Name: LARGO, EBARLEEN KEITH C.

Date: 11/21/2020

My Reflection about the System Thinking Approach

Who knew reconnecting people with their local food systems would also create a new
kind of community? Kalen Pilkington illustrates how farming underutilized land in our
backyards can lead us toward system wide solutions for some of Earth’s biggest problems. Kalen
understands that sustainability is about more than recycling and saving the bees. It’s about
finding a balance between ecological integrity, economic vitality, social equity and cultural
continuity.
The speaker in the video, named Kalen Pilkington, talked about how system thinking is
being used in real life. System thinking is looking at the whole as oppose to individual parts and
pieces. It is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent
parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. We
are looking for the cause and effect relationship here. Every day, we interact social, cultural and
economic systems as well. She quoted that the decisions that we make impact how the said
systems change and evolve. Ms. Kalen wanted to make a difference but she doesn’t know where
to start. She started the discussion by saying that there is a gap between how system function in
reality and how we think they function. So, she uses the food system to illustrate the problem. It
is a system that has high degree of human interference. Because of the decision we made, we
create unhealthy and unbalance system that we are disconnected from where our food is grown,
raised and produced. Through this problem, she came to a conclusion that maybe through
decision making, the system can move a little bit. To have a further authenticate conclusion, she
became a vegetarian which became her first step. She gradually reducing her ecological
footprints. Ecological foot print means how fast we consume resources and generate waste.
However, she still didn’t feel the connectedness of her ideas to food systems. Hence, she decided
to just grow food together with her friends. Before they successfully planted plants, they
encounter different lapses until they met people whom they seek help to have a garden. They
offered that if they let them garden their yard, in return they will get fresh produce. Within few
months by spring time, they get eight (8) yards and five (5) gardeners. This way they realize that
they don’t only need to take care of the garden for sustainability but we need also to take care of
one another. So, they include social cultural and economic component all part of the same
complex system. As a result, they plan to grew more foods. They added yards, more gardeners
and they also learn the culture of the residents about planting crops. This gave them knowledge
about planting crops that they could never learn on Internet. They also started inviting each
household to visit them rather than worrying about disturbing them. And because they had
already extra produce, they started partnering with local farmers where they were given small
corner of their market table where they could sell the extra food and at the same time make some
money. Each of the people and also nature became part of the system. Natural environment gave
them countless things such as sun, rain and pollinators. Gardeners gave them social stimulation
and manual labor. The homeowners provided land and knowledge. The farmer provided them the
means to sell their produce. And lastly the community benefitted from having access to
affordable local organic produce and their money was being directly reinvested back into food
security within the community. This kind of ways did by Kalen have extremely impacted local
but it is connected to a global goal of foo security. Through the local actions they did, they are
also nudging the global aspects. As she ended the topic, she came up to an end that system
thinking is complex. There are things or issues that interlinked and interrelated which need to be
looked holistically. These tools can break apart the solutions and reassemble them to address the
goal. She also emphasized that that we need to shift our thinking from parts to whole, from
objects to relationships and from quantity to quality.
In my experience, system thinking approach has also help me to be an effective leader in
my organization. Way back when I was in college, I was the former Chairperson of the Bachelor
of Elementary Education (BEED) which we called it Generalist Society for 2 consecutive years.
Our organization was known to be the largest population among all organizations in Southern
Christian College. As a leader, it’s not easy to handle such huge family. In my first year of
service in the organization, I was in the state of unpreparedness for I don’t know where to start
and what to do as a leader. As Kalen did, I thought also on how can I make difference to make
my legacy remembered by my members. How can I make the years to be more memorable and at
the same time knowledgeable one to them? So, I gathered information about from the former
chairperson of the organization on what steps, activities and ways she did to be an effective
leader, and all she said was “work together with your co-officers.” Because of that I realized that
I am not the only one who has responsibilities here, I never thought that I have my officers to be
with me in every decision and actions we make. So, the first step I did was to conduct a meeting
with my co-officers. We recognize each one’s functions. In a system thinking, management
discipline is first observing discrete functions and interactions between components.
In education that would be the interactions amongst teachers, learners, administrators, digital
content and learning goals. Sometimes this system is multiple systems of multiple functions. So
as in organization, each position has specific functions that are interrelated to achieve the
ultimate goal of the organization. Our teamwork was tested for we were assigned to be the host
of “Buwan ng Wika” of the Elementary Training Department. Our organization was assigned to
prepare all the requirement from permits to the program. So, what we did was seek support from
other organizations, teachers and from advisers. The other organization that we ask help was the
Filipino Society. They gave us ideas about the program. Advisers also from the CTE department
support us by giving permits and also advices on how we handle the program. And the teachers
and staff signed the permits in order for us to be allow to conduct the program to the Fellowship
Center. It was a successful program. All the parents, students and elementary teachers were very
happy in the celebration of “Buwan ng Wika”. We had contests such as in singing, folk dancing,
balagtasan, and many more. In that simple way, we just figured out that we just need to do our
own function effectively to have an order and organize steps to achieve the goal. That became
our first step to be known as Generalist Society in the campus. And after that, we conducted
many programs and other activities which I can say became a legacy in my years of service. In
conclusion, don’t just see the whole picture, but you need also to figure out how the parts of the
whole work together as a team.