The India Connection
by Suzanne Miller
The faces of the 3rd graders beamed. The scene was an Indian festival in the gym of Riverside Elementary School in Oneonta, New York. For weeks the students had been planning this community event, Visions of India: A Sister City Celebration. They had learned about the culture and art of India, including classical Indian dances, yoga, Indian textiles and prints, and Indian literature. They had studied the country's geography, its religious traditions, and the daily lives of its people. At the festival, they performed the dances they had learned and sold a variety of articles they had made, such as baked goods, jewelry, and bookmarks with Indian designs.
Riverside's Indian festival was the culmination of a multifaceted study of India that included a large service learning component. To understand the origins of this project, we need to go back to1996, when Ashok Malhotra and I, professors at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, led 11 college students in a Semester in India program.
Josie Basile, one of the students in the group, learned about extreme poverty in India and raised $4,500 to take with us to help that country's children. When we arrived at the village of Dundlod in northern India, village leaders told us of the pressing need for a primary school for the children, who were not attending any school because of poverty and the caste system. So we used Josie's funds to establish a school in a one-room building donated by a villager. On the first day, the children thronged outside the school, and we had to limit admission to 50. Never had we seen children so excited and eager to learn.
With the help of the Ninash Foundation (www.ninash.org), a nonprofit organization Ashok Malhotra established to support and expand the work in Dundlod, the Indo-International School in Dundlod has grown to more than 350 students, now housed in a new building with many classrooms. The foundation has already founded two additional Indian schools; its goal is to establish more schools and promote literacy throughout the world.
In 2000, Malhotra visited Ken Sider's 3rd grade class at Riverside School as a guest speaker on Hinduism. When Sider heard about the Indo-International School and the Ninash Foundation, he decided to get his students involved. In addition to participating in the learning experiences described earlier, his students became pen pals with students at the Indo-International School. They learned about the commonalities that connect people in the United States with others in distant countries. They also learned about the basic resources and supplies that the Dundlod students lack and most U.S. students take for granted. They gained an understanding of such issues as poverty and child labor; the power of literacy and the value of education; and the effects of economic status, gender, and religion in different societies.
The 3rd graders began raising money in a variety of ways to help the students in India. One of their first fund-raisers, a traditional bake sale, became a springboard for lessons in marketing, money management, sales, public speaking, staffing, and time management. Sider reports that as the final totals were announced over the school's public address system, "We all had a feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves." He adds, "Each year, as we begin an interdisciplinary unit of study on India, I witness the dramatic transformation of my 3rd graders from learners to activists."
Like a pebble dropped in the water, the establishment of a new school in a small village in India has spread ripples in all directions. The service learning project that started in Ken Sider's class spread to other 3rd grade classes in the Oneonta School District who teamed together for the Indian festival. In nearby Cooperstown, New York, for example, the Cooperstown Elementary School had a penny drive and raised $2,000 to build a room for the Mahapura School, another project of the Ninash Foundation.
A college student raises money, and a school in India is born; a 3rd grade teacher develops a curriculum that combines knowledge and compassion, and students become activists; a professor starts a foundation, and many formerly unschooled children become literate. From one little pebble, the ripples go out in ways we may not have imagined. All of us can be that small pebble that starts the ripples—and we can help our students do the same.
One Question a Day
by Kerry Weisner
This is Harley and Sarah—live!—bringing you this morning's announcements. Here's our question of the day:Before Christmas, our school raised money to help people who aren't as fortunate as we are. One kindergarten girl is still thinking about helping others. Yesterday she brought some of her own money and asked her teacher to give it to some poor people. We'd say that this girl is internally motivated to help others. What does this mean?
So begins a typical day at Alex Aitken Elementary in Duncan, British Columbia, with a question designed to inspire students to aim toward the highest level of human behavior, motivated by a genuine desire to do good.
Prompted by Marvin Marshall's Discipline Without Stress approach, which features principles of positivity, choice, and reflection, our teachers decided to promote social responsibility and internal motivation by making responsibility an attractive choice and doing more asking than telling. From developmental psychologist, Gordon Neufeld,we understood that social responsibility grows from personal responsibility; the order of this process cannot be reversed.
For a year prior to developing our question of the day program, we concluded our daily morning announcements with a short statement or simple request designed to encourage students to take personal responsibility in the classroom and on the playground—"Please wipe your feet when you come in today," "Always treat your friends nicely," or "Don't forget to wash your hands before you eat." But students didn't seem interested in our advice. Their faces said it all: "Ho-hum."
We decided to switch things up. Instead of telling students what to do, we began to ask them to think for themselves.This evening we have parent-teacher interviews. Your parents may ask how well you pay attention to lessons, whether or not you are organized, and how well you manage yourself on the playground. How does your teacher know what to say about you?
When announcement statementsbecame announcementquestions, we noticed that students began to pay attention. We could see it in their body language, in their faces, and by the fact that across the school, students spontaneously started sharing thoughts after each day's question. Seeing we were onto something, we eagerly began to build a bank of questions.
We soon realized that our program provided an opportunity to draw student attention to issues that adults felt were problematic. To remain positive, we worded questions in ways that respected students' dignity, conveyed high expectations, and encouraged them to voluntarily seek responsible solutions.Inside our schoolyard, the parking lot is one area where students are asked not to go. Everyone would agree that playing near cars is never safe, yet there are some students who keep playing in the parking lot.Smart people choose to take care of themselves. What would you do, or say, if someone suggested playing near cars?
We also began to look for other ways to encourage students to develop internal motivation and the desire to be personally responsible. For years we had motivated our students to participate in a telephone book recycling program by offering pizza parties as prizes. Despite high collection numbers, we felt uncomfortable—rewarding strategies do not promote internal motivation. We began to point out "the real reasons for doing things." Instead of focusing on pizza, we used our question of the day—along with a few charts and graphs—to prompt student thinking. Recycling phone books can protect nature and help prevent global warming. Not surprisingly, when you consider that youth is often the time when idealism and enthusiasm are strongest, our collection numbers first matched and then consistently exceeded the numbers achieved when we assumed it was necessary to dangle pizza as an incentive.
Providing youth with opportunities to reach for the highest level of behavior—that which is motivated internally—respects their capacity to be fully human. By asking one question a day, we joyously discovered that young people can become excited about making responsible decisions when introduced to the idea of conscious choice.
Exploring Global Poverty
by J. Spencer Edmunds and Amanda Wall
At Canterbury School, an independent K-8 Episcopal day school in Greensboro, North Carolina, our aim is to graduate students who not only know facts and information but also know who they are, how they fit into the world, and how they can make the world a better place. We have found that the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (see What Are the Millennium Development Goals? p. 80) provide an effective framework for promoting that aim.
A problem-solving experience called MDG Explorers illustrates how we weave the goals throughout Canterbury's middle school curriculum. Every year in social studies class, our 7th grade students learn about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the global needs these goals seek to address. Then they participate in the two-day MDG Explorers experience, which takes place in a wooded area of our campus. The students are split into five groups, each representing a small village in Africa, India, China, Afghanistan, or Honduras. They receive specific information on their village and its people and problems. Each student then opens an envelope with information about his or her identity, vocation, and income level. Thomas, a student in the Afghanistan group, finds this:Ismatullah: Low IncomeYou are a grape farmer, and you live with your wife and two children in a ramshackle house with no electricity. Although you are fortunate to have a farm and job, your crop has been damaged by poor conditions and blight, and one of your daughters is very sick. You cannot afford the supplies necessary to improve your field and farm, and with less income from your grapes you cannot afford the medicine your daughter needs to get better.
In their envelopes, students with low income levels find one dollar; those with middle income levels find three dollars; and the one or two per group with high incomes find five dollars (we make our own money). Teacher leaders inform the groups that they must pay a fee to get a supply kit to start their village. Combining their money to buy the kit immediately thrusts students into a situation that sparks collaboration or conflict. Who has what? And who is willing to give up these vital dollars? They must resolve these questions to continue.
With their start-up kit (magic markers, a triangle of cotton muslin, a rope, a tarp, and a bottle of water and cup for each student), Thomas (now Ismatullah) and his fellow villagers must establish a shelter, designate and design a separate area for council meetings, form a system of government for decision making, and create a flag with the muslin and markers to mark their territory. With their sparse supplies, their ingenuity, and their imaginations, they will build and work together.
When they line up for lunch later, hungry from their physical labor, they are disappointed to discover that it's only a cup of rice—and appalled to learn that it will cost them two dollars each. Some do not have enough money and appeal to their fellow villagers. Some, who claim they don't like rice and pass, will be very hungry later.
The villagers have council meetings to discuss the needs of their village in the context of the Millennium Development Goals and to determine a development project they will complete the next day. They may each bring one supply from home, and they discuss and plan accordingly. Past projects have included building schools, hospitals, gardens (for agriculture), and water filtration systems; every year their imaginations surprise us. One group targeting clean water brings hoses, coffee filters, a funnel, and buckets to siphon water from our pond and simulate a crude filtration system. Another group, who seeks to start a school, brings books and paper and writing utensils, a child-sized easel, scissors, and other school supplies. They clear a space on the bare earth and create rows and spaces to sit marked out with sticks and stones.
Something amazing happens once this simulation is set in motion: The teachers disappear into the landscape while the students assume responsibility for their collective learning. Together they face challenges, collaborate, listen, and problem solve as if their existence depended on it. Our experience suggests that these young people will not only remember what they learned, but they will also be more socially responsible.
The MDG Explorers unit in 7th grade has become the anchor experience for developing our middle school students' social responsibility. Students reflect on the insights they gained in the unit as they prepare research papers and participate in service learning projects in 8th grade, which are also tied to the Millennium Development Goals.
Although there are many effective ways to teach students to be more socially responsible, we have found that hitching our program to the Millennium Development Goals has allowed us to provide educational experiences that stretch students out of their comfort zones and increase their awareness of needs in both the global and local communities.
