Multi-faceted Refractions

I am posting this for a third group of Juniors, who are working on a third project. If anyone is interested, either comment or email me.

The Juniors at the North Shore Country Day School have been actively researching many different project as a result a research project which has arisen from a service learning initiative. After hearing a presentation by Jeffrey Sachs, a noted macroeconomist who created the U.N.’s Millennium Goals towards global development and improvement, the students became very interested in Millennium Promise.  This is an organization Sachs created that works to make the U.N.’s Millennium Goals actual realities, and within it is one especially interesting endeavor, the Village Project. This program ‘adopts’ certain villages across Africa and uses technology and intelligent investments to completely revitalize the community.  By drastically improving healthcare, agricultural methods, education, and infrastructure, the Village Project raises these towns and the areas around them out of extreme poverty, creating a sustainable system that enables the people there to survive and work and live their lives.

The students at North Shore knew they wanted to get involved.  They had heard that the city of Chicago, with the Chicago Promise organization, had recently adopted a village in Kenya, pledging $1.5 million over the next five years.  Clearly they knew they could not raise this sort of money alone, but what if other schools got involved? ?  If 300 schools together adopted a village, each school would need to pledge only $1000 a year for five years—a pretty reasonable commitment.

They’ve communicated with Pat Bassett, the president of NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools, and he has promised to include our mission in his e-bulletin, which will go out to the more than 1,200 member schools.  And they’ve also asked our faculty to contact other independent schools where we have friends and ask them to join us.

I am asking if you think your school would be interested in cooperatively adopting a village in Africa.  By raising $1000 a year for five years, we can do something that is actually a spectacular feat. So please, see if your school would be able and willing to join our mission, and then send the message on to friends you have at other independent schools.  Then please contact Kathy McHugh, (kmchugh@nscds.org) the teacher here who is overseeing this project, or Vinnie Vrotny, (vvrotny@nscds.org),our Director of Academic Technology.

The Village Project ( http://www.millenniumpromise.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home) is an incredible initiave that will bring an entire community back from the edge. It’s an opportunity to work towards a better world.

It has been awhile since I have updated you with what has gone on with our Junior English classes. When we last left them, they were in the midst of planning and executing their Read-a-thon for the Kilimanjaro English Nursery School. Their goal was to raise$15,000 so that the school could provide a salary to “Teacher”, help purchase the land, and provide support to refurbish the buildings currently on-site. The juniors far exceeded their goal and have raised over $25,000 to support this project. In February, they had an opportunity to hear and meet Greg Mortenson himself, who was on a book tour. It was a cold and snowy Sunday evening, but all in attendance were in awe and inspired by the good fortune of finally meeting someone whom they admired.

As the Service Learning project has continued, the students, under the leadership of Kathy McHugh, our English teacher, have been brainstorming and researching problems and projects that the students could work on. I have had the pleasure of working with two different groups of students. The first group heard the plea of the local foundation for the Kilimanjaro English Nursery School.  These students are working with the directors to create a web presence for the school and the foundation, so that they can continue their work for the school. We have decided to use a simple Word Press blog, since most of the people who will be reporting on the progress of the school are “digital immigrants”. We determined that this would be the most sustainable and scalable way for them to get up quickly. Once it is set up, I will share the site.

A second group of students  is trying to develop a book sharing web site for children. They want to allow outsiders to view book reviews that members of the site can contribute. It looks like we are going to use a Drupal installation for this. I know enough about Drupal to be dangerous, but this will provide a wonderful learning opportunity for both the students and I to learn about this environment and its various modules to enable this project to start small, but be scalable if we desire.

It is a pleasure to work with students who have become impassioned and who are feeling empowered to make changes that in a small way, may change the world.

One of the members of our school’s Parent’s Association asked me if I could recommend a speaker that could speak to the group sometime next year. The group is looking for someone to speak on the concepts of globalization and parenting. I have a few thoughts, but I wanted to throw this out to the Internet at large.

With the new tools, this person wouldn’t necessarily need to be on campus. We could set up a skype or elluminate session, which may actually be a neat way to go, since it would  show parents the power of the new tools.

So does anyone have any suggestions?

One of the questions that emerged in the strategic planning meeting that I participated in yesterday was how do you define what a Global Citizen is? I have added the time frame in the title, as this committee’s report is to help guide our school for the next three to five years. The head of our language department began to define, on our discussion board, that a world citizen is someone who:

• applies the same ethical standards to all human beings regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomics, and nationality.
• understands human differences as functions of genetics, history, culture, opportunity, and individual variances and value these differences.
• is proficient in at least two languages
• can put aside their own nationality and biases when assessing global issues.
• understands themselves to be members of a world community.

I want to publicly applaud her, as she has done a great job of framing the answer. I have added that a world citizen is someone who is empowered and impassioned towards active participation with others in the world, to brainstorm and try to solve some of the problems, no matter how small that they may seem. For as Margaret Mead states, “Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” And one of my boyhood idols, Roberto Clemente was once quoted as saying, “If you can make life better for others and you fail to do so, you are wasting your time on earth.”

But, knowing this may be read by others with different world views and perspectives, what would you add to the definition?

Last Friday, I had the distinct privilege to be asked by our French 5 teacher to participate in a brainstorming session about a project that the class was beginning. Since it was a Friday, I got to go off campus to a local coffee house where the class meets to participate and help create an environment that will support their project. Lucky for me, that on this particular Friday, that the class rule, “en francias, si vous plate” was suspended, or else I would have been at an extreme disadvantage.

For this project, the students are participating in a service learning project. They have determined to focus their project on issues relating to Haiti. They are still in the process of researching various issues so that they can determine what specifically their project should focus on. So, over a hot cup of chai tea, I introduced the group to the concept of a wiki and how this tool could be used to facilitate their threaded conversations and create documentation of the process of the project. I created a wikispace for the class (sorry, right now it is a private space for the class to use internally, until they are better organized) and had everyone sign up for the space. I also showed them how to create a PhotoStory project, which may be used to support some of the support materials that they may want to put together in support of their project.

I was nice to teach and share technology in a relaxed space, over a cup of chai. This does not happen nearly frequently enough, as my life seems very frenetic most days.

I may be sharing updates on this project, as it develops.

<Image from Paula Wirth’s flickr photostream>