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Posts Tagged ‘education’

Teaching Gullah Geechee Culture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged african, culture, education, food, Gullah Geechee, school, south carolina on August 8, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Patrick Martin.
More than 50 high school seniors from Charleston county school of the arts visited the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

Those of us who enjoy eating in restaurants with authentic cuisine from different countries know how food has taught us a lot about those countries. That’s the premise behind a high school class in South Carolina that hopes to educate seniors about some fascinating South Carolina islanders.

Melissa Hellmann writes at the Guardian, “When students from Charleston county school of the arts in South Carolina entered a research institute on the African diaspora, staff greeted them with ‘welcome home.’

“The field trip at the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture was the culmination of a six-week English course about memoir. Students learned about the culture of Gullah Geechee people — the descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans who retained their customs — through the lens of food such as okra, red rice and beans.

“The more than 50 high school seniors leafed through pamphlets on local food festivals, advertisements from the 1960s and Gullah Geechee cookbooks spanning more than 30 years. A few Gullah students in the class found information about their families in the center’s archives.

“During the visit, a Gullah Geechee chef, Reggie Miller, prepared a meal of Carolina gold rice, broccoli grown on nearby John’s Island and locally sourced chicken for the students. The visit culminated with the students creating a ‘zine about Gullah Geechee foodways that was built on archives from the center, and which showed how family recipes and traditions shape history.

“ ‘These cultural foodway legacies have been part of the Charleston and the southern United States culture and even beyond that for hundreds of years and students may have just not learned about it in school,’ said Patrick Martin, an English teacher at the school. Martin received a $1,000 memoir grant through the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Penguin Random House and the Anne Frank Fonds to teach the course. …

“High school and college students throughout South Carolina this past school year have learned about Gullah Geechee history and culture in the context of food. These classes mark a shift in the past decade in which educators are increasingly teaching about Gullah Geechee culture and history in classrooms. Coastal Carolina University students, for instance, created multimedia projects about Gullah foodways through support from the Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies, and the student-driven publishing lab the Athenaeum Press. Twelve students contributed articles, photography and graphic design to the project, funded by a $150,000 Mellon Foundation pilot grant. Students wrote about the history and cultural significance of rice, hibiscus, peas, watermelon and collard greens within the Gullah Geechee community.

“Recently published literature such as Natalie Daise’s Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Tradition, and Rita Woods’s The Last Dreamwalker serve as new tools for teachers to introduce Gullah Geechee culture to their students, said Dr Tamara Butler, the executive director of the Avery Research Center. Teaching about Gullah Geechee foodways is one way that classrooms can connect to the community’s history and heritage, particularly in the face of environmental changes.

“ ‘Gullah Geechee folks’ struggles are included in environmental sciences. We’re expanding beyond the English classroom and social studies classroom and into the science classrooms as well,’ Butler said. ‘Foodways are one of the ways you can get at that: what foods are available to us in the face of climate change? What’s available to us as people are being displaced? What recipes can we still hold on to and adapt, especially now as prices are going up, and fertilizer is not available? …

“As part of the Coastal Carolina University project, it was important to [Zenobia Harper, the Joyner Institute director] and Alli Crandell, the director of the Athenaeum Press, to give back to the Gullah Geechee community. The students helped five Gullah makers increase their social media presence and designed packages for their products.”

More at the Guardian, here.This sounds like a great way to educate young people. But the story makes me wonder why state and federal governments don’t contribute more to such quality education. Did you notice how many charitable funders were mentioned, even from abroad?

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Mississippi’s Stellar Reading Program

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accountability, education, eight-year-old, literacy, mississippi, progress, reading, school, third grade on August 3, 2026| 6 Comments »

Photo: Rory Doyle for the New York Times.
Mississippi sends literacy coaches to low-performing elementary schools, one key part of its strategy.

Educators have known for some time that the most important school years for gaining literacy is third and fourth grade. That’s why Mississippi poured its limited resources into teaching reading at that level — and turned the state around.

Sarah Mervosh writes at the New York Times, “In Kim Luckett-Langston’s first year as principal of Hazlehurst Elementary School, one of the lowest performing schools in what had been one of the lowest performing states, she quickly diagnosed the problem.

“Children at her school, outside Jackson, Miss., were suffering from what she calls A.B.T.: ‘Ain’t been taught.’

“Kindergartners arrived not knowing their letters from their numbers. After a few years in school, they were still far behind. A decade ago, just 12 percent of Hazlehurst students were reading on grade level.

“Today, Hazlehurst has clawed that figure to 35 percent. And Mississippi has emerged as one of the best places in the country for a poor child to get an education.

“Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.

“Poverty remains a driving factor in student achievement, and wealthy states like Massachusetts still have the highest share of students proficient in reading and math. But adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

“ ‘If you want to ask the question, “Which states are helping kids coming from difficult circumstances learn as much as they can?” Mississippi is now doing much better than many other states, including wealthier states in affluent progressive areas,’ said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank.

“Mississippi’s gains have been confined mostly to the early years, where the state has focused its efforts. … Yet Mississippi has figured out something almost no other state has, and it has involved far more than just changing the way reading is taught, the most common explanation for its success.

“Even as schools elsewhere have focused on issues like school funding, social justice and mental health in recent years, Mississippi schools like Hazlehurst have made academics their North Star.

“ ‘At the end of the day, our job is teaching. Their job is learning,’ said Ms. Langston, who added that no matter what is going on in a child’s life, the classroom is the one thing she can control. ‘If we don’t meet that need, we have failed them.’

“Mississippi’s progress has made it the envy of the education world, inspiring countless think pieces and recurring debates about whether the ‘Mississippi miracle’ could be real.

“How could Mississippi, with its low education spending and high child poverty, pull it off? It did not do so by relying on some of the most common proposals held up as solutions in education, like reducing class sizes, or dramatically boosting per-student funding.

“Rather, the state pushed through a vast list of other changes from the top down, including changing the way reading is taught, in an approach known as the science of reading, but also embracing contentious school accountability policies other states have backed away from.

“ ‘Science of reading is really important — it was a key piece of what we did,’ said Rachel Canter, the longtime leader of Mississippi First, an education reform group, who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left Washington think tank. ‘But people are missing the forest for the trees if they are only looking at that.’ In addition to the reading overhaul, Mississippi raised academic standards and started giving each school a letter grade, A to F.

“But unlike No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era federal law that set a goal of having every child in America be proficient in reading and math, Mississippi also measures how much students progress toward proficiency. Schools get credit if students show improvement — and double credit for the improvement of students in the bottom 25 percent.

“The state also takes an unusually strong role in telling schools what to do.

“The Mississippi Department of Education sends literacy and math coaches into low-performing elementary schools, with the goal of teaching teachers, not children. And state officials vet and approve curriculum used by the vast majority of districts, unusual in a country that prizes local control of schools.

“Mississippi also made other changes, like investing in pre-K, and holding back third graders who cannot read well, one of its most debated policies. …

“In Hazlehurst, a rural area 35 miles south of Jackson, more than half of children live in poverty and two in three adults don’t have a college degree. A chicken plant and the local Walmart are two main employers. The elementary school serves about 625 students, mostly Black or Hispanic. All are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. …

“It is the kind of school that might have been punished and labeled as failing during No Child Left Behind.

“Today, it is flooded with support.”

More at the Times, here.

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Seniors in Sweden Keep Learning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cognition, education, elderhostel, elderly, loneliness, retiree, Road Scholar, seniors, Senioruniversitetet, sweden on February 14, 2026| 7 Comments »

Photo: DCPhoto/Alamy.
In Sweden, over-55s can study at Senioruniversitetet for a relatively low fee.

An aunt and uncle on my father’s side were always voracious for education, and when they retired, they took learning vacations with Elderhostel [now called Road Scholar]. More recently, two different friends of mine enjoyed hearing Road Scholar’s academic lecturers on a trip to the Panama Canal, although my sense is that the excursions are heavier on things like indigenous dance performances than they used to be.

Miranda Bryant reports at the Guardian that in Sweden, seniors are teaching one another rather than hiring outside professionals. Reader Stuga4, for example, helped to teach a class on a recent Nobel economics prize winner.

Bryant writes, “record numbers of retirees are enrolling in a university run ‘by pensioners for pensioners’ amid increased loneliness and a growing appetite for learning and in-person interactions.

“Senioruniversitet, a national university that collaborates with Sweden’s adult education institution Folkuniversitetet, has about 30 independent branches around the country which run study circles, lecture series and university courses in subjects including languages, politics, medicine and architecture.

“The Stockholm branch, which is Sweden’s largest, has become so popular since it was founded in 1991 that it is now run across multiple venues across the capital by about 100 volunteers. Its most popular event, the Tuesday lectures, gets about 1,000 people each week.

“Recent Stockholm lectures have included ‘The art of awarding Nobel prizes’ by a former member of a Nobel committee, ‘Disinformation and AI – the threat we invented ourselves’ and ‘From soap to cultural heritage/canon and vice versa.’

“Inga Sanner, chair of Senioruniversitetet in Stockholm, said membership nationally was at an all-time high. … In 2023 there were 2,099 events held across Sweden attended by 161,932 participants, according to Folkuniversitetet. This year, that number is projected to increase to 177,024 participants across 2,391 events.

“Gunnar Danielsson, secretary general of Folkuniversitetet, said: ‘The desire to learn for pleasure’s sake, or for the sake of learning as such, is a joy to experience in a society which is increasingly obsessed with learning and education as [only] preparation for work.’

“Sanner, a retired history professor, said older people were ‘more and more alert’ and that there is a ‘fantastic hunger for education.’ She added: …

“The wider societal role that Senioruniversitetet plays is becoming increasingly important, she said, and the learning and wellbeing of its members has a knock-on effect to their families and beyond. …

“For many of their volunteers, their office in central Stockholm is like a workplace. ‘It is very meaningful work, but also you have such a lovely time and meet others.’ Sanner said the demographic of its membership does, however, tend to be ‘too homogenous,’ adding that they need to do more to extend their reach to a more diverse audience.

“Susanne Abelin, 66, a former journalist from Norrtälje, near Stockholm, volunteers on the university’s newsletter and is learning Italian. Ageism is rife in Sweden, she said, and palpable in day-to-day life. ‘You are seen more or less as an idiot.’ … But Senioruniversitetet, where over-55s can learn for a relatively low fee, is ‘a bit of the Swedish welfare system that is still left.’ …

“Joachim Forsgren, 71, a former physician who now volunteers for the Stockholm branch, has given lectures on ‘man and drugs’ and tuberculosis. …

“By volunteering, he said, ‘we are contributing to some kind of democracy project. This is really trying, especially in this day and age, to get people interested in what is going on.’ Amid the rise of online disinformation and populism, the university helps people to ‘look critically at the amount of information we are almost drowning in every day.’ “

There’s a Harvard-affiliated program like the one in Sweden, with retirees teaching courses in their field. My understanding from friends who have participated is that it’s quite demanding, for both the teacher and the student. More at the Guardian, here.

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College Lectures in Bars Are More Fun

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged $35, bars, college lecture, education, learning, los angeles, relaxed, talk on January 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Lectures on Tap.
A new approach to education: academic lectures in bars. For $35, you can hear, for example, an analysis of the horror-film genre by Drew McClellan, an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Here’s a new way to get some learning if traditional postsecondary education feels out of reach or unappealing. Although $35 per lecture might also be out of reach, I imagine that a really great talk could inspire someone to educate themselves.

Yahoo has kindly shared what Kailyn Brown wrote about this at the Los Angeles Times.

“A man wearing a Jason Voorhees T-shirt steps onto a purple-lighted stage and stands next to a drum set. Audience members, seated in neat rows and cradling cocktails, enthusiastically applaud. Then they look toward a glowing projector screen. Some clutch their pens, ready to take notes.

” ‘In cinema, three elements can move: objects, the camera itself and the audience’s point of attention,’ Drew McClellan says to the crowd before showing an example on the projector screen. The clip is a memorable scene from Jordan’s Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out, when the protagonist (Daniel Kaluuya) goes out for a late-night smoke and sees the groundskeeper sprinting toward him — in the direction of the camera and the viewer — before abruptly changing direction at the last second.

” ‘Someone running at you full speed with perfect track form, you can’t tell me that’s not terrifying,’ McClellan says laughing with the audience.

“McClellan is an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the cinematic arts department chair at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). He’s presenting on two of the seven core visual components of cinema — tone and movement — as part of Lectures on Tap, an event series that turns neighborhood bars and venues into makeshift classrooms.

“Attendees hear thought-provoking talks from experts on wide-ranging topics such as Taylor Swift’s use of storytelling in her music, how AI technology is being used to detect cardiovascular diseases, the psychology of deception and the quest for alien megastructures — all in a fun, low-stakes environment. And rest assured: No grades are given. It’s a formula that’s been working.

” ‘I hunted for these tickets,’ says Noa Kretchmer, 30, who’s attended multiple Lectures on Tap events since it debuted in Los Angeles in August. ‘They sell out within less than an hour.’

“Wife-and-husband duo Felecia and Ty Freely dreamed up Lectures on Tap last summer after moving to New York City where Ty was studying psychology at Columbia University. Hungry to find a community of people who were just as ‘nerdy’ as they are, they decided to create a laidback space where people could enjoy engaging lectures typically reserved for college lecture halls and conferences. …

“Lectures on Tap, which also hosts events in San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, is the latest iteration of gatherings that pair alcoholic beverages with academic talks. Other similar events include Profs and Pints, which launched in 2017 in Washington, D.C., and Nerd Nite, which came to L.A. in 2011 and takes place at a brewery in Glendale. At a time when the federal government is moving closer to dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, AI is impacting people’s ability to think critically, attention spans are shrinking and literacy rates are down, events like Lectures on Tap are becoming more than just a place to learn about an interesting new topic. …

“During his presentation, McClellan broke down key film concepts in layman’s terms for the diverse audience. … To illustrate his points, he played several movie clips including the 1931 version of Frankenstein and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, both of which made several people in the audience, including myself, jump in fear. …

“Though some patrons like to go to Lectures on Tap events for specific topics they find interesting, others say they would attend regardless of the subject matter.

” ‘I felt really comfortable and I loved the social aspect of it,’ says Andrew Guerrero, 26, in between sips of wine. ‘It felt more like a communal vibe, but at the same time, I miss learning.’

“He adds, ‘I can absorb [the information] more because I’m not pressured to really retain it and because of that, I actually do retain it.’

“The relaxed environment allows the speakers to let their guard down as well.

” ‘I can play with certain elements that I maybe haven’t used in the classroom,’ says McClellan, who made jokes throughout his presentation. ‘It’s definitely looser and getting around people who’ve been drinking, they’ll ask more questions and different types of questions.’ “

More at the Los Angeles Times, thanks to Yahoo, here.

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Nomadic Kids Meet Technology

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children, education, Kashmir, mountains, technology, volunteer on January 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Arsalan Bukhari/EGAB.
Nomadic young people attend a computer class in a tent in the Kashmiri mountains.

Whatever we may think nowadays about technology going too far, it’s such a big part of life that it would be unfair to leave anyone who is interested out of it. And judging from today’s story, Nomadic children in Kashmir are definitely interested.

Arsalan Bukhari at the Christian Science Monitor describes recent efforts to help these young people get up to speed on computers.

“Fifteen-year-old Shabaz Ali keeps one eye on his wristwatch and the other on the dirt path winding through a meadow in his highland town, Tangmarg.

“ ‘Three, two, one. It’s 5 o’clock!’ he calls out. ‘Where’s Shabir?’

“For members of the nomadic Bakarwal communities in Indian-administered Kashmir, timekeeping means survival. Children like Shabaz earn hourly wages for shepherding animals, gathering firewood, or loading trucks with goods for sale.

“Today, Shabaz isn’t tracking time for wages. A rumble echoes through the valley. … Shabir Khatana, Shabaz’s friend who runs a shop in town, pulls up on an old red motorcycle. Shabaz snatches up Mr. Khatana’s cellphone – their shared lifeline – and dashes into the Ali family’s large tent.

“The internet connection is strongest in the back corner, so Shabaz crouches there and opens the Zoom app. Aamir Sir, a volunteer mentor from the city of Srinagar, some 55 kilometers (35 miles) away, is waiting onscreen to teach animation and video editing to Shabaz and other students. …

“For generations, education has been a distant dream for the tribal Bakarwal families who migrate with livestock between summer pastures and winter shelters. … Most Bakarwal children, especially girls, grow up herding animals, working as dishwashers, or begging on streets.

“But since mid-2024, an initiative led by urban young people across India has begun connecting Bakarwal children to digital training in animation, coding, and web design. It’s about more than education; it’s about fulfilling the children’s ambitions, developing their confidence, and in some cases, generating income for their families.

“The transformation began when Zubair Lone, who recently graduated from college in Chandigarh, saw Bakarwal children washing dishes at his sister’s wedding.

“ ‘Little children, some no older than 7, were cleaning up the wedding venue,’ he recalls. ‘When I spoke with them, they told me something that stunned me: This was continuous. Both boys and girls saw working in people’s homes as just life. … That night, I called my friends and said, “If we don’t do this, no one will.” ‘

“He reached out to nearly 18 people, forming a group committed to change through volunteer work. ‘God has given us so much in terms of money and information,’ he told them. ‘Our one or two hours a day can mean a lot for someone.’

“The group, called Sukoon Digital, now has 14 active volunteers. … They include computer science students as well as graphic designers and other professionals who run digital training sessions across nomadic settlements in Baramulla, Budgam, and Kupwara districts.

“The first week of classes, the challenge seemed overwhelming to Mr. Lone. … ‘I have to start from the very beginning,’ Mr. Lone says. …

“The concept is straightforward: Children borrow smartphones from shops, siblings, or Sukoon’s volunteer teachers, and then join Zoom sessions in which mentors guide them through designing websites, creating digital artwork, and even setting up freelancer profiles. Classes are held on weekends and evenings, after the children’s work tasks are complete.

“Seventeen-year-old Bilquees Jan used to spend her days tending sheep and decorating mud walls with floral patterns. ‘I thought I’d never do anything beyond making tea and applying henna,’ she says.

“After more than 35 Sukoon sessions on graphic design, she has begun taking freelance orders, including to create social media ads for a Srinagar-based café. Her instructor, Afifa Qadri, teaches remotely from Mumbai’s rural outskirts, sometimes on patchy networks powered by solar panels.

“ ‘There’s something incredibly powerful about watching a girl who never saw a computer start using [design tools] Canva or Figma,’ says Ms. Qadri. …

“Another success story is 19-year-old Zahid Ahmed, who creates short cartoons on YouTube featuring village jokes, stories about nomadic life, and videos promoting safety. In 12 months, Zahid says, he has earned more than $1,000 from freelance work and ad revenue. (A typical Bakarwal family’s annual income ranges between $600 and $800.) …

“While helping children earn money motivates participation, volunteers focus on the children’s sense of their own possibilities.

“ ‘The idea of a career beyond labor doesn’t exist when you live your entire life on the move,’ says Mr. Sir, the volunteer in Srinagar, who makes a living teaching social media marketing. ‘Our goal is to change that perspective – to convey that you are important and your creativity is valuable.’ “

More at the Monitor, here.

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Music Education Plus Empathy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged after school, community, education, free, low income, music, providence, rhode island, string instruments on November 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alfredo Sosa/CSM.
Community MusicWorks, a program that allows students to use stringed instruments at no cost, is shown presenting its end-of-year gala in Providence, Rhode Island.

When I was visiting Nancy on Thursday, we talked about an amazing new music hall and school in our area and how it provides free noontime concerts to all comers. My husband and I had just attended one where some of the jazz teachers performed new compositions.

Looking at the huge crowd reminded me what music means to people, and how the word “free” in connection with “music” can make a real difference in people’s lives.

Troy Aidan Sambajon reports at the Christian Science Monitor about how it can make a difference for low-income children.

“The melodies drifting from Community MusicWorks’ spacious building are more than just the sounds of young musicians practicing. They are the heartbeat of the neighborhood.

“For 28 years, an after-school program run by the Providence, Rhode Island-based nonprofit has been reimagining what access to classical music education looks like. Community MusicWorks operates in areas of the state where K-12 students might not otherwise be able to afford to play stringed instruments. The program allows students to use instruments at no cost, offers mentorship, and hosts free concerts and workshops for the wider community to attend.

“Eli Arrecis, 10, is starting his fourth season in CMW this fall. On the last day of summer camp in late July, he and his fellow campers are performing original songs for their parents, using violins, violas, cellos – and shakers they crafted out of cardboard.

“Since joining the program, Eli listens to music with a newfound appreciation and even picks up sheet music at home to read for fun. His parents hope to enroll Eli’s siblings in the program. …

“In an era when many schools’ arts budgets are dwindling, CMW offers something increasingly rare: a space where young people find joy, purpose, and camaraderie through music.

“CMW’s beginnings were modest. In 1997, while he was a senior at Brown University, Sebastian Ruth launched the program with a $10,000 grant and a vision for what he termed ‘musicianship working for positive social change.’

“Mr. Ruth grew up in Ithaca, New York, and was first inspired by a high school violin teacher, who encouraged him to think about the social and spiritual impact of music on people. He and a small team rented a tiny storefront in Providence’s West End neighborhood – one of the city’s most diverse but also most economically disadvantaged areas – and began offering free violin lessons. …

“Within a few years, CMW expanded to the building next door to accommodate its growing after-school program. Hundreds of students later, CMW has cemented its place in the neighborhood with a new state-of-the-art facility, which opened in September 2024. …

“The three-story building has a performing arts center, group practice rooms, an instrument repair workshop, and plenty of space for lessons. Financing for the $15 million project came from state and local funds, as well as individual donations.

“AlexisMarie Nelson started her CMW journey in the sixth grade in 2006. It led her to study violin and viola and to eventually graduate from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music. Now a program coordinator at CMW, she says … ‘The connections that we’re making are so important.’

“Inside the building, teens such as Cesar Mendez shuffle in and out of lessons and jam sessions. They engage in soul-searching discussions about music and identity.

“ ‘This place feels like home,’ says Mr. Mendez, an 18-year-old violist who joined the program nearly a decade ago. ‘It’s just full of life.’

“But the real impact goes beyond mastering scales. ‘The arts aren’t just about skill-building or learning to play an instrument,’ Mr. Ruth says. ‘It’s a different way of being with other people. Many communities, particularly urban communities, are just doing a disservice to the children by not having adequate opportunities to learn the arts.’ …

“Notes Cecil Adderley, chair of music education at Berklee College of Music and president of the National Association for Music Education. ‘It’s a way to model how to excel at something artistic.’

“Even if students never go pro, he adds, they’re using their creativity as well as fostering collaboration and a sense of belonging. ‘You’re learning not just how to be a musician – but how to be a better neighbor.’ …

” ‘A lot of the time, we talk just so we don’t feel alone in the questions we have,’ says Mr. Mendez, who will study biomedical engineering at the University of Rhode Island this fall.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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This School Gives Hope to the Very Poor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged africa, education, nigeria, payment, poor, problem solver, school on August 13, 2025| 5 Comments »

Photo: Ogar Monday.
Two students sit outside an experimental Nigerian school’s computer lab, donated by the Irish Embassy.

Today’s article is about an educational experiment in Africa that makes it possible for the “poorest of the poor” to get an education. The experiment is focused on keeping payments low and teaching kids to become “problem solvers.”

Ogar Monday writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Groups of students, deep in discussion, are huddled under a large schoolyard canopy on a sweltering morning. Flanked by two teachers, Kingsley Bangwell strolls among the students. He stops beside one group and asks, What problem are you solving?’

“Two students rise. Faridat Bakare, a girl with paper in hand, responds. ‘Our work is on the lack of proper business strategy among female-owned small businesses in Kuje,’ she says.

“She explains that many women in that Nigerian city unintentionally limit the growth of businesses they start by overlooking the four P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. The students’ solution is to start a mentorship cycle connecting established businesswomen with local budding entrepreneurs. Mr. Bangwell nods his approval and moves on to another group.

“Mr. Bangwell is a co-founder of the Knowledge, Solutions, Skills, and Kreativity (Knosk) school in Kuje, on the outskirts of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. For 100 naira (6 cents) a day, the school provides six years of learning for students who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

“The exercise that Mr. Bangwell is observing is part of a solutions ‘hackathon.’ Over four days, students engage with small-business owners in their communities to identify real-world challenges and develop solutions.

“ ‘The goal is to help them think critically and work collaboratively,’ Mr. Bangwell says. Winning teams receive prizes, but the biggest takeaway, he insists, is that the students realize ‘they, too, can provide answers to questions around them.’

“In 2018, while she was at a hospital in Abuja, Irene Bangwell overheard a cleaner talking about her teenage daughter, who had dropped out of school to work alongside her. The cleaner explained that she couldn’t afford the $19-per-term school fees for the girl. She believed that it was better for her daughter to work and save money than to attend an underfunded public school with little promise of quality education.

“Mrs. Bangwell, who had spent years working with young people, understood the mother’s concerns. Although public schools in Nigeria are mostly free, they are chronically underfunded, which has led to crumbling infrastructure, teacher shortages, and frequent strikes. Private schools provide better alternatives, but with nearly 39% of Nigerians living below the poverty line, many families find such schools out of their reach.

“Mrs. Bangwell shared the cleaner’s story with her husband, who has a background in youth development. They started Knosk in September 2019 after reaching out to community leaders, churches, mosques, and public primary schools, asking them to refer students who couldn’t afford secondary education. …

“Parents contribute $4 per term.

“ ‘We cater to the poorest of the poor,’ Mrs. Bangwell says. ‘If we don’t take the child in, they have no other chance at an education.’

“The school provides a curriculum that integrates computer and vocational skills, daily lunch, menstrual supplies for female students, and a boarding facility for a few students. …

“Victoria Simon, one of Knosk’s pioneer students, was 6 months old when she lost her father. By age 9, she had also lost her mother, leaving her in the care of her older sister. After Victoria completed primary school in 2018, her family had no means to send her for further education.

“ ‘We were ready to give up when my sister heard about Knosk,’ Victoria recalls.

“The school sounded too good to be true. But two weeks later, Victoria took Knosk’s entrance exam and wrote a 300-word essay about her aspirations. ‘I wrote about creating a free six-month training program for women and giving them tools to start their businesses,’ she says. …

“For some families, even the small fees that Knosk charges are a struggle. And according to Mrs. Bangwell, those fees are not enough to sustain the school. ‘Between paying teachers, uniforms, feeding the kids, and providing learning materials, we need more support,’ she says. Yet no child is ever turned away for unpaid fees.

“The school, which started with 30 students and now has 170, relies heavily on what it calls ‘education angels.’ These are individuals and organizations that sponsor students, for $156 per year.

“Knosk’s impact hasn’t gone unnoticed. ‘The quality of teaching and learning there is comparable to any private school in this area,’ says Daudu Shedrach, an education inspector with the Federal Capital Development Authority. …

“At Knosk, every student is called ‘solver,’ a title that reflects expectations. ‘A solver sees problems and takes action,’ Mrs. Bangwell explains. ‘We build their capacity to see beyond their challenges and to think like contributors to society, not victims.’

“For solvers like Mustapha Ibrahim, who joined Knosk in 2019 after losing his father two years earlier, the title has become a compass for how he approaches life. ‘There is no problem that I cannot solve,’ he says. ‘I just have to think hard about it.’

“Mustapha recalls how he once struggled with self-doubt and anger, believing that his life had ended when his father died. … Today, Mustapha dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer. ‘I’m always fascinated by how airplanes stay in the sky despite their weight,’ he says.

“He also hopes to give back to the school that changed his life.

“ ‘I want to make it,’ he says, ‘and then come back to help other kids like me. Because I honestly don’t know who I would have become without this place.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscriptions are reasonable.

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An App for Disrupted Education

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged app, Boko Haram, digital, displaced, disrupted, education, Flowdiary, nigeria, skills, terrorist on February 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Nathaniel Bivan.
Muhammad Auwal Ahmad wears a cap and shirt with the Flowdiary logo during a meetup in KanoNigeria with some of his educational app’s tutors and students.

Whenever I used to read about Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, all I could think was how horrifying and hopeless the situation seemed. But it’s amazing how the human spirit can work around almost any hopeless situation.

Today’s story is about the young man who invented an app to help displaced Nigerian youth learn skills — despite terrorists and a disrupted education.

Nathaniel Bivan reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “Seventeen-year-old Ahmad Aminu finished secondary school and would like to go to college near his village in Zamfara state. But this region of northwestern Nigeria bears the brunt of attacks by bandits who kidnap students for ransom. …

“The 17-year-old Mr. Aminu [has] been able to take – for free, or at very little cost – courses in various digital skills in Hausa. He is becoming a well-known graphic designer within the community surrounding Dalba.

“ ‘The payment depends,’ says Mr. Aminu, the excitement clear in his voice. Designing an invitation card, for example, earns him about 2,000 Nigerian nairas, about $1.25; doing video editing, up to 3,000 nairas.

“ ‘In a month, I make as much as 30,000 naira,’ he says. ‘I really thank God.’ …

“Mr. Aminu is the sort of student whom Muhammad Auwal Ahmad had in mind when he created Flowdiary two years ago as a 23-year-old attending Federal University Gashua in northeastern Yobe state. He says Flowdiary now has more than 8,000 students enrolled from far-flung, impoverished areas across northern Nigeria; on average, almost one-fifth of those are active weekly users. The platform’s name refers to opportunities flowing to young people who might not normally have them.

“ ‘We have students from regions affected by terrorism and banditry … that we train and mentor,’ Mr. Ahmad says, noting that students who speak only Hausa struggle to find online courses in digital skills in their language.

“Mr. Ahmad’s dream began in Bayamari, a village in Yobe state that has only two small schools, a health center, and a police outpost. As a curious tween growing up there, Mr. Ahmad started researching digital technology when his father brought home a mobile phone and, later, a computer. Gradually, Mr. Ahmad started troubleshooting and soon had ambitious digital goals. …

“After unsuccessful attempts at building a couple of online businesses as an undergraduate computer science student, Mr. Ahmad set up Flowdiary in March 2022. It started as a team of tutors, who included some of his friends, teaching digital skills on Telegram to other young people across northern Nigeria at low cost.

“By that November, students could access the Flowdiary website. In February 2023, the app’s release became official. Paying as little as 1,200 nairas per course, students could register to learn web development, graphic design, and other digital skills. Tutors net half of the proceeds from course fees, and the rest goes toward operational costs such as maintaining the app and helping link Flowdiary students with career opportunities, Mr. Ahmad explains.

“Registered as a business, not as a nonprofit, Flowdiary has struggled to find other funding. … But Mr. Ahmad says he is set to obtain some much-needed funding after winning the 2024 Yobe State Research and Innovation Challenge, a prestigious regional competition organized by the Biomedical Science Research and Training Center of Yobe State University, in partnership with Yobe’s state government. …

“In 2011, Al’amin Dalha Suleiman and his seven family members abandoned their home in Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Borno state, because of the Boko Haram insurgency there. They fled to Kano, more than 500 kilometers (about 310 miles) away, mourning the deaths of neighbors and friends as well as the loss of the family’s hat shop. But discrimination in Kano against outsiders forced them to return three years later to Maiduguri, where Mr. Suleiman struggled to revive the family business. …

“Through a friend on Facebook, Mr. Suleiman heard last year about Flowdiary. He enrolled in several courses, including video editing, web development, and graphic design. There was a major challenge, though – the need for wireless data and a laptop. For months, Mr. Suleiman struggled to finish the courses over his phone, but the payoff – the skills he has acquired – has been worth it. …

“Mr. Ahmad currently teaches computer science in northwestern Kebbi state as part of his National Youth Service Corps requirement. His vision after the one-year program is to expand the Flowdiary platform to reach more young people and – crucially – to help them grow their skills into careers.

“The end of online training for each student does not necessarily mean goodbye at Flowdiary. The Flowdiary team recently set up a mentoring and internship program; any student who takes a course can apply to work with companies that Flowdiary has forged a relationship with. As of late September, 20 students had secured internships – including two with Abdul Gusau, the owner of Abdoul Shoe Ventures in Zamfara.

“ ‘It is impressive to see how effective Flowdiary is through the work the interns are putting in my store,’ Mr. Gusau says. “ ‘The graphic designer has not yet entered the intermediate class, and yet his work is excellent. The same goes for the social media manager, who runs effective ads.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Subscriptions solicited.

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Solar for Gujarat Salt Farmers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged agariya, diesel, education, india, quality of life, salt mining, solar on November 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ahmad Masood/Reuters.
Working on a salt pan in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The marshes produce 30% of India’s inland salt.

I’m always up for a little good news from distance places, as I hope you are, too. Today we learn about the benefits of solar energy for one hands-on industry in India.

Suchak Patel writes at the Guardian, “In the expansive salt marshes of the Little Rann of Kutch the bleakness of the sunburnt, treeless landscape is matched only by the drudgery of the salt farmers who toil there for eight months of the year.

“In October, as the monsoon recedes and the flooded salt pans dry out, farmers and their families hop on to trucks and tractors to migrate to the Little Rann of Kutch in Kutch district, Gujarat, where they pitch tarpaulin shelters and begin mining the underground deposits.

“An estimated 10,000 families of farmers, known as agariyas in Gujarati, migrate to the marshes from across the state. They start each season by digging wells to pump out brine using diesel pumps; the brine is then poured into shallow, squarish plots carved on the salt pans and left to evaporate under the sun to produce salt crystals. These marshes produce 30% of India’s inland salt, typically table salt.

“Life in the salt marshes is uniquely challenging. Drinking water comes not from pipes but tankers, children attend schools inside buses not buildings, and the only avenue to healthcare is weekly mobile vans from the health department. Basic amenities such as an electricity grid and toilets are nonexistent.

“ ‘My entire family, including my brother’s two daughters, lives in the desert these eight months, and my nieces attend primary school in a mobile school bus,’ says Bharatbhai Shyamjibhai Mandviya, 45.

“Contracts made with salt traders before each season, where the traders pay an advance to the farmers to buy pumps, diesel, and to meet household expenses mean most farmers start the season in debt, with the harvest income barely enough to cover their costs, let alone allow them to save.

“Diesel constitutes nearly 65% of the input costs in salt farming, and about 1,800 litres [~476 gallons] of the fuel is needed to produce [about] 750 tons of salt, according to Purshottam Sonagra, area manager of nonprofit Vikas Centre for Development that works with salt producers in the region. …

“But the introduction of solar panels to the pans has triggered a significant shift in the lives and lifestyles of the impoverished salt workers. In 2017, the Gujarat government gave solar pumps to salt farmers at nearly 80% subsidy, as part of a larger push to cut emissions and bring down the costs involved in salt production.

“ ‘Solar-powered pumps have reduced the cost of salt farming to one-third of what it was,’ says Sonagra.

“Mandviya has installed three pumps on the salt pan he works on, the savings from which have led to many firsts in his life.

“ ‘We have now built a two-bedroom house with a separate hall and a kitchen in Kharaghoda [his home village],’ says Mandviya. The new home with tiled walls and built-in cupboards which he will share with his brother and family, is a big upgrade from the kuccha [mud and straw] house they lived in before.

“The brothers also bought a motorcycle and a refrigerator from the money they managed to save.

“With more than 5,500 solar-powered pumps now dotting the region, energy costs have fallen [and] the agariyas such as Mandviya are no longer as dependent on the capital from traders, which gives them greater negotiating power over salt prices. …

“Solar pumps and the financial stability they grant have improved access to health, education and mobility, while also offering freedom to salt farmers from an endless work cycle, campaigners say.

“ ‘Steady supply from the solar panels is powering not only pumps but also televisions. Children of salt makers are switching to state-run ‘edutainment’ programs to make up for the loss of education,’ says Bhavna Harchandani, a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, who has tracked the agariya community as part of her studies. …

“Sonagra says it was difficult to find an office assistant with basic secondary-school education among agariyas until a few years ago.

“ ‘Today, many agariya children attend private schools, complete ITI (vocational) courses, and some manage to go to college. Solar pumps have opened up educational opportunities for the next generation of the community,’ he says.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Late to Integrate, Now a Model

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cleveland Mississippi, diversity, education, getting along, North, segregation, South on October 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo:Todd Davis.
Friends of Cleveland School District, a nonprofit composed of local parents and community members are working to save the town’s school district.

Northern states are supposedly against segregation, but as soon as Boston desegregated its public schools, it resegregated. Interestingly, a city in the deep South, is embracing diversity.

Leonardo Bevilacqua reports from Cleveland, Mississippi, for the Guardian, “Fernando Green sits on a pile of plywood in a new barn on a humid Mississippi Delta afternoon. The barn will be a center for students like his daughter to get a feel for local jobs in agriculture. There’s school swag for the incoming middle schoolers. A petting zoo with a baby alligator is off in one corner while boys throw a pigskin around in the back.

“A Mississippi Delta native … looks out with a glint in his eyes on the grounds of a middle school that used to house his revered high school: East Side. … A recent effort by a parent group looking to heal divides and counteract disinvestment has locals like Mr. Green excited. … Using donated lumber and dollars, the parents are fighting not only for their children’s future but for their town’s as well. …

“Says Todd Davis, a professor at the town’s own Delta State University in an interview with the Monitor. ‘I’m not fighting for some grand mission … I just want my kids to go to a nice school. … Every kid should have that option.’ …

“Dr. Davis joined with Kierre Rimmer, a Cleveland native and coordinator at the Family Treatment court, to fight disinvestment in Cleveland public schools. The duo, along with community partners, LaKenya Evans, Clare Adams Moore, and Rori Eddie Herbison, helped found the group, Friends of Cleveland School District (FOCSD).

“In a 2016 high-profile court-ordered integration, Cleveland School District’s two middle schools and high schools were ordered to merge. Some 63 years after Brown v. the Board of Education, Cleveland became the last district in the United States to desegregate in 2017. The historically white high school became the consolidated high school, and the historically Black high school became the site of the consolidated middle school. The district’s football team was rechristened the Wolves in purple and white.

“The following autumn, over 100 white parents pulled their children out of public school – as locals of all races had predicted. That, locals interviewed say, is why residents both Black and white sought to block integration, to the consternation of mainstream media outlets and policy watchdogs. Many in town feared that court-ordered desegregation would inspire a massive white flight in the last town in the Delta to have a sizable white population still enrolled in the public schools.

“And, those interviewed say, the reality on the ground was different than in the headlines. By the time of consolidation in 2017, enrollment at Cleveland High and Margaret Green Junior High, the historically white schools, were roughly 50-50 when it came to race. In 2013, parents were granted the freedom to choose which high school to send their children to.

“With students arriving for their first day Aug. 5, administrators are still waiting on a final head count for the 2024-2025 academic year. Last year, 243 more students joined Cleveland public schools, the first time the district wasn’t losing students since consolidation. …

“Friends of Cleveland School District has secured $30,000 worth of paint, timber, and appliances from the likes of Fleming Lumber Company and other regional and local businesses. They’ve raised roughly $250,000 for the school from grants and fundraising efforts.

“This is a little less than the roughly $300,000 that leaves the district each year with the 300 or so students that depart for private school or other towns, after the neighborhood-zoned and magnet elementary schools cut off at sixth grade.

It helps that Cleveland has a middle class. Quality Steel, Baxter Healthcare, a luxury hotel, a local university, and a downtown with boutiques and coffee shops offer families comforts unknown in the rest of the Delta. …

“Dr. Davis is building planters for a school garden on a warm April afternoon, putting the raised funds to use. Students will get a chance to grow okra, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes – a reflection of the local agricultural economy.

“It’s still the big industry in this area,” remarks Dr. Davis. … He lends his green thumb during breaks in between teaching classes at the local university.

“Students have joined the garden club by the dozen, learning the power of civic mindedness with hands deep in world famous Delta dirt. The garden ‘allowed us to make new friends that we otherwise probably would not have made,’ says seventh grader Michael Vardaman. …

“Parent volunteer Stephen Chudy is tall and burly with a firm handshake and a warm smile beaming beneath a trucker hat. He’s here for one reason.

“ ‘I gave my daughter the choice, here or the independent school. She chose here. Fine by me. She’ll get to be around all different kinds of kids like there is out there in the world. It’s realistic,’ says Mr. Chudy, who is digging an irrigation path with ditches for the school’s many green stretches on a molasses thick morning.

“ ‘There’s an understanding that the school is the only thing we all share as a town,’ he adds. ‘It’s a small place. We all go to the same McDonald’s and Walmart too.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Reasonable subscriptions. I really like the Monitor because it seeks out positive stories and international stories.

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Harlem’s Great Librarians

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black, education, harlem, librarian, library, poor, reading on August 2, 2024| 6 Comments »

Photo: New York Public Library.
In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

I have read numerous accounts of what a public library has meant to poor children with insatiable curiosity. The most recent was the autobiography Up Home by future intellectual and university president Ruth J. Simmons. She grew up in a desperately poor Black sharecropper’s family in Texas. Books and encouragement from Black teachers meant everything.

Meanwhile in Harlem, Black librarians meant everything to generations of Northern children.

Jennifer Schuessler reports at the New York Times, “It was a banner day in the history of American libraries — and in Black history. On May 25, 1926, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired the celebrated Afro-Latino bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection of more than 4,000 books, manuscripts and other artifacts.

“A year earlier, the library had established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials, at its 135th Street branch in Harlem. Now, the branch would be home to a trove of rare items, from some of the earliest books by and about Black people to then-new works of the brewing Harlem Renaissance.

“Schomburg was the most famous of the Black bibliophiles who, starting in the late 19th century, had amassed impressive ‘parlor libraries’ in their homes. Such libraries became important gathering places for Black writers and thinkers at a time when newly created public libraries — which exploded in number in the decades after 1870 — were uninterested in Black materials, and often unwelcoming to Black patrons.

“Schomburg summed up his credo in a famous 1925 essay, writing, ‘The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.’ In a 1913 letter, he had put it less decorously: The items in his library were ‘powder with which to fight our enemies. …

“Today, figures like Schomburg and the historian and activist W.E.B. Du Bois (another collector and compiler of Black books) are hailed as the founders of the 20th-century Black intellectual tradition. But increasingly, scholars are also uncovering the important role of the women who often ran the libraries, where they built collections and — just as important — communities of readers.

“ ‘Mr. Schomburg’s collection is really the seed,’ said Joy Bivins, the current director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as the 135th Street library, currently home to more than 11 million items, is now known. ‘But in many ways, it is these women who were the institution builders.’

“Many were among the first Black women to attend library school, where they learned the tools and the systems of the rapidly professionalizing field.

On the job, they learned these tools weren’t always suited to Black books and ideas, so they invented their own.

“At times, they battled overt and covert censorship. … But whether they worked in world-famous research collections or modest public branch libraries, these pioneers saw their role as not just about tending old books but also about making room for new people and new ideas.

“ ‘These librarians were very tuned in and understood that a cultural movement also needs a space,’ said Laura E. Helton, a historian at the University of Delaware and author of the recent book Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History. …

“In the 1920 census, only 69 of the 15,297 Americans who listed their profession as librarian were Black. Many cities in the segregated South had no library services at all for Black citizens. And even in the North, those branches that did serve them often had few books geared to their interests, and sometimes no card catalogs or reference collections at all.

“That started to change, if slowly. In 1924, in Chicago, Vivian Harsh became the first Black librarian to lead a public library branch there. [But] no place captures the transformations of the era more than Harlem, where, starting in 1920, a white librarian named Ernestine Rose hired four young Black librarians at the 135th Street library. …

“The poet Arna Bontemps (who himself later became a librarian) recalled visiting the 135th Street library after his arrival in Harlem in 1924. ‘There were a couple of very nice-looking girls sitting at the desk, colored girls,’ he said. ‘I had never seen that before.’ …

“Other ‘girls’ at the branch fostered the neighborhood’s artistic ferment in different ways. Among them was Regina Andrews, a young librarian from Chicago (where she was mentored by Harsh) who came to New York City on vacation in 1922 and decided to stay. She … soon settled into an apartment at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue with two friends who worked at Opportunity, a new magazine that aimed to capture the creative ferment bubbling up in Harlem. Nicknamed Dream Haven, the apartment quickly became a salon and crash pad for some of the most celebrated figures of the period.

“It was there that Alain Locke held some planning meetings for the special issue of the Survey Graphic magazine that later grew into his landmark 1925 anthology The New Negro. And it was there that many Black artists and writers who attended the 1924 Civic Club dinner now recognized as an opening bell of the Harlem Renaissance gathered.”

Better Schools for Rural China

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cave classroom, education, rural China, school, transform on December 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ann Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor.
This photo from 1992 shows Bai Guiling teaching multi-grade primary students in a cave classroom carved from a hillside in the village of Yangjiagou. It had no electricity and few books.

Today’s story is about two women who transformed education in rural China. It’s written by Ann Scott Tyson of the Christian Science Monitor, who wanted to follow up on an article she wrote 30 years ago.

“After a 12-hour train ride, I’ve reached a remote village on China’s Loess Plateau, where I’m searching for a teacher I wrote about 30 years ago. I can still picture Bai Guiling juggling lessons for four grades in a dim cave classroom carved from the yellow earth. Her dedication to the needy village children was unforgettable. Now, I want to revisit her story as a window into education in rural China today.

“But no one in the dusty hamlet in northern Shaanxi province has heard of Teacher Bai or even remembers the school. … I flip through my notebook looking for the phone number of the only person who might be able to help – a Chinese American woman who years ago took a special interest in Teacher Bai.

“Sitting in my taxi while the police watch from down the road, I tap her U.S. number into my phone and wait for what seems like forever.

“ ‘Hello?’ a frail but chipper voice answers. It’s Lin-yi Wu.

“A few days earlier, in mid-May, I’d tracked down Ms. Wu, a retired librarian, at a senior living home in Walnut Creek, California. The nonagenarian was recovering from a fall – taken while jazz dancing – but was in good spirits. …

“Born the daughter of a well-to-do Shanghai antiques merchant in 1933, Ms. Wu received an elite education that bore no resemblance to Teacher Bai’s bare-bones cave classes. She rode rickshaws to a stately Shanghai middle school run by American missionaries. After graduating from the top-flight Peking University, she was retained to teach French. A formative moment came when Communist Party authorities exiled her and her husband-to-be, English professor Hung-sen Wu, to labor in a hardscrabble mountain village outside Beijing in 1958, during Mao Zedong’s commune movement.

“ ‘My eyes were opened to see how the majority of Chinese lived,’ Ms. Wu told me. For that, she was grateful. But she also witnessed how Mao’s failed communes slashed farm output, leaving bok choy wilting in the fields and piglets dying in the street. A massive famine ensued, forcing villagers to eat leaves and corncobs. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. From 1959 to 1961, tens of millions of Chinese starved.

“Once back at Peking University, Ms. Wu was shocked when authorities spread propaganda about a bumper harvest, rejoicing with music and gongs. ‘People are dying, and they celebrate the big harvest? That was the last straw,’ she said. ‘I could never live under a government that tells such a lie to the detriment of its people.’ In 1961, the couple fled via Hong Kong to the United States. …

“Forging a life in America, the Wus never lost the desire to help their destitute countrymen. Then, in April 1992, they opened the Christian Science Monitor and read my article about Teacher Bai’s struggles. At once, they each decided – without a word between them – to use their savings to build the village a proper school. … She penned a letter to me in Beijing, asking to contact Teacher Bai.

“But where is Teacher Bai now? I ask over the phone. ‘I don’t know where she lives, but I remember her village was in Ansai County,’ Ms. Wu tells me. ‘And I have her daughter’s phone number.’

“I open my road atlas and scour the map of Ansai, two counties away from where I am. Suddenly it makes sense – there are two villages with the same name, Yangjiagou, and I’m in the wrong one.

“Her smile and warmth are infectious. After 30 years, I instantly recognize Teacher Bai when I see her waiting for me at the train station in the nearby city of Yan’an, a meeting arranged by her daughter. It feels like we never lost a beat. Driving a borrowed car, she whisks me into the rugged countryside. …

“ ‘Look at this old classroom!’ she says, peering through the worn wooden lattice of the cave’s front window at the peeling mud-and-straw walls. ‘I taught here for five years. We were so poor,’ she says. …

“Born in 1964 to a farming couple in a cave high on a barren hillside a few miles away, Ms. Bai was the eldest of five children – four girls and a boy. Food was scarce in the wake of China’s famine. They ate boiled thistles and cornhusk buns. ‘That counted as good food,’ she says. …

“ ‘I want to popularize the importance of primary education,’ she told me back in 1992. … Her dream: to rally the villagers to build a new school. …

” ‘The article you wrote changed my fate, and the fate of three generations of my family.’

“Not long after my 1992 trip, a local official came to find Teacher Bai. Breathlessly, he told her a group of overseas Chinese and Americans wanted to build a new primary school at Yangjiagou – and they named her to be in charge. …

“Back in the U.S., Ms. Wu excitedly tallied the funds. After a benefit dinner, greeting card drive, and garage sale – combined with her $4,000 in savings – she’d amassed more than $8,000 as of 1994. It was enough to build Yangjiagou a new school, the first by her new organization, Friends of Rural China Education (FORCE). …

“Through a Catholic church with contacts in Hong Kong, she found a nun who would soon travel to mainland China to teach. They arranged for the nun to hand-deliver $8,000 in cash to Teacher Bai at the train station in Guangzhou, across the border from Hong Kong. ‘I will never forget what Teacher Bai told me,’ recalls Ms. Wu. ‘She said, “I will guard this money with my life.” ‘ “

It’s actually a very long article, but how can I not love it? Read the whole beautiful thing at the Monitor, here. No firewall.

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A Better Climate Curriculum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged action, climate change, climate solutions, education, global warming, hope, positive on October 29, 2023| 3 Comments »

Photo: Fernando Cortes via Inside Higher Ed.

Unless people are committed to the “ain’t it awful?” worldview, they probably respond in more positive ways to pitches about hopeful progress than pitches describing how dire everything is.

In an opinion piece at Inside Higher Ed, Stephen Porder agrees, noting that climate-change education is more likely to be effective when students learn that there is hope.

Porder writes, “The first year I taught Introduction to Environmental Science was 2007, the year after the release of An Inconvenient Truth. The class was full of eager students, most of whom would have described themselves as environmentalists. … I was there to teach them the science — basically how to use hypothesis testing, data and analysis to convince them the world is going to hell. They didn’t need much convincing.

“The endless description of problems, with little emphasis on solutions, is a hallmark of almost all environmental science and studies textbooks. After 20-plus years teaching in this field, I’ve come to think that our relentless focusing on the negative is, at best, missing an opportunity. … My more recent experiences teaching about solutions, rather than problems, suggests that a healthy dose of positivity even in the face of profound environmental challenges will reach a broader audience, gain more traction and diversify the people working on the admittedly wicked environmental challenges of the 21st century.

“Back in 2007, I walked into the classroom, fresh out of my Ph.D. and postdoc, eager to share the wonders of environmental science. I marveled at the data from the group run by Charles Keeling, who measured rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the observatory on Mauna Loa in Hawai‘i. … I dove into the details of carbon isotopes to demonstrate just how we knew that the rise in carbon dioxide was a result of fossil fuel combustion, as opposed to natural sources. The course was definitely a science course —but looking back I realize each bit of data and analysis was perfused with pessimism. …

“Still, my course evaluations were good. … These good evaluations came from students who were mostly self-selected environmentalists — passionate about ‘saving the planet.’ They were bright, motivated and talented. … Other equally bright, motivated and talented students didn’t take the course. I wondered why.

“Having talked to many such students since, I’ve learned many felt a bit excluded. The environment was a worry for them, as it is for most of us, but it wasn’t their primary worry. They also felt like environmental studies or sciences was not a place where they could explore solutions. They felt that there was a relentless focus on what was wrong, rather than how to put it right. Finally, they felt like the problems we were describing were going to be fixed by people beyond the environmental field.

“I’ve come to agree with them. I, at least, was not doing enough to train problem-solvers. I’d been training people to cleverly document problems. I don’t think I’m the only one in the field who’s fallen into that trap. …

“I handed off Introduction to Environmental Science to a younger professor a few years ago, and from here on out I’m focusing on solutions, not problems. Climate solutions. Agricultural solutions. Deforestation solutions. They exist. They are not perfect and involve hard trade-offs. But their existence should be front and center in our teaching.

“Just putting ‘Climate Solutions’ in a course name dramatically changed my student enrollment. Surprisingly, very few environmental studies and sciences students signed up. Instead, students majoring in economics, political science, engineering, applied math and a variety of humanities fields appeared in my classroom. … Like all my students, they were united by their climate anxiety. But they came for, and responded to, the idea of solutions.

“This eclectic group brought a wealth of different interests, skills and weaknesses to the class and was eager to learn from each other about different approaches to overcoming the 21st century’s biggest environmental (I would argue societal) challenge. They were thrilled at the opportunity to contribute to a better future, even if the environment was not their top priority (for some it became a top priority when they learned there were things they could actually do to make a difference). Many had felt unwelcome in environmental studies/sciences, which often demands a political and philosophical homogeneity of its participants.

“As an example of this, a senior applied math major told me he had been searching for a field where his math could have impact. He had never taken an environmental class before (despite plenty of environmental angst) in part because he didn’t feel welcome or like he fit in with environmentalists. He now works doing data analytics for a solar power company. …

“Solutions are picking up speed. Technological advances in transportation (electric vehicles), space heating (heat pumps) and electricity production (renewables) have made extraordinary leaps since I started teaching. Given that transportation, space heating and electricity generation make up more than 70 percent of all fossil fuel emissions, this is huge news! We should be teaching about it at every level and helping our students gain the skills to push these revolutions forward as engineers, community organizers, investors and so on.

“Already these advances have cooled our future. A decade ago, we were headed for four to five degrees Celsius warming by century’s end. Now three degrees Celsius is more likely. Anyone who studies climate knows that’s still way too much warming to be safe, but it’s also a huge step in the right direction. You may not hear that in most environmental science classes, or in the news, but you should. Even better news is that most of what precludes keeping that number to two degrees Celsius is political, not technological. That wasn’t true when I started teaching, so we need to update our curricula to reflect this remarkable progress.

“I don’t mean to be overly optimistic. The challenges to a stable climate future are enormous. … But by relentlessly beating a drum of negativity in the absence of hope, we’re driving away brilliant young minds that could help make the world a better place.”

More at Inside Higher Ed, here. No paywall.

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Generosity In the Curriculum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canada, education, kindness, satisfaction, school, teaching generosity on July 21, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Jenna Hauck/ Chilliwack Progress.
Children in Canada buying coffee for two strangers at Vedder Park during Watson Elementary’s Kindness Project on March 15. It’s all part of the curriculum.

How do you raise children who are kind? Partly by example. And maybe partly by putting generosity in the school curriculum. It can’t hurt to set aside a time for kids to know the satisfaction of committing random acts of kindness.

Sydney Page at the Washington Post writes about an experiment in Canada.

“While writing report cards several years ago, Jennifer Thiessen was troubled by something. Her third-grade students were being evaluated on subjects such as math and science, but not on life skills — such as social responsibility and kindness.

“ ‘That’s the stuff that I feel is really important for them to learn and carry forward in their lives,’ Thiessen said. … ‘There are so many important life lessons I wanted to teach them outside of the curriculum,’ said Thiessen, a teacher at Canada’s Watson Elementary School in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

“She mentioned her concerns to Kyla Stradling, then a fellow teacher at the school, and they hatched a plan. They assigned their students a project that had nothing to do with standard school subjects. Instead, it was centered on spreading goodwill. They called it the ‘Kindness Project.’

“ ‘If we could be that spark of kindness, we could inspire others to do acts of kindness,’ Thiessen told her third-graders in 2018.

“Students from two separate third-grade classes made cupcakes at home and sold them for $1 during a series of bake sales at the school. They raised about $400 and used the proceeds to purchase small gifts — things like bouquets of flowers, dog treats, chocolate bars and coffees — and handed them out to strangers near the school.

‘The students felt joy inside of them; that they did something that day that mattered,’ Thiessen said.

“Many of the gift recipients seemed ‘caught off guard’ at first, she said, though they were all in when the students explained what the project was about. Some were moved to tears. … She decided to make it a yearly activity for third-graders at the school.

“ ‘This project isn’t about who can read the best and who is best at math,’ she said. ‘This is an everybody project. It doesn’t have any limitations when it comes to ability.’

“For the past five years, third-grade students at Watson Elementary have embraced the Kindness Project. They host several bake sales to raise money, and each class adds their own spin to the assignment. During the pandemic, for instance, students collected funds to put together care packages for front-line workers.

“ ‘Every year, we sit down with them and ask them how they want to spend the money,’ Thiessen said. …

“Occasionally, students can be ‘a little overzealous,’ she said. As she brainstormed with her class this year, one child enthusiastically said: ‘Let’s buy someone a house!’ …

“Given the success of the project, the school decided to broaden it this year to involve five classes — including three third-grade classes, and some students in second and fourth grades. They started selling cupcakes each week at the school in February, and over five weeks, they raised more than $1,000 — the highest amount yet. …

“This year, the 100 students split up into several groups to focus on different initiatives. While one group wrote cards and bought small gifts to hand out to strangers, another put together care packages with essential supplies — including toothbrushes, snacks, gloves, socks and sanitizer — for homeless children and teens. Other students made a ‘teacher appreciation bin’ filled with treats and goodies and dropped it off at a nearby school.

“On March 15, the students and chaperones divided and carried out their various kindness missions. Some stayed at coffee shops surrounding the school, offering to buy beverages for strangers, while others waited around a local park, passing out dog treats and fresh flowers. Several students did a forest cleanup. …

“Though the goal of the project is to start a chain of kindness within the community (one man offered up $20 toward next year’s fundraising effort, Thiessen said), it’s also intended to show the students what they are capable of.

“ ‘I think what I want most for them is to know that it doesn’t matter where you come from or how old you are, you can do something that is good,’ Thiessen said.”

The idea of buying someone a house is not necessarily “overzealous,” I’d say. It shows the kid is already thinking about about adult-sized needs. Isn’t that the point?

More at the Post, here. For a version with no firewall, click on the Chilliwack Progress, here.

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Missouri Helps Kids Get Outside

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conservation, education, environment, missouri, nature at school, outdoor on July 12, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Alfredo Sosa/CSM Staff.
Students from Thorpe Gordon Elementary in Jefferson City, Missouri, at the Runge Conservation Nature Center in April.

It’s not a new idea, but it’s gaining traction: Getting kids outside into nature benefits their learning.

Jackie Valley writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Down a hiking path and through the woods, giggles and chatter echo from a clearing where elementary students have just finished constructing makeshift shelters.

The challenge blended environment with engineering, hence this visit to the Runge Nature Center from third, fourth, and fifth graders. They’re part of a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) club at nearby Thorpe Gordon Elementary in Jefferson City, Missouri. …

“A boy announces he saw a turkey, while another student proclaims ‘teamwork’ her favorite part. The scene portrays what conservation leaders and educators in Missouri are hoping to instill in the state’s youngest residents: an appreciation for the outdoors, a new experience, and some learning along the way.

“ ‘I think it’s so important,” says Melanie Thompson, a librarian from the elementary school who’s leading the STEM group on this day. ‘Kids don’t spend enough time playing outside.’

“In Missouri, efforts to connect children with nature date back to 1939. That’s when the Nature Knights program launched, giving children recognition for conservation practices. Three years earlier, the state’s residents approved an amendment that created an apolitical conservation agency.

“Today, terms such as nature education, outdoor learning, and environmental education refer to instruction that, in many ways, takes students out of traditional classroom settings. Subtle nuances exist, though, depending on the location and programming. The Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental education as a type of learning that allows people to ‘explore environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take action to improve the environment’ – while also not advocating a particular viewpoint.

“The Missouri Department of Conservation, meanwhile, sees nature education as a way to ‘inspire and educate individuals about nature so they appreciate and ultimately protect our resources and wild places,’ says Brian Flowers, a regional supervisor for the agency’s education branch. …

“ ‘You introduce them to it,’ says Mr. Flowers, referring to conservation, natural resources, and wildlife. ‘You show them why it’s important, and, eventually, that leads to that they care about it. They protect it.’

“A study called The Nature of Americans, conducted in 2015 and 2016, found that more than 80% of children surveyed said time in nature made them feel creative, happy, healthy, and smarter. …

“ ‘Once they’re there, there’s so much that happens – curiosity and creativity and just enjoyment of being outside,’ [Megan Willig, a program coordinator for the National Environmental Education Foundation] says. It can also introduce students to career pathways in the natural resource, conservation, and STEM fields.

“In a grassy field not far from an elderberry patch, a sustainably designed building with large windows and a gently sloping roofline is under construction. It’s the future Boone County Nature School, which occupies land in the Three Creeks Conservation Area and will welcome a rotating cast of 12,000 to 13,000 students each year, says Mr. Flowers.

“The project represents a partnership among the Missouri Department of Conservation, Columbia Public Schools, community organizations, and other school districts in Boone County.

“Columbia Public Schools has hired a teacher to lead instructional efforts at the Boone County Nature School, which fits into the district’s overall mission to pour more resources into place-based learning, says Michelle Baumstark, the chief communications officer. About half of the district’s students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“ ‘These may not be experiences that they would have any other way and when you can create an access to an enriching opportunity, that can change the trajectory of a kid,’ she says.

“The land surrounding the nature school will feature a food forest, pollinator plots, a prairie restoration area, trails, a pavilion, and a council house with three tiers of stadium seating. The karst topography of the conservation area – caves, springs, and hills – is typically only found in southern Missouri near the Ozarks, making it an ideal exploration area for local children, Mr. Flowers says. …

“The Missouri Department of Conservation also operates programs that teach students archery and how to fish, among other things. And, in St. Louis, pavement will be removed and replaced with a green schoolyard at Froebel Literacy Academy. Picture a park-like setting with trees and wildflowers, where students can play and learn through STEM activities.

“The schoolyard project represents a step toward outdoor equity for children who grow up in urban areas that have more concrete and asphalt than lush, green recreation space, says Aaron Jeffries, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Conservation. …

“There’s no national standard for outdoor learning or environmental education, says Ms. Willig of NEEF, which was congressionally chartered in 1990 to complement the work of the EPA. So efforts differ by state and local jurisdiction, though she has seen more interest in making it a formal part of the curriculum.

“If barriers such as time or transportation exist, Ms. Willig recommends that school systems seek community partnerships. For instance, a local nonprofit that supports watershed health, she says, may be keen on helping with programming.

“ ‘The school doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch,’ she says.”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall, nice pictures.

You can read another of my posts on kids benefiting from nature at school, here.

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