Welcome to 2020 Karanga Newsletter Part 2
Hello and welcome to 2020 Karanga newsletter,
Thank you to everyone who was part of our second online SEL conference on 30 June, organised in partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar, Committee for Children, SELinEdu and Knowledgehook. The conference featured 29 speakers and explored three key themes; the intersection of SEL and social justice, SEL and education in emergencies and SEL and hybrid learning models. The day was organised into two blocks of time, each with the same structure but with different speakers from different parts of the world.
Below we have some headline takeaways from the two keynote addresses, and we will be sharing more insights from across the different discussions that relate to the three main conference themes in the next few newsletters. Throughout the entire conference we wanted to demonstrate the relevance of social and emotional learning to some of the most significant challenges that all of our societies face and to share insight and practice from different parts of the world. If you were one of the nearly 1000 people who watched or participated live then we hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, if you were not able to join us at the end of June but would like to watch it, then recordings of part one and part two of the conference are on the Karanga Global YouTube channel.
One of the main reasons that Karanga exists is to support the global ecosystem around social and emotional learning. We hope that these quarterly conferences are a useful contribution to that and would welcome feedback or suggestions for ways we can do them better or make a more useful contribution.
Conference Keynote 1:
Aparna Rae Decolonizing Education
Aparna gave a wide ranging and inspirational key note that focused on adaptive challenges that education faces in order to be more relevant to all students' needs, the need for more humility in leadership, recognizing different kinds of privilege and the advantages they bring, and ways in which we can all be better allies for young people.
Conference Keynote 2:
Manos Antoninis All Means All
Manos, the director of the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, presented key findings from the 2020 GEM report Inclusion and Education All Means All, which was published a week before our conference. There are many points of contact between the SEL community and inclusion in education advocates, including on the role of civil society and an emphasis on empathy, compassion, a sense of identity and the importance of a sense of belonging. Manos' keynote highlighted all of these and much, much more.
Meet Karanga's Steering Committee
Karanga is a global alliance, with a small executive committee and a growing steering committee of SEL experts from around the world. Each month in the newsletter we focus on the work of one steering committee member or organisation. This month we would like to highlight the work of Vishal Talreja, the co-founder and trustee of Dream a Dream.
Vishal is leading a remarkable global education movement organised around the power of the question #what if. Amongst the trauma, grief and disruption caused by COVID-19 there is also an opportunity for us all to pause, take stock and re-imagine our education systems. The what if movement has written a three part series (1,2,3) that sets out their thoughts on what needs to change. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the movement by using the hashtag #WhatIf and sharing via any means they want their ideas about transforming education. There are some excellent resources and ideas already up on their website.
SEL Global Leadership Series
The third conversation in the SEL Global Leadership Series is now up on the Karanga Global YouTube channel. It is an incredibly powerful conversation about SEL, Equity and Human Connection with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant Ken Shelton and Giancarlo Brotto and Adam Collis from Catalyst.
This series is organised in partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar and Knowledgehook. The recording of the fourth conversation will go up in July. We are taking a break in August and the SEL Leadership Series will recommence in September.
SEL and the Corona Minister Simulation
One of the greatest challenges in a time of crisis is to create safe spaces for students and the general public to reflect and interact about the psychological consequences they are experiencing. In the Corona Minister game, developed by Karanga Steering Committee members Jacob Sherson and Janet Rafner and their colleagues, students and the general public explore the health, economic and social implications of various COVID-19 containment and reopening strategies. This is a prototype for a new simulation-based public democracy initiative that the Center for Hybrid Intelligence is developing. In an SEL context they have held workshops for Danish high school students where the exploration of Corona policies is followed by a chance to anonymously reflect and discuss their own considerations of the personal implications of the crisis on their own lives, these workshops produced the word clouds below.
Save the Date!
3rd Karanga Conference - begins 5th October 2020
We will be changing the format slightly tor the third of our quarterly online SEL conferences, organised in partnership with Committee for Children and SELin Edu. Rather than holding it over the course of a 12 hour period we are going to offer shorter sessions over the course of four days (5 - 8 October). Each day will have a different theme and there will be diverse program of talks, discussion and presentations. More information about the conference will be up on our website in the next few weeks.
Quotes that help shape our work
This quote is attributed to the Indigenous Australian artist and activist Lilla Watson, although she has said it grew out of a collective process and should not be solely attributed to her. Louka Parry shared it during the 30 June conference
'If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.'
