Learning to create communities
How can caregivers encourage children to find new ways to care for themselves, others and the environment?
Authors
Connecting with other people can bring multiple benefits. Positive, caring relationships between teachers and students, for example, can boost student engagement and achievement and have a positive effect on teacher motivation, effort, and teaching quality. Meaningful student-teacher relationships also provide both with a sense of wellbeing. Meeting students’ emotional needs and providing a sense of belonging and connection have a positive impact on their motivation to learn.
Wider collaborations between students, schools, nature and society can create a community of learning and help protect the environment. Family and community involvement in learning can even improve children’s learning outcomes. Could helping children become more engaged in their communities encourage them to find new ways to care for themselves, others and the environment?
This video is part of the animation ‘Learning to thrive’. The animation and related resources bring these ideas to life, providing a space to engage in thinking about how caregivers and educators might support young people to thrive. This is also a space for researchers and science journalists to share the latest evidence on the role of nature, play, creativity and agency in young people’s wellbeing.
It can be tempting to believe that if we want to be successful, we must each focus on our own way in the world.
But the more we connect with people, the more we encounter ideas and actions that inspire us.
We are more likely to experience the joys and benefits of caring, thinking and learning with those around us.
After all, we are social beings who thrive through connection, communication, and co-operation.
Learning alongside others means we can benefit from the varied experiences and ideas of those around us.
Sharing perspectives with each other, and our children, can expand our understanding and ideas. It may even lead us towards new or different ways of behaving.
Becoming more curious and engaged in the communities that we are part of, can help us all to discover new skills and build on our existing strengths.
Listening, sharing and playing together can help us to feel part of something bigger than ourselves; to find new and better ways to care for one another, for ourselves, and for our local environments.
Authors
Footnotes
Produced by PositiveNegatives for BOLD
In collaboration with Lifeworlds
Powered by the Jacobs Foundation
Direction
Dr Benjamin Worku-Dix
Scriptwriter
John Servante
Illustration
Gabi Froden
Animation
Diana García