THE 6TH GRADE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS OF SCH Julie Knutson Author specializing in history, humanities, and the social sciences Co-teacher, SCH 6th Grade Social Impact Course
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t’s a Thursday morning in early December of 2021 at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy. Paris Gramann, my 6th grade Social Impact co-teacher, and I have met with our new cohort of students for all of two class periods—a cumulative total of 110 minutes. Already, she’s forwarded me an email—sent to her by one of our students en route to school—that captures the essence of CEL’s entrepreneurial mindset. The two-sentence note reads as follows: Hi Ms. Paris, I am on my iPhone so this may be quick, but I was thinking of a water filter prototype for CEL. Unfortunately, this is a bit lengthy but I want to talk about it for a possible water filter that can help homeless people with affordable pricing. Experimentation and prototyping. Creative problem solving. A thoughtful willingness to put an idea out into the world. All from a 12-year-old who is
CEL 10th Anniversary Book
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ready to make change and eager to make our planet better for all its inhabitants. It’s a short message, but one that captures the attitudes and traits required to move the needle on the big issues and challenges that face our world . . . and shows how the students of SCH are embracing this work. Rewind to May of 2019. At that time, I’m writing a young adult nonfiction book titled, Global Citizenship: Engage in the Politics of a Changing World. Throughout my research process, I scour .orgs and .govs for educators and students at the vanguard of social engagement. While on the site of the microfinance organization Kiva, I come across a profile of a middle grade course at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia. In this unique class, according to the site, students learn about microfinance and host a craft fair to raise funds to invest in Kiva microloans. I follow the click path, land on the course website, and am floored to learn more about this 6th grade class that introduces the concept and practice
of social impact. Immediately, I reach out to the instructor, Rene deBerardinis. This was a class— this was a program—that needed to be profiled, promoted, and emulated. Rene was a willing partner in the writing process, sharing a bounty of information about the course’s underlying principles and its impact on students’ worldviews. We also came to discover that our work shared a common foundation—the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While Global Citizenship took shape around acting on the SDGs, Rene’s course, in her words, asked “students to make decisions on who they will loan to through the lens of these goals.” In addition, the 6th grade classes “needed to support their lending decisions by applying the UN SDGs to their Kiva borrower situations.” This was real-world, inquiry-driven, problem-based learning at its finest, which I was delighted to profile in the book’s chapter on economic justice. As the book’s September 2020 publication date approached, I reconnected with Rene, who was just on the cusp of retirement. She invited me to pay the class a virtual visit, and introduced me to her incredibly dynamic successor, Paris Gramann. On a Zoom call that first pandemic fall, a new collaboration
PASSION AT WORK: In addition to their ‘SDG Hero’ biographies, students produce a range of other interest-driven projects.
