Thinking Systemically means to be able to see the outcome of your choices and decisions before you make them. It means to be able to look at a complicated issue or problem and to see the different parts, and how they all connect and impact each other. Thinking Systemically also means to look at a situation and focus on a small part of it or the whole thing all at once. When you Think Systemically, you can look at something with a critical eye, and can use your understanding from many different sources to conclude. You can also use your knowledge across different areas to make critical judgments and eventually turn them into actions. Thinking critically means to analyze and evaluate an issue in order to form a judgment.

My Understanding

In action, Thinking Systemically would look like thinking logically about the pluses and consequences of your choices, and being able to look at something large as a whole and at a small specific part of it. This can be beneficial to the overall quality of a project, because you are able to think about it from every possible angle through every possible lense. This can help to maximize the positive outcomes of your choices, so you can correctly recognize what’s causing the problem. ​

A counter-example of Thinking Systemically would be not being able to think deeply about something. Thinking Systemically involves being able to find similarities, identify patterns, and come to conclusions based on observations and critical thinking. If you aren’t able to research and think about all of the effects of everything you do or say, then that would not be Thinking Systemically. Additionally, if you go into something without any idea of its benefits and drawbacks, and the effect that it will have, that would not be using this skill correctly. For example, you want to apply to 10 different colleges to have many options. However, you may not think about how stressful that would be for you, having to do 10 different interviews and write 10 different essays. You also may not think about the fact that you have school, your part-time job, and the end of senior year to juggle. This would not be an example of Thinking Systemically, because you are not thinking about your actions will affect you, as well as effecting others like friends and family around you because you may burden them by being stressed or anxious.

I believe that this shows we were Thinking Systemically because we had to think of the negative effects rats can have on the ecosystem, different ways that we could try and fix the problem, and what negative outcomes those solution ideas might have. We ended up choosing to make rat traps, because we thought that would have the least bad effects. However, when presenting our idea to the class, we realized that there were a couple of things we didn’t think of, such as it being slow, and having nowhere to dispose of the rat’s bodies. It was also sort of a violent method, and we may have been able to find a way that didn’t kill the rats, just helped them to leave our village. Nevertheless, I believe that we showed Thinking Systemically when we were able to think critically and come up with many different ideas. I think that I have to use this skill a lot in EQS, and in my daily life when I make choices and first think about the effects that they will have.

This skill is important to me because it is something that will be very beneficial later on in life. Knowing how to think about something from every angle will help me so much when doing almost anything. Without this skill, I don’t think I would know how to successfully solve problems. When problem solving, you can use this skill to look at something as a whole, and notice how everything is connected and how it impacts other things. You are also able to address a specific part of the problem, as to make sure it doesn’t arise again in the future.

My Growth

In 6th grade, if I was asked what Thinking Systemically was, I couldn’t have explained it very well at all. I didn’t like to think about this skill because I found it harder than all the other ones, and I had trouble understanding it. In 7th grade, I wouldn’t have cared much about what the skill meant. But now, in 8th grade, I am able to tell you what it means and why I think it's such an important skill. In the beginning of my time here, I thought Thinking Systemically meant to zoom out and zoom in. It made sense that you could look at something as a whole, and then be able to focus and analyze a specific part of it. However, I now am aware of how hard that is, and that is not the only skill needed to Think Systematically. In order to Think Systemically, you need to know what it means. As I talk about in the box below, The Sandalwood Trade from Mr. A’s Roleplay Class in 7th Grade was an experience that helped me grow in this skill, but I definitely don’t think that was the only project. Throughout my journey at SEEQS, I have had teachers, projects, and experiences that have helped me grow in my understanding and use of this Sustainability Skill.

For example, in EQS Changemakers in sixth grade, we had to do a Pecha Kucha Presentation. This is a method of presentation where you only have photos on your slideshow. On one of our slides, we were required to have a stock and flow diagram. This is a diagram and helps you to think about all of the things that positively and negatively affect something. Since mine and my partner Genisis’s topic was plastic affecting animals in the ocean, that was what our stock and flow diagram was about.

One part of Thinking Systemically I still struggle with is zooming out and zooming in on something. When I encounter something that needs to be analyzed, I often only look at the bigger picture and forget to focus on small, specific parts of it. I have a mindset that looking at the issue as a whole will be the way to solve it, and not wasting my time learning about specific contributors and sections of it. In actuality, being able to do both is the only way that you will be able effectively solve the problem. When you don’t analyze and act upon a smaller section of an issue, you may neglect it to resurface in the coming times.

I can continue to improve on Thinking Systemically in the future by practicing my critical-thinking skills. When I know how to properly contemplate something and look at it from every angle, that will be very helpful to me when making important decisions in the future.

My Project

An experience that helped me grow in my understanding of this skill was The Sandalwood Trade in Mr. A’s Hawaiian History Roleplay Class in 7th Grade. Our essential question was: “How can we use lessons from our past to shape our future?” I think that we were able to address this by learning about the importance of sacred Native Hawaiian locations in the Roleplay. While I was in this class, the protest of the TMT Telescope at Mauna Kea was going on. I was able to understand why they were protesting and all the significance that volcano has in the past, present, and for the future.

This project helped me grow in my understanding of Thinking Systemically because I was being put in a situation where I had to use the skill, but didn’t know it yet.

Before we even talk about the experience, I think I need to talk about the class. Mr. A’s Roleplay Class was definitely one of the most interesting and unique classes I’ve ever taken. Essentially, the class is a game, and all the students are characters having to overcome real-world challenges that Native Hawaiians may have had to face, such as traveling to Hawaii by canoe, famine and drought, corrupt monarchy, the arrival of foreigners, and battles for power, among many other things. You need to be able to think logically and make smart choices to survive.

The Sandalwood Trade occurred during a particular part in Hawaiian History. It happened somewhere around the time period from 1810 to 1820, and was detrimental to Native Hawaiians living at the time. Ship captains from America, Britain, and Russia were just starting to come to Hawaii. They had many new devices Native Hawaiians had never seen before like guns, cannons, and other weapons. Many of the ship captains wanted Sandalwood, because back where they came from it was very valuable. Other of my classmates who were either ship captains or maka’ainana (commoners) started making trades. I remember people were coming up to me and asking, “Will you give me 10,000 sandalwood trees and I’ll give you a gun?” and thinking that seemed very unfair. I thought that they were asking for too many trees for just one gun or one cannon.

By the end of the class, we’d sold so many boatloads of Sandalwood that we couldn’t possibly pay it all off. Below, I’m including a sample screenshot that I wrote that day in my Roleplay Document after all this had happened.

I chose to share this excerpt with you because it shows and explains what happened that day in class at the time that it happened. I didn’t want to edit it because this is what I wrote in my document on that day. I think it really shows that even though this was just a class, we were able to get into our characters and have everything feel a lot more real.

Below is a paragraph taken from the class after The Sandalwood Trade had happened and all the deals were made.

​Another thing I remember about this class was that we had to carry an actual block of Sandalwood around the classroom to stimulate what it really would have been like.

I chose to show this excerpt because it shows my understanding of Thinking Systemically. While everyone was making trades, they weren't thinking about the consequences of their actions or making logical decisions, which is what Thinking Systemically is all about. This talks about all the outcomes of the choices of people who were making trades.

Something I really liked about this class was that our Roleplay Document and “Quickwrites'' were the only assignments we got. Every morning when we came to class, we would go to Google Classroom and answer the quickwrite prompt. I really liked this way of teaching, because we were both having to come up with an answer quickly, and have our answers visible to the rest of the class. Also, since quickwrites weren’t really graded, it was more of a fun environment than a scary one. After writing, we would always have a discussion about the prompt and our answers. Our Roleplay Document was where we would journal (from the point of view of our character) everything that had happened each class. Our Roleplay Document was also a place for us to add our own thoughts and perspectives and to brainstorm on how to solve problems.

In conclusion, I think that having this experience and taking this class in general taught me so much about Thinking Systemically. In the moment, I was able to Think Systematically about the outcome of my choices and therefore think critically about how things were going to end up. Not only did I learn to understand this skill better, but also use it more often. I believe that through this experience I was able to sufficiently demonstrate my understanding and use of this Sustainability Skill.

Relation To Skill

In this experience, I needed to use Thinking Systemically or I would die. (In the roleplay, at least.) We didn’t know it in the moment, but if we made trades such as, “four boatloads of Sandalwood trees for one cannon and one gun”, that would end in us having to pay off all the debt for years, and eventually dying. I think that when we were making the trades, we should have been thinking about how this might end up. Who is going to cut down all the many Sandalwood trees you’re trading? How long will it take them to cut all those trees down? And how might having one million less trees in the mountains affect the ecosystem? If we had been asking ourselves these questions while making trades, things may have turned out better in the end.

This project helped deepen my understanding of the Sustainability Skill Thinking Systemically because I was able to see what would happen if I didn’t use it. After having something bad happen as a result of not Thinking Systemically, you are able to look back and see what you could have done differently. I remember in that moment thinking back on all the mistakes we had made and how they had lead to our situation then.

We were not Thinking Systemically when we didn’t think about the outcomes of our choices and the effects of our decisions. In the moment, we only thought about the deals we were making and not anything else. If we were to do this project again, I think we should take a minute to consider what might happen if we trade 100 boatloads of Sandalwood, and how it would affect the ecosystem and ourselves. If we had done different things, it probably would have ended up differently. If we were to do this again, we would need to zoom in on all the different parts of our system, and notice how they are connected. We would also need to zoom out on our environment as a whole, and how our choices may have a domino affect. The pieces we would need to analyze would be the number of people in our village, how long it would take for us to harvest all of the Sandalwood Trees, the height of the mountain the trees are on, and how the trees affect our land, runoff, and our food. If we had thought this way, then we might have realized that the different pieces of our ecosystem are all connected. If we cut down the trees, there would be a lot less fresh water because trees collect rain, our crops would all die because of runoff, and then we wouldn’t have any food or water. It might not seem like it from the outside, but all the parts of the system that sustained us were ruined after making this one mistake. If our village hadn’t died from the laborious work, we would have died from either famine or drought. The problem we were addressing started out as paying off all our debt in Sandalwood, but turned into something much bigger, because our situation was much more damaged then we realized.

Thinking critically, we could overcome this problem with little negative impact by not trading so much Sandalwood in the first place. Looking at the big picture, the problem started right up at the beginning, when the deals were made. We should have not made any trades in the first place, or made just a few small ones so that we could have at least a few guns or cannons. We could have also tried to compromise with the ship captains and see if they could make any deals that were a little more fair. But I think that if we’d even made a few fewer deals, it would have been helpful in the end.

​In the future I can use Thinking Systemically in many different aspects of my life. I hope that this skill (being the most complex one, at least in my opinion) will serve as a helpful tool as I continue along my journey. Because of this skill, I will now understand how to think critically as a student, as well as learning to apply it to other aspects of my life, such as with family, friends, work, and any other situation I may find myself in. This skill will lead me in making the best decisions about things and knowing how to look at a problem with an analytical eye. And I know that because of SEEQS and because of this Sustainability Skill, I have become a better person and a better learner than I would be if I had never come here.

View Other Sustainability Skill Reflections:
Reasoning Analytically
Managing Effectively
Communicating Powerfully
Collaborating Productively