Academic Skill
Posted on October 16, 2020
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Inquire, Collaborate and Organize
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Academics have always been an important part of my life. The skills that I chose to show which I find myself depending on across my classes are inquiry, collaboration and organization.
In year 10 at NIST, for our Individuals and Societies class we were asked to create a “social enterprise” model to teach us how businesses are run. We were given around five weeks to create a business model, marketing materials, and a product, which I did with Leila and Zeke, two of my classmates at the time.
After searching for products that would have a meaningful impact locally, we decided to produce and market a tooth powder to reduce the use and consumption of fluoride. We chose this because water in Thailand is often treated with fluoride, especially water that is supplied to suburban and rural communities. In large doses, it can have a detrimental effect on children. Our company, which we named Crush, made a product that did not contain any fluoride while still being very effective for dental hygiene. We decided that our action should be that for every can of tooth powder sold, we would donate one can to children in rural communities.
The first skill that was required was inquiry to narrow our focus. In theory, we were passionate about many topics and we would have been happy to create almost any product. In order to create something doable, we decided to do something that was meaningful to us and something we could make ourselves. We wanted to make things that were durable. We cycled through many ideas, when we realized that an easy alternative would be to create a health care product, which we could directly provide to an underprivileged community. After a great deal of research, we decided to make a dental tooth powder. This required very extensive research on our part in order to find cheap and sustainable ingredients while also figuring out how to make it. We then had to consider how viable the product was to make and how much it would be affected by competition within the market.
This awakened a level of understanding for me in terms of the nature of inquiry. Many of the questions we are asked in school only require a few Google searches, so we use the skill of research much more than inquiry. What incited this inquiry was the fact that the task was so open. We had to make conscious decisions on which avenues to follow in terms of ideas. I found that we used one process to narrow down ideas. We would begin by brainstorming together about the first ideas that we had. From there, we would pick a few to research individually, and then come back and discuss the feasibility of each idea. If we liked one of the ideas, we would go with it. If not, we started at the drawing board again. We went through this process countless times, for everything for our cause, to our final product, to the competition our product would theoretically face.
I was curious as to how we had developed such a process and whether this was common in terms of inquiry. I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that this was so natural for us; I had half expected us to get lost in the openness of the task and never come to a solid decision.
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After some research, I found the IB-promoted inquiry cycle, which seemed to display our thought processes. Although it is very simple, I find that it holds the deeper concepts of combining individual and shared thoughts to create meaning that can be further pursued. This idea of using personal and intrapersonal skills to think, reflect, and evaluate allows a common thread to be created, which can then solidify into an idea.
It was surprising that we had never really learned this directly, but it came naturally to us. Perhaps this was because it naturally mimics how we develop ideas, or perhaps we have honed this skill in MYP on a smaller scale. It also may have been a reflection of the natural dynamic we had as friends, because conversation between us was not very different to us bouncing ideas off each other.
Obviously, inquiry on its own was not enough for us to come up with ideas. It required a great deal of research to come up with the ideas. Although we had consistently honed research skills in every academic discipline we have, they were usually more guided. However, there is one subject that required this research on a grander scale. I took French for two years, moving from phase 2 to phase 4 in the process. One activity we had was an assigned open-ended essay. We were given an open question and asked to write an essay on it. These were usually on broad topics we had little to no knowledge about. I created an approach to this, which was to first look up the broad topic and read several articles about it. Then, I would summarize my findings concisely and choose a smaller focus for the essay from that. The next step would be to learn all I could about the small focus, until I had three main talking points. I would then go to a French dictionary and look up the words I didn’t know. After that, I was fully equipped to write my essay. This process, however, was not developed overnight. It took several essays for me to form an efficient structure for my research. This may have been a subconscious development
This ability of research was honed over my MYP years in subjects like world languages where we had to create short texts or make presentations (I had to do a presentation about SDGs in French). In essence, starting out with a very broad subject and thorough research narrowing it to a very specific goal which is meaningful for me.
The other major component was collaboration; where I was working with my friends with whom I rarely do anything academic. This was a skill that I can trace back to the dance unit in PE and mathematics/science when we needed to investigate requiring me to work with classmates towards reaching consensus. One obstacle in group work is to maintain focus and perseverance but having done this repeatedly makes this easier the more times one does it.
In year 11, I took Drama instead of theatre as maybe I would take that in IB. When I joined the class I was thrown into performing comedy without the use of words. This may sound easy, but it is really not as simple as it looks. The group I was working with was creating a piece relating to music and they were struggling, so we sat down and identified the hurdles. I immediately realised that they had no idea what the musical instruments looked like, nor the way they were played. I needed to transfer my music skills to take in knowledge I had from band and music lessons and show them how to hold and play the instruments to make their performance believable and realistic. I had to go further and also show them how a band is conducted with its rules and etiquette. I ended up being the conductor in our performance even though I have never done that before in my life. Whatever I got was only through observation when I participated in a band.
At the end of our performance, I was required to reflect and that was challenging as a reflection in theatre uses a different paradigm. To overcome, I imagined how I would reflect had I performed a musical instrument (from my band).
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References:
http://insightswithimpact.org/2019/11/04/six-collaboration-tools/