Every school has its "rockstar" students - the ones who attend every Model United Nations conference, sustainability initiative, or leadership programme.

But for every one of those students, five or ten others remain disengaged.

This raises a question educators everywhere wrestle with:

How do we get more students to care?

After all, unless we narrow the gap between the ‘rockstars’ and everyone else, can we really claim to be preparing young people to engage positively with the world around them?

A recent collaboration in Hong Kong offers some interesting insights.

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A collaboration around stories that matter

The project brought together Sprouts Foundation, which creates enrichment opportunities for students from local Hong Kong schools, and Plastic Free Seas, an NGO that empowers young people to take action against plastic pollution.

               Takeaway Takes Away Our Life, a film made by student storytellers from Sprouts Foundation, Hong Kong

Through Docathon, students created short documentary films exploring plastic waste in their communities.

For many of the students, this was their first experience with filmmaking. They had never interviewed strangers, edited a video, or researched an environmental issue in depth. Many were also building confidence communicating in English.

This setting created an ideal opportunity to explore how storytelling might change the way students engage with real-world issues.

Investigating real-world issues brings learning to life

Dana from Plastic Free Seas, who has delivered environmental workshops in dozens of Hong Kong schools, noticed a key difference in this programme.

Instead of simply learning about plastic pollution, students investigated it firsthand - interviewing people in their communities and exploring how the issue affects everyday life.

Exploring different perspectives encourages reflection

Winnie, one of the student filmmakers, described how interviewing people in the community changed the way she saw the issue:

Through this process, Winnie moved from seeing the project as just another classroom assignment to reflecting on her own behaviour in relation to the issue.

By investigating the issue themselves, students began to connect with it - and that connection sparked something important: they started to care.

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Sharing their film with an authentic audience is highly motivating 

Students then had the opportunity to share their story at the Hong Kong Docathon, hosted by the Canadian International School of Hong Kong during its annual SDG Summit.

As students developed their films, they began to feel responsible for telling the story well.

On 7 March, the students presented their films to an audience of over 150 students and educators from around 10 schools across Hong Kong. They introduced their documentaries, answered questions on stage, and discussed the issues their films explored.

The students went from being merely curious to having a genuine sense of responsibility for the issues they explored.

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Final thoughts

When students become storytellers, they begin to care more deeply - not just the so-called “rockstars,” but everyone involved in the telling of that story.  That’s why purposeful storytelling really is the single most important superpower we have to change the world.  

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