A “Yes, and…” Response to Ms. Hughes’ Article in The International Educator
Socratic discussions are a key pedagogical tool in the Critical Global Citizenship course at the International School of Kigali (ISKR). Socratic discussions involve participants challenging each other with questions about an object of knowledge, such as a text; they also involve offering alternative arguments, or building upon arguments already presented. In class, we have to deliberately practice the types of interactions that foster productive Socratic discussions, which, in addition to questions, include responses such as: “I disagree, because,” “yes, but…,” or “yes, and…”.
All of that was preamble to set up the purpose of this post. Ms. Estelle Baroung Hughes, Secondary Principal at the International School of Dakar, recently (June 18, 2025) published a short article in The International Educator, which summarized an address she gave at a conference earlier this year. I encourage you to check out the article, which is titled Nurturing Passion for “Glocal” Citizenship. Like in an effective Socratic discussion, I would like to present a “yes, and…" response to Ms. Hughes. I agree with her and would like to build on what she said by sharing some perspectives from the Critical Global Citizenship course at ISKR (note that I shared the syllabus for this course in this previous post).
In the Footsteps of Nanabozho
This is the title of a chapter in the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This chapter is one of the texts we engage in class through Socratic discussion. The full title for Kimmerer’s chapter is “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place.” Some of the inevitable questions that come out in our Socratic discussion include:
What does it mean to become indigenous to place?
Is it possible to ever become indigenous to a place? Doesn’t that violate the very definition of indigenous— to be original inhabitants of a place?
Is becoming indigenous an appropriate goal? Or is this just another form of settler colonial displacement?
The tensions revealed in the questions above and the ensuring Socratic discussion align with Hughes’ remarks about the importance of “blossoming where we are planted,” and the “tension and complementarity between indigeneity and endogeneity.” Indigeneity refers to the quality or identity of being indigenous, or original. Endogeneity refers to something that is generated from within. In biology, for example, an endogeneous chemical would be one that originates within the organism, such as when the body produces and releases a particular hormone (as opposed to an exogeneous chemical, which is one that enters the body from the outside). When contrasted with indigeneity, endogeneity refers to something, despite not being original to a place, that is still deeply tied to and arises from a specific place. As Hughes’ points out, there can be both complementarity and tension between the indigenous and the endogenous. To demonstrate that tension and to complicate her botany-based admonition that we “blossom where we are planted,” an invasive species is one that has blossomed where it was planted.
This is the tension explored by Kimmerer in her chapter “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho.” Nanabozho is considered the original human in the creation story of the Anishinaabe peoples, historically of the Great Lakes region of North American. Among the Anishinaabe is the Potawatami Nation, of which Kimmerer is a member. In Kimmerer’s telling of the story, Nanabozho, though the original human, was a new-comer to the land of Turtle Island, which was already inhabited by the plants and animals that preceded him. As Kimmerer tells it:
“…he was set down into a fully peopled world of plants and animals, winds, and water. He was an immigrant too. Before he arrived, the world was all here, in balance and harmony, each one fulfilling their purposes in the Creation. He understood, as some did not, that this was not the ‘New World,’ but one that was ancient before he came.”
As Kimmerer states it, Nanabozho, the first human, had to become native to the land. He did this by walking through the land, observing its inhabitants (the plants, the animals, the soil, the rivers), coming to appreciate their contributions to the land, learning their names, befriending them. He learned from them, including how to live in harmony among them. Kimmerer wants to point to Nanabozho as an example to follow for other new-comers to the land, but she fears the long historical patterns of settler colonialism. She writes, “Against the backdrop of that history, an invitation to settler society to become indigenous to place feels like a free ticket to a housebreaking party.” She continues later: “I want to envision a way that an immigrant society could become indigenous to place, but I’m stumbling on the words. Immigrants cannot by definition be indigenous. Indigenous is a birthright word.”
Kimmerer is not just a storyteller, she’s a biologist, specifically a botanist. From this perspective, she considers the example of plantago major, the common plantain, a plant that grows across large swaths of North America. Plantago major is not indigenous to North America; in fact, Kimmerer points out that the Potawatami refer to it as “White Man’s Footstep” because of the way it arrived from Europe and spread in the wake of settler expansion across North America. But Kimmerer points out that plantago major has many beneficial uses, learned by indigenous peoples in North America, from it’s edible leaves to its medicinal properties. Furthermore, though it’s a non-native species, botanists have a name to describe it that distinguishes it from an invasive species; plantago major co-exists with other species in the environment, contributing to the ecosystem, without causing harm to what already existed. For this reason it’s called a “naturalized” species. It’s one that, like Nanabozho, learned to live in harmony with what existed before it got there.
For Kimmerer, maybe newcomers cannot become indigenous to place, but perhaps they can naturalize; perhaps they can learn to live in harmony and contribute positively to the place. Maybe we could add to Ms. Hughes’ earlier admonition and say, “like the common plantain, we should blossom where we are planted.”
A Critical Pedagogy of Place
Another of the texts we engage through Socratic discussion is a chapter by David A. Greenwood called “A Critical Theory of Place-Conscious Education” (in the International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education, 2013). In the field of cultural geography, the concept of “place” has a specific meaning. It’s not just another name for a geospatial location or point on a map; rather, a place is a cultured landscape. It’s a location where the natural landscape and environment has been shaped by human interaction, so that it’s imbued with cultural meaning and significance. Think of the concept of “home.” For most people, home is associated with a physical location, but its meaning to a person is derived from much more than location; it’s the other people, the building structure, the sense of security and nurture, the memories, the milestones, the food, the smells, and the shared experiences.
Greenwood reminds us that people are embodied beings that exist in specific places. We experience the world, and learn from those experiences, within specific places. We are shaped by those places, just as our actions contribute to those places. Greenwood also emphasizes that places are inherently local in scale. At any given moment in time, one can only exist in the world within a relatively local-scale place. Greenwood quotes Wendell Berry to emphasize this point: “Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do something except locally, in a small place.”
This is what Hughes is getting at with the term “Glocal” Citizenship Education. “Glocal,” obviously, is a merging of the words “global” and “local;” it’s an effort to emphasize the importance of the local within global citizenship education (GCE). Particularly within international schools — places that both Ms. Hughes and I are familiar — the goal of GCE is typically to promote learning that pushes student thinking beyond parochial narrow-mindedness. The objective is to guide students to recognize the larger interconnectedness of people and planet, of our different societies and ecosystems. This is well and good, but GCE often neglects the local. Without attention to the local, without recognition of the importance of place, GCE can become little more than abstraction. We render hypothetical the issues studied in our lessons; they become objects of learning, disassociated from the lived reality of place. We encourage the idea of our students acting in the world to foster change in response to their learning, but without attention to the local, student actions are often performative, leaving them feeling helpless to effect change. With this, we may condition in them apathy rather than activism.
Greenwood suggests three questions to guide a critical pedagogy of place, to shift towards a “glocal” citizenship education. The first is, “What happened here?” This is a historical question. What people, events, movements, innovations, and conflicts have shaped this place? How have the people shaped the landscape, and how has the landscape shaped them? This is also about the indigeneity of the place; it’s about celebrating and learning from those who have long inhabited and contributed to the place.
The second of Greenwood’s questions is, “What is happening here?” As Greenwood notes, this is a phenomenological question. It’s about experiencing the place first hand, and learning from the lived reality of the people in the place. It’s about approaching the place humbly and without judgement, to learn from the expertise of that place. How do the people in this place perceive of their world, and how has this place shaped that perception?
Greenwood’s third question is, “What should happen here?” This is a forward-looking question. It’s one related to ethical and responsible action; one that arises from a desire to contribute to the place, but informed first by the previous two questions. If we tie these questions back to the story of Nanabozho and the common plantain, maybe we could say that these three questions can help guide the naturalizing to place. How can I learn from this place, so as to live in harmony with, and contribute positively to this place?
Practicing Participatory Action Research
In ISKR’s Critical Global Citizenship class, we engage, through Socratic discussions, with the above two texts and many others, thinking critically about what it means to be global citizens. We also model the practice of global citizenship through a form of guided, participatory action-research. There are different definitions and approaches to participatory action-research; for our purposes in the class, we define it as involving two main components: one related to research, the other related to action.
First, we carry out ethnographic research through interviews and observations with two community partner groups. With this component, the participatory element comes from our phenomenological approach to the research. The two community partner groups are not sources of information, or objects we wish to learn about; rather, we approach them as experts of their own reality, and our goal is to better understand their experience. Our research is mediated in part by the nature of the two community partners: one is a youth-led, climate action NGO, while the other is a boarding school for vulnerable teens, built around a very intentional village model that foregrounds social-emotional healing, together with academic success. The goal of our research, then, is to learn from the people in the partner organizations about their lives, their interests, their concerns, their work, and the challenges they face. We’re asking: What happened here? What is happening here?
The second component of our participatory action-research is to work out, together with the community partners, how we can act together to support positive change. This is where we ask the question, What should happen here? Our asking of this question is participatory; we ask it together with the community partners and then attempt to work together on an answer. This is not a simple task; it’s also one that we’re still figuring out. In some instances, the community partner already has a vision for effecting positive change, and, to put it bluntly, we’re not equipped to be helpful. We are an international school, we are high school students, and despite our efforts to naturalize to place, we often lack the contacts, the knowledge, the language, and the resources to be helpful. This, however, has been a tremendous lesson. How presumptuous to assume that these partners need our help? It’s been instructive to recognize that it’s worth the relationship with the community partner regardless of any action together. We’ve learned humility when they’ve willingly continued to partner with us non-transactionally. We’ve learned the patience to wait and see how the relationship develops and what action opportunities may naturally arise in the future.
However, one action has resulted from our participatory action-research process. Arising from the research conducted by the Critical Global Citizenship students over the past two years, ISKR and the youth-led, climate action partner, have hosted a Climate Action Summit. This year the summit brought together students from four different schools, including students from the other community partner. Students led workshops on what they’d been learning about climate change, they participated in a climate-policy debate competition, and they engaged in a climate negotiation simulation. The summit also included an exhibition of nearly twenty local organizations (private sector, government agencies, and NGOs) involved in climate-related work in Rwanda. The summit has become an opportunity for students to learn from each other, learn from the work being done locally, and network together for further action on climate change.
Learn From and Act With
Our participatory action-research in the Critical Global Citizenship class is meant to be a tangible manifestation of a global citizenship practice, but it’s also designed to be an enacted metaphor for an broader global citizen attitude. In everyday speech, we sometimes use the word attitude as roughly synonymous with mood, but in psychology, attitude is a much more complex construct. Attitude refers to one’s deeply held beliefs, values, and motivations. Attitude is also tied to behavior; my actions in the world tend to be informed, sometimes unconsciously, by the beliefs, values, and motivations that make up my attitude. The goal of ISKR’s Critical Global Citizenship class is not for students to learn the formal methods of interview transcription, observation field notes, or data coding— the methodology of participatory action-research. Rather, the goal is for students to develop a global citizenship attitude, one that will inform their actions in the world going forward. In our Critical Global Citizenship class we’ve embraced a slogan of sorts that captures the essence of participatory action-research; I believe it also captures the attitude of global citizenship. The slogan is “learn from and act with.”
This slogan is best understood in juxtaposition with its opposite. Some approaches to global citizenship — Vanessa Andreotti would call them “soft” forms — tend towards a more “learn about and act for” model. This approach seeks to learn about a problem in the world in the abstract, maybe, as mentioned above, by neglecting the importance of local place and the questions of “What happened here?” and “What is happening here?” This approach then seeks to act in the world to fix the problem, acting for those who actually experience the problem (and often failing to fix anything). This is the opposite of naturalizing to place; this is contrary to a place-based critical pedagogy; this is the antithesis of participatory action-research.
In contrast, to learn from requires engagement with the local place; it means to listen, to withhold judgement, to value the phenomenological experience of the place and its people. To act with is to join in partnership, to decide together on a response to the question, “What should happen here?” To learn from and act with is to embrace an attitude of global citizenship (with Hughes, perhaps we should call it glocal citizenship). To learn from and act with is to follow in the footsteps of Nanabozho; it’s to “blossom where we are planted.”
