked at things from a, a multitude of perspectives. and the real rewarding part has been that the fact that I get to spend, you know, six hours of my day with other amazing teachers. And so the idea is that. Unlike before where you would kind of get burned out by June, now by June, you know, if I’m having a bad day, then I know that one of them is there for me and vice versa.
And it creates a much more sustainable environment. And so, um, we have more fun, I think in the class. I think the kids enjoy seeing us playing off each other, but I just think it’s a more sustainable model in terms of like teacher longevity.
Elizabeth: That’s nice to hear. I know. Any time we hear things that help teachers to be more efficient or to, you know, reduce that burnout and have more of that work-life balance is always, always nice to hear. So
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah.
Elizabeth: the educators appreciate it. And so, I’d love to dive in a little bit about the curriculum with the science, uh, and the social studies.
But before we even do that, could you just kind of break down IGS and tell us about what was that point you noticed or observed something to where you wanted to create this?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: I mean, the, the program itself was all sparked by a, a single statement. So just over a decade ago, uh, I was teaching a class and we were looking at climate change and one of my sharpest 15-year-old boys stood up from the very back of the class and he shouted out, what’s the point? We’re screwed. many of your listeners know, you know, teenagers complaining is, is nothing new.
But this was something different. So just as he said it, the bell rang and everyone left the room. It was a bit of a downer. So we came back together the next day and I grabbed a, a red marker and I wrote his words in the middle of the whiteboard, what’s the point? And then I just turned to the class and said, what do you think?
And for the next 45 minutes or so, they just unloaded. by the time the dust had settled, one thing was clear that these kids weren’t indifferent, they weren’t apathetic, they were afraid. we weren’t just dealing with a, a knowledge gap. I think we faced something far more profound. We were dealing with a, a hope gap, and this was heavy.
I mean, I think, I know things are going wrong. I’m pretty sure you know, things are going wrong. Um, but. What we thought was a, a kind of a crazy idea. If we want our students to devote themselves to the, the challenging task of making progress, then maybe just maybe we should let them know that it’s possible to make progress.
So with this in mind, we reimagined our curriculum, so we now dedicate. Half, like half of all class time to showcasing progress and possibility. And so it’s not about like sugarcoating reality, it’s actually about leaning into the data, leaning into the facts. And our goal is always to kind of find that sweet spot.
We want our students to avoid cynicism on the one hand, and we don’t want ’em to be too complacent on the other. and we’re trying to ignite action. And so in order to do this, we kind of had to come up with a plan, a framework. So we went through all the literature and there really wasn’t one there, especially for teenagers.
So then we kind of dove deeper and we built one ourselves. And so I. We call it the, the Triple P approach. It’s problem, progress, and possibility. and what it does is it gives students a, uh, a different lens for being able to look at the world. So usually we start. Where most courses start, where almost all high schools start is by looking at the problem.
What we found is that many of our students, this is, they spend their whole time in the problem. They never get past it, and so our goal is to start at the problem and they know we’re starting there. So here we kind of roll up our sleeves, we wrestle with reality, we take a deep dive into the data. From there, after we have a really good handle on what the evidence suggests, then we really intentionally pivot and we kind of flip our focus and we shine a light on the revolutions, the quiet breakthroughs.
And for us, this is really where it gets exciting. Hope stops to be something that we kind feel and becomes something we do. So, I see hope as a skill, just like reading and writing. And so it’s something that we need to, to practice and we need to hone. And so after we’ve looked at the progress part, then we do something that I don’t think anyone else is doing.
We ask the question, what could go right? And so we spend our final time in this idea of possibility. I think the jury, the jury’s in on this one, when we give our students, the uh, the more complete picture, we show them the problems, but also the progress and the possibility. It’s pretty cool. They don’t freeze.
They seem to like focus, they find solutions. It’s been amazing to witness. And so wherever we kind of take this approach now, whether it’s coast to coast, so many educators, so many and men have been like, this is the, the framework. We’ve been waiting for. So I think we’ve stumbled across something here.
and what I love about it is that it allows us to spend a lot of our time in a context of not just kind of doom and dread, but rather enthusiasm and excitement because we make it really clear to our kids that we get to spend a lot of time making this world like a, a wildly better place. So that’s the kind of the context of the IGS program.
Elizabeth: And
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: yeah,
Elizabeth: mind walking us through maybe what a day looks like in this? I know you focus on progress. So, and you mentioned earlier climate change. So what might be kind of a day-to-day lesson or, or concept that you’re working on with the kids?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: yeah. So, um, we try to look at. If, well, we start in grade nine and we go all the way to grade 12. So in grade nine we kind of lay out the de defining challenges of our time. In grade nine, we kind of have more of an environmental perspective, so we’ll look at everything from climate issues to water, to food production.
To all kind of aspects, environmental related. And as we push through into kind of the grade 11 and grade 12 components, we also include a lot more kind of social justice pieces. So we’re looking at equality and and poverty reduction and governance and democracy. So where we are on the scale, we try to.
Build it up. We start with kind of more environmental issues and then we add on different social layers as they go through. But, my grade twelves are gonna be graduating here in a couple weeks, and we were just talking about yesterday and the time it’s taken them to go from like diapers. To diplomas.
The world’s been totally transformed and, and most students, and most teachers don’t think about this a lot, but since those grade twelves have been alive, the likelihood of a child on this planet surviving to the age of five, I. Has nearly doubled and the rate of extreme poverty since my, my grade twelves were like toddlers has been cut in half.
And so we look at the big problems, but we also lean into the data and I think the data is really crystal clear for all the big problems that we face. life expectancy, health, wealth, happiness, knowledge, safety, these things are all on the rise, and not just in the West, but across the world. So our goal is really to show them whether they’re in grade nine or grade 12, is to, to really to dive into the data and to be data informed.
And what we find is not only is it nicer for the teachers to spend a lot of the time in this head space, but our, our students, they, they think the world is going. It’s a hell in a hand basket. They come into our program thinking things are totally falling apart. and in fact, part of the reason I, I gave this Ted Talk, uh, last year, and it all was sparked by this number, so my one grade 10 class last year spent 46,000 hours, 46,000 hours on social media in one year.
And so when I heard that number. I was a bit shocked, but we came together as a class and we kind of studied their feeds and amidst there was the cute puppies and all the dances. But what really stood out was this tsunami of like stress inducing content that seemed to wash over them day after day. So our program is about what it really comes down to and what’s the message?
I think that is really resonating right now is that. We need better inputs. So if you’re getting 46,000 hours of input sensational, that’s about decline and danger and division. I think teachers are no longer just gatekeepers anymore. I think the gates have been like kicked in. I think we need to be balancers, like we need to build balance.
So a big part of our program now is, and I hate, my kids hate it when I say this ’cause I say it so often, I say it like. We need better inputs, inspire better thoughts and better thoughts, drive better actions. So a huge part of our approach is to be really intentional about cultivating better inputs. unfortunately, a lot of our students aren’t seeing these inputs.
I give a test to a lot of my colleagues about the state of the world. They score even worse than the students do. They think it’s worse off than the students. And my master’s students and some of the doctoral students I work with, their scores are the worst of anyone. So it’s as if as our knowledge levels increase, our hope is diminished.
And so our program tries to buck that trend a little bit.
Elizabeth: That’s interesting. So you were talking about the 46,000 hours for the high schoolers. So for those master’s students, the adults who are a bit older. Was there, are they on social media as well? Did you notice kind of their consuming content in, in different ways too?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah. So when we kind of dug a little bit deeper with my own students, and this is just anecdotal, this is just a few classes, they weren’t spending as much time on social media. But we began to look at why do they have such a skewed view of the world, especially when, you know, they’ve probably done more reading than any group that I, I work with.
And research has suggest. It kind of comes down to three big reasons. There’s three reasons why the most educated often have the most distorted views. The first is we all have this quirky evolutionary trait. Known as the negativity bias. So this helped our ancestors to detect threats. So we’re all hardwired to remember bad news.
and as I say, it’s as if for our, the bad news, our brains are like Velcro. We, we hold on and catch every bit. But for the good news, it’s like we’ve coded our minds in Teflon, where all that good stuff, it just slides away. So we all have the negativity bias, but then there’s the 24 7 news cycle and the news isn’t wrong.
But it’s just highly, highly selective. It magnifies and it amplifies the rare and the dramatic and it all, but ignores that slow, steady drum of progress. And I think a lot of my master’s students, they read a ton. They read, they consume a lot of news, and so. You know, you’re not gonna see on the front page of the paper, you know, 43 million planes landed safely last year.
You’re not gonna see that headline. So I think perhaps it’s that, and then you pour social media on top of that. It adds to the, this negativity bias bonfire, I suppose. So I think it’s, uh, a combination. but it’s a bit disheartening that the most, you know, the students that have done the most schooling.
I think the world is worse off than almost any other group, and they couldn’t be more wrong if you connect it to the data.
Elizabeth: That’s interesting. And with your high schoolers and social media usage, would you say that you know now after they’ve been through this program, are they utilizing social media less or are they just more cognizant and more aware and they can kind of know what’s coming at them and be able to filter it?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, I’d love to say that they, uh, that they aren’t using it quite as much, and I think some of them are, are more intentional. but I, I think they have a greater awareness and they’re maybe trying to balance some of the ways, those inputs. But just yesterday we were studying, I. This quote by Charlie Munger, and he was an advisor to Warren Buffet, the wealthy investor, and he says,
show me the incentives and I’ll, I’ll tell you the outcomes. And so we were looking at the incentives of social media and the incentive structure is maximize attention. And so if you wanna maximize attention, we know that bad news grabs our attention. So, you know, decline, despair, division, that’s gonna grab our attention.
And so the outcome of that is gonna be. Despair. And so our students, we talk about this, I’d like to say they’re spending less time on social media and maybe some are, but I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but we’re still facing an issue in our schools where cell phones are are pretty rife.
And we still haven’t kind of gone belt to bell bands. I would love to have a, a period of the day where they just. Could take a break from all of this, and so maybe that’s coming, but we’re not there yet. Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: I know absolutely. Making, making progress though I know some schools have implemented it. Interesting results on how it’s going. You know, some e some, I mean, children are very clever. They’ll have two cell phones, put one away and
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah.
Elizabeth: the other. Um, but I, I’m curious, how has the parent community, uh, received this new curriculum?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: We kind of rolled this out in 2013. So because we take core courses like social studies and science, and we run them together, we still have to hit all the prescribed learning outcomes that are entailed in the, in the curriculum. But what we found is, is that by looking at an issue like, let’s take climate change again. And usually you look at it from a scientific perspective and that’s where they would learn it. But because we can also look at the science behind it, but then we can look at the policy, we can look at the, the psychology of why we’re doing what we’re doing. I think we get to get into.
The material in a, in greater depth. And so what we’re finding is a lot of our students, as they’re graduating, they seem to have perhaps a more well-rounded, more nuanced understanding. And so. You know, they’re going on to do pretty great things. So thus far the, the parents have been on board and a lot of the post-secondary schools are really on board as well.
And we work really closely with a lot of university programs, which is amazing. So we get to, to go up to these campuses and they come down to us and it creates this kind of amazing synergy. So I think. A lot of the parents are really on board. and, you know, students are, voting with their feet.
We’ve got wait lists and, it makes it, I think, more fun because we get outta the class a ton. A big part of our program is to get students into the world, you know, doing field studies. We do a lot of travel. We have a trip every year called Rails to Relevance, where we jump on a train and go from Vancouver.
All the way across the country and along the way. We pick up politicians and leaders and they ride the rails with us. And then students often make documentaries and they ask big question like, what is Canada’s responsibility to the world and what does it mean to be a, a citizen of Canada? And then they interview people of all stripes and they come back and they, they put these documentaries together and then we showcase them for the community.
So. I think right now we get a lot of buy-in from parents and, um, yeah, hopefully that continues.
Elizabeth: That’s great to hear. And you know, I know you’re located in Canada, so
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah,
Elizabeth: you know, there’s a high school teacher in South Carolina. In what ways do you think this could expand to more places, you know, to more locations, to more educators, to to, to be able to start making this
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: I.
Elizabeth: on a more massive level?
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah, no, I think that’s a great question. And so I, I feel that schools across North America are already doing this. You have pockets everywhere with incredible teachers moving the needle, and it’s not gonna be like IGS, it’s gonna be more site specific. It’s gonna bring in the flavor of the teachers there.
But I, I think a big part of it, it revolves around administrators. And superintendents, you know, trusting their teachers and allowing them and getting flexible in terms of timetabling, because to be able to get this co-teaching model and to be able to have these cohorts going through requires.
Administrators and superintendents to be pretty innovative and to really trust their teachers. We have been so lucky in my district to have incredible leadership right from the top. They’ve probably given us too much leeway in some, in some cases, and to try things and to fail and to iterate and try again.
But I think that you’re already starting to see this kind of quiet movement that’s starting all over. And I guarantee in, in South Carolina, there’s some programs that are, are bubbling up. But I think any teacher wanting to try this, uh, a simple way to do it is to try this Triple P approach, have students look at problems.
We do that already, but that’s usually where we stop. Most students have no idea about the solutions that exist or you know, how those could be amplified and scaled up. So if teachers get a bit more intentional about showing the problems, but also the progress and the possibility, I think that, you know, students are waiting for this.
They, they wanna be excited, they want to be engaged, and they wanna be dealing with real world problems. So, uh, I feel confident because I, I know how many emails we get every week about our program, and I get to hear about these other, you know, these courses and these offerings all over the place. So I’m sure, and I got to go down to South Carolina.
When I was about 25 visiting one of my best friends in Gaffney, South Carolina, so I’m sure they’re doing great things there.
Elizabeth: yes. yes. I, I’m from there and I have some, I know some teachers there too, so I’m sure too. and for the PPP approach, appreciate. That, that’s some good actionable advice right now that they can implement.
Elizabeth: speaking of your TED talk that you mentioned a little bit earlier, congrats on that and I’d love to hear a little bit about kind of the motivation behind it and then maybe a little bit about the process about building your speech, working on that public speaking.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah, no, it was, uh, it was a pretty fantastic, journey. So, uh, an amazing university in Victoria. It’s called Royal Roads University, and they were hosting a, a TEDx event and I had the good fortune of doing some of my graduate work there. And so I, I got an email about maybe putting my hat into the ring and I thought about it, and so eventually I kind of went for it and I was lucky enough to be shortlisted to I think the final 15.
And then you had to go into this room with about 10 people and they’re just spread out and they just say, okay, you have about five minutes. Just go and I kind of stumbled. I didn’t really know what I was doing and I left feeling like, oh, I kind of dropped the ball there, but I’m, something must have landed a little bit.
And so a few days later I got a call. I. That I had been selected as one of the, the eight people to do the talk. And from there it was just an amazing journey. We were each paired up with a coach. The, the team that curated the whole event, it’s all volunteer. They spent hundreds of hours. Uh, and my coach, she was amazing, Terry.
And yeah, we worked for six months. So first you design the speech, you get it down to your. Your lockdown mode, and then you practice it. You practice it, you cut, you cut, and then you have to memorize it because there’s no teleprompters and you have 10 minutes and you’re in front of 600 people. So the whole event was pretty surreal because you have the 600 people in the audience, but then you also have the cameras. So you’re supposed to be speaking to the cameras, but yet you have all these people in front of you as well. and so I was pretty nervous up until the day of the event, even right before I went on stage, my heart was pounding and then the mc made a joke right as I came on and it seemed to like lighten the mood and I actually enjoyed that.
Those 10 minutes. I think I enjoyed them. Uh, and then. When it came, when it was over, it was, yeah, it was wonderful. And I was really lucky Ted picked my speech to be promoted as an editor’s pick. So now it’s kind of gone out and a lot of people have, have seen it. My students make fun of me. So it’s, uh, it’s, it’s,
Elizabeth: Oh, thank you for sharing that and giving us a little bit of the background. Um, one of the districts I used to work for. They had a TEDx club for kids, which was
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: yeah.
Elizabeth: similar, you know, they’re looking at, it was elementary school and they’re still looking at these big world problems, you know, I think one of ’em was plastics in the ocean and, you know, working on a little one to two minute speech that they present.
I remember that fondly. Yeah.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: That’s great. Yeah.
Elizabeth: we’d love to kind of wrap these up by hearing about what you’ve learned about yourself during this process and kind of how you’ve grown, you know, from being an early educator and to, to up where you are now.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s still crazy to think that, you know, I’m coming up on, I’m doing this for nearly 20 years, I think I’ve learned a few things along the way, but most importantly for me, and like I mentioned at the very beginning. I think that teaching can be quite a, solitary endeavor. So for me, the biggest thing I’ve learned is that, if you can along the way, connect with those colleagues and if you can even better find a way to co-teach with those people, has to be the right people.
but I’ve found that by June, I used to be totally burned out. And now, you know, we’re getting into June pretty quick here and. I’m gonna enjoy the break, but I don’t feel as if I need to get to that finish line. So I think finding those people, working with those people and trying to find a way to bring the real world into your classroom and then take on tangible projects that students can actually accomplish is something that will, you know, that fills my bucket time and time again.
And so in a few weeks here. Uh, I get really excited because we have our, our culminating capstone project. So our grade twelves, they take on a big action project in grade 11 and 12. They find something that they want to make better in the world, and then they, we build a team around them of mentors, and then over the next year to two years, they develop this project and then we get to see the showcase of that.
You know, at the end of June, and for me, rather than just teaching to a textbook, we’re taking on real problems and we’re also having a good time. We’re being enthusiastic. We’re talking about how do we make this a better, more, you know, a wildly better world. And for me, keeping that front and center and coming back to the progress and the possibility.
Especially right now. I mean, we have a lot of things in our world right now that are making people feel overwhelmed. And so by being intentional and also telling that second part of the story, I. I think it’s really important, and if I was to go back and talk to myself when I first started teaching 20 years ago, it would be to, to lean into the other half of the story.
just like to finish, I was watching with my own kids last night, we were watching Moana and I was thinking to myself, what if disney told stories like the way we do in education, like we only tell half of the story. So my kids love the Lion King. And so I was picturing like, what if we told the Lion King the way that we teach in education?
Like basically it would be Simba watches his dad fall, blames himself, runs away, eats bugs, and then movie would be over. I mean, I think we really need to get better at telling the good parts too. Not just the decline and you know, all the bad stuff. We need our kids to know about the good parts we need to know about, like that return to pride rock.
it’s very key for teachers and myself to remember that our world is both messy. but It’s also magnificent. And our students, they need a more complete story. So I think we need to hire people from Disney to overhaul our education system.
Elizabeth: Well, Graham, thank you so much for everything you’re doing for your students for education, and thank you so much for sharing today on the podcast. I can’t wait for everyone to listen.
Dr. Graeme Mitchell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I’ve really enjoyed our chat.
