Five years ago, Upper Arlington resident Jason Blair realized that while all teachers participate in professional development, they rarely see how other teachers implement new practices.
From this thought, the Agents of Change Festival was born in 2019. Blair, an art teacher at Dublin City Schools’ Abraham Depp Elementary School, created an annual festival where educators and their students could come together to showcase and reflect on what students and teachers explored in the classroom throughout the year.
“We wanted to break down the walls of districts and get passionate educators who were willing to challenge the status quo to work together and showcase their learning,” Blair says. “The ultimate goal was to create conversations around what innovative practice could look, sound and feel like.”
The first year saw five to six different school districts and teachers come together at the Columbus Museum of Art to “showcase student agency.” The most recent festival included 15-18 teachers from eight different districts, with an attendance of 450 people. This year’s festival is being held at the Emerald Campus in Dublin on May 18.
Planting seeds
Photos courtesy of Jason Blair
student art presentation
Amanda Schaeffer, art and ecology teacher at Hilliard City Schools, has attended the festival each year.
“It’s a really cool way to showcase student learning but also to advocate, inspire and educate others on steps that they can take themselves within their own sphere of influence,” Schaeffer says.
One of the first projects Schaeffer did with her students and shared at the festival was learning how farmers can grow crops with less resources.
She says the students learned about how to improve agricultural practices while keeping food production local and reducing farmers’ carbon footprints. They ended up pitching their ideas to a panel of agriculture experts and were able to get feedback.
Schaffer, who hopes her students carry what they learn into adulthood and change the world for the better, has learned a lot about the impact her novel lessons can have on students.
“These kids are still doing the same work on their own in high school and college. One tiny seed grew into this much bigger thing,” Schaeffer says.
Connecting cultures
This year, Schaeffer and her students are working on The Global Comic Project with 143 schools from 37 countries. Kids attending participating schools can submit a comic or drawing to a virtual library, which will be compiled into a large collective comic book at this year’s Agents of Change Festival.
“The big idea was to try to break down as many barriers as we could, like time, space, geographical locations and language. So it’s pretty cool because through these comics we’re able to break down those proverbial school walls, those barriers,” Schaeffer says.
Schaeffer hopes this project will result in empathetic, global citizens who are better able to understand people from across the world.
“It’s a really powerful, profound thing to understand that what’s affecting you is also affecting somebody in Serbia, or Turkey, or Palestine or France,” Schaeffer says. “So that’s been really powerful for my students, and my own children, just to see how closely connected we truly are.”
Tomorrow’s leaders
Photos courtesy of Jason Blair
students' art prezi
Blair has seen first hand how this event affects both students and teachers. He’s noticed that teachers will attend to see what it’s all about, and then want to return the next year with their own students and projects.
“I think that’s the power of the change. It ultimately benefits the students because it’s putting more agency in learning and letting students have more of a role in creating their learning environment,” Blair says.
Blair and Schaeffer have enjoyed getting to see their students take more initiative and engage in creative thinking over the years, and are excited to see them continue to grow.
“When students can see that people are listening to them and their ideas matter, they’re more likely to continue to believe in themselves or the possibility of the average person to create change,” Schaeffer says. “And to see collectively that even the smallest of us can make the biggest difference.”
Ava Huelskamp is a contributing writer at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com
