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NEXT UP IN THE CLASSROOM
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Helping reveal students’ gifts
BY LYDIA CHRISTIANSON
Collaboration with the community is incredibly important in schools. No one knows that better than Anna Edlund, the Gifted Services and STEAM Lab Facilitator at Bluff Creek Elementary School in Chanhassen.
Community partnerships bring opportunities to young people, Edlund said. In a recent speech she discussed how young people are like prisms. When they are surrounded with opportunity, the Anna light of opportunity shines through them and Edlund reveals what their gifts are.
Edlund recently received the 2022 Service-Learning Practitioner
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
Anna Edlund always tries to bring what is going on in the community into the classroom. In this picture are the Bluff Creek Plant Patrol Wizards.
Leadership Award, given by the National Youth Leadership Council. For her, the recognition was remarkable because it came from her peers and mentors. She hopes to use the recognition she received “to elevate civic engagement in our schools and in our communities,” Edlund said.
She is also a finalist for the Minnesota Department of Education Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics o and Science Teaching for 2022. According to Edlund, the honor allows the opportunity to network with others to bring initiatives forward and to grow projects. Another benefit is the recognition of the many community partners she works with.
“It would not be fair or right to suggest that the recognition is for me alone, or that I earned it as a solo pilot, because it’s just not true,” Edlund said.
FUNKY MINDS
Edlund is the founder of Funky Minds, a nonprofit focused on community based service learning. The model of the nonprofit is to gather the gifts of community and answer the call to serve, she said. It is rewarding for her when she sees children recognize their purpose and that they have value, she added.
Education is often deficit-based, Edlund said, focusing on what needs to be fixed or how things can be improved. However, education can be seen as asset-based. Whether it’s working with students or in the community, the perspective can be changed to look at what their gifts are and how they can be recognized.
Edlund said part of her role is “helping kids understand what they have within themselves to offer to the world.”
Students aren’t the only ones learning new things in the classroom. On a daily basis, Edlund learns from her students. She believes that children are incredibly wise and makes it a point to take time to listen, engage with them and follow their lead.
“Much of our time in education is trying to fill the child with ideas, where I think that listening to them really reveals the remarkable beings that they are,” Edlund said.
INNOVATION
New ideas and innovations in the classroom are music to Edlund’s ears. Her students know one of her favorite phrases is “I have an idea,” she said with a laugh. She is always open to what is going on in the community and tries to bring that into the classroom so students can “step out into the world,” she said.
One of the ways she has done that is by working with Project Impact!, which is associated with the Chanhassen-based nonprofit A Better Society. They have worked together to develop a guide for civic engagement and use the United Nations Global Goals as a framework for students to do their work.
“Civic engagement is really a cornerstone of what I do,” Edlund said.
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Educator Anna Edlund believes that children are incredibly wise and makes it a point to take time to listen to her students, engage with them and follow their lead.
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