Introducing Some Sections

Section 1: School
P’Aom, P’Noos (pronounced like P’Newt, but not spelled like that), and I have really begun working as a team, planning every week, evaluating and modifying our plans every day, discussing education, etc. This transformation has been really exciting and helpful for my own mindset. I actually feel able to organize, motivate, and strategically create. For example:

2 weeks ago we had a big campout at the school with the third and fourth graders, and we invited the students’ parents and guardians to part of it. I had an epiphany. P’Aom hadn’t told me about this camp until the week before it was at first supposed to happen. Every week has felt put together this way, last minute…actually she probably knew in the back of her mind that this camp was going to happen, seeing as how they had one last semester, too, and this was a follow up. But shouldn’t the camp have been part of a larger picture? Shouldn’t we have been building up to an event where we invited the parents, and mixed with the fourth graders? There should have been some strategy that connected this camp to the rest of the semester, rather than just the rest of the days in the week. I’m actually considering bringing up units as a method to visualizing the semester, so that every week can build upon the last. And of course, we will need to map everything out before the semester begins!

But we are going to start looking a little more like CIEE Thailand in more ways than that…
Last week we took a field trip to a festival going on at the big lake downtown, which was about Isaan people and protecting resources in communities. We didn’t really prepare the kids much other than telling them that they were going to see some aspects of the communities in their dreams, and asking them to think about a few questions. The excuse for not preparing more was that we didn’t really know what the festival would be like…

I remembered working at the farmer’s market in Champaign, though, and having kids come up to me and ask me questions, filling out worksheets, so I brought this up at our evaluation of the field trip. Therefore the day after the trip we had the class make up questions that they would have asked the people at the festival, if they would have thought to talk to them (or if we would have thought to make them talk to them). Overall they participated in this activity, and we could see that if done multiple times, and more in depth, it would have been a great opportunity to build skills within the students. Also, all three of us were participating in this activity: P’Aom facilitated, P’Noos took notes on butcher paper, and I participated with the students.

Next year we will have sent the kids on the field trip having prepared questions to ask. This year P’Aom says we shouldn’t wait for another event; we should take the kids somewhere, anywhere, to use this strategy of learning.

So yes, in the name of strategy and building upon classroom experiences, I think we might be on the track to becoming more like CIEE Thailand, except with a third grade class rather than college students. This is not just because of me, though; I think it might be because we are using the same basic strategy: group process, goal-making, evaluation.

Section 2: Personal Direction
The books I’ve been reading have been drastically affecting my mood, passions, ideas, and goals.
First of all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was really impressive…really, really. I just finished reading a book that compiled a bunch of his speeches and writings (the first book I’ve actually finished in awhile). Everyone should be studying MLK in school, examining his words, and using them as a basis for building a new society. I remember studying the “I have a dream” speech in something like early grade school, but I don’t remember how in depth we got, and I don’t think we ever re-visited other speeches or writings later in school. In fact, I wonder if I didn’t come away from that lesson thinking his dream had been somewhat made into reality, when in fact learning about the speech could have facilitated learning about oppression of all types, which still existed then and now, including oppression caused by a system built on racism.

Now I’m reading “Listening to the Land,” interviews by Derrick Jensen with a bunch of environmentalists. I put this one down before because the people he interviewed sounded a bit in their own, academic world. But I’m stomaching that for now, because they also have (some) very valuable things to say, which should be applied to small-scale situations such as the school I’m working in or the human rights project I’m hoping to join this coming May in Kentucky. For example we are now looking for ways to facilitate the kids knowing the strengths in their families and communities, rather than only focusing on issues…because education should support protecting those strengths in our local communities (David Orr).

Both of these books have thankfully inspired me in the past month.

They are both male-dominated. MLK was a man, but I’m still surprised he came off as male-centric to me. As for “Listening to the Land,” 8 out of 29 of the interviewees are men. 2 of the women are in the first half, the rest in the back. I’ve read one of the women interviews so far, and though I identified with many of the aspects the male interviewees brought up, it is astounding to me how much more holistically I was able to identify with what the woman said (Charlene Spretnak)…

So I’m realizing just as black people have had to seek out and create their own powerful role-models in a white-centric society, I need to start doing the same with women. Actually it’s not that I haven’t met and heard of many wonderful women role-models, but I’m not sure I have come across many speeches by women that have been taken seriously enough, by women and men alike.

Besides books shaping my personal goals, though the choices I’ve made so far since college have been very much based on intuition, they seem to be each in their own way lending definition to “what I’m doing.” I think with another 6 or so years that might be defined, or maybe never, which is fine as long as each day means something.

Maybe I’ll be on the path to becoming the first woman president...with a Thai first gentleman. Hah.