I Wish I Had Learned to Think in Systems Sooner

It was a cold winter morning, and my neighborhood along with the rest of the Washington, D.C. area was digging out from a snowstorm. Thankfully, my parents and I had spent hours the day before shoveling our driveway so we could get out. That morning, they drove me through the snow-covered city to a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, where I was attending the NAIS Student Civic Leadership Summit. At the time, I was mostly excited to finally be out of the house staying at a hotel and getting to hang out with students from all over the country. I didn't expect that those two days would change the way I assess the world around me.

During the conference, we worked through complicated civic issues in a way that felt different to me. Instead of jumping immediately to whether something was good or bad or deciding who was responsible, we were encouraged to ask questions, consider different perspectives, and look at all the different things influencing an issue.

One question led to another. Who is affected? What happened before this? What rules or decisions might be contributing to it? Who has choices and who has to adapt to choices made by other people? If we change one thing, what else might change because of it?

I loved thinking this way. And as I sat in those sessions, I started connecting what we were talking about to things I had experienced in my own life.

When I came home from the conference, I wanted to understand this way of thinking better. I started researching online and learning more about systems thinking. I learned that there was an entire field devoted to understanding how different parts of a system interact, how patterns develop over time, and why changing one part of a system can sometimes have consequences somewhere else.

The more I learned, the more I kept thinking one thing: Gosh, why didn’t I learn this sooner? Why was this way of thinking and approach to discussing societal challenges not taught to me sooner, like in middle school.

By the time we are in high school, we are already making decisions that feel important and that can influence the trajectory of our lives. For example, we are deciding what we care about, what activities we want to pursue, what information we believe, and we are choosing our classes that influence what we want to study and the careers we want to have when we are adults. If I had known about systems thinking in middle school, I would have been better prepared to make the decisions I was being asked to make in high school.

And I started wondering what would happen if middle school students had the opportunity to practice them before they reached high school. That question led me to create curriculum and training guides to support a pilot, which I was thrilled was approved by my school. My other blog details how it went (spoiler alert…it was amazing!).

I appreciate that systems thinking is already being taught by educators in schools and classrooms across the country, and there are amazing organizations working to bring these skills to students. What I want to explore is a slightly different model: high school students learning systems thinking and facilitation skills and then using those skills to lead meaningful conversations with middle school students.

There is something powerful about learning from someone just a few years ahead of you. A high school student doesn’t need to have all the answers. As facilitators our role is not to tell younger students what to think, but rather it is to learn how to ask questions that help them look beyond the obvious answer, notice connections, challenge their assumptions, and become curious about what else might be influencing an issue. I know I would have loved learning from a high schooler when I was in middle school.

So over this coming year, I will be continuing to deepen my own understanding of systems thinking and facilitation, improve the learning materials as I learn, and develop training and resources that other high school students can use to become Hang Haven facilitators. Follow this journey as I create a community where student facilitators can share what they are learning, give each other feedback, and bring Hang Haven sessions to middle school students in their own schools and communities.

My dream is much bigger, I hope that systems thinking becomes a natural part of how kids are taught from an early age to understand the world around them so that when we are adults, we can build better systems and solve our most pressing societal challenges.