I've been in Kentucky exactly 3 weeks now, and now I'm balancing TWO blogs! So please check out our human rights blog for more updates on what I'm doing.
So I often worry that my life is leading me in too many directions and it's never going to come together and make enough sense. But after some time feeling worried about this, I'm happy to report that it's still all coming together. This is truly turning out to be a sabbatical. My time here is going to help me develop my purpose in life -- somehow.
I was taking a walk today and started talking to myself in Thai, explaining to myself my utopia of education. Here it is.
All of us would start to learn at a very early age about health, law, and learning and teaching. These would be taught in a manner that started with our cultural framework, so as to facilitate an internalization of our ancestors' values. Maybe in kindergarten we would learn gardening and first grade house building, in addition to really simple health, law, and how to learn according to our culture's values.
We would progress towards learning international law, health practices in various other cultures, and other frameworks for teaching and learning. So the teacher has this responsibility to instill cultural values in kids, and then shows them other frameworks that allow for developing students' creativity and critical thinking.
All of this of course is done through participatory learning, place based classrooms, teacher-student, student-teacher relationships...oooh utopia.
I also chose these subjects as a focus because through personal experience I believe that we should all -- whether we have access to higher education or not, be well-enough educated in these areas to not constantly feel we need to rely on experts, some of which only get richer by advocating for our continued and increasing lack of knowledge. So if everyone were educated this way -- whether they could read/write or not, my ideas is that the current societal structures would break down ... from the grassroots on up. The trickle up theory. Just imagine if all of us were lawyers!
Yours, Vanessa.
Coming soon: crazy old activist teachers -- prairie monk, BB lake restorer, mountain forest woman.
May 28, 2010
Apr 13, 2010
Sabbatical
I'm back in the States, and for 6 months not working primarily in schools...Since I'm still a student of life, however, I'll just keep this blog here and add to it.
I wrapped up my first semester with KKEI...really about 3 weeks ago. Since then I've been distracted by my friends Connie and Sarah coming to visit me. They both changed my life in Khon Kaen in their own ways. How lucky I am to have such friends!
Through KKEI I learned that I'm good at organizing teachers. I'm not as good at being with kids. I hope my stamina and patience for the latter will improve. I should get a chance to find out this coming Fall when I go back to KKEI for another year and a half (first we have to request a stipend for 3, rather than 2, ITT members). I learned so much this first semester, but had little opportunity to apply it and test myself.
A lot of what I learned, though, was reflected in our KKEI Retreat, which was followed up by John and I totally redoing the KKEI website. Dut-da-dah! (Still not done...but cool anyways.)
If everything works out, KKEI teachers will be creating their curriculum before the school year starts, under "KKEI Principles," but as appropriate for each of their classes/schools/communities. If everything works out, teachers will come to the U.S. in October and connect to schools in Spartanburg, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. If everything works out KKEI will facilitate action research in the coming year to better define the goals of their own and others' teaching -- and problems that they face. If everything works out, KKEI will have a more concrete presence in the general public, through facilitating concrete, strategy-driven activities.
It's a lot to work out, and I wish I were there for all of it.
Rather, I'll be taking a 6-month sabbatical (haha) in Kentucky -- or however long my pocketbook can take it -- working on a human rights project with the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE) and with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC). This sabbatical may give me the opportunity to combine much of what I love: organizing, human rights, schools, and maybe even farming...? I won't really know what's up till I get there in early May. I hope I get to dance, too. I hope I find a totally integrated approach to life!
I wrapped up my first semester with KKEI...really about 3 weeks ago. Since then I've been distracted by my friends Connie and Sarah coming to visit me. They both changed my life in Khon Kaen in their own ways. How lucky I am to have such friends!
***
Through KKEI I learned that I'm good at organizing teachers. I'm not as good at being with kids. I hope my stamina and patience for the latter will improve. I should get a chance to find out this coming Fall when I go back to KKEI for another year and a half (first we have to request a stipend for 3, rather than 2, ITT members). I learned so much this first semester, but had little opportunity to apply it and test myself.
A lot of what I learned, though, was reflected in our KKEI Retreat, which was followed up by John and I totally redoing the KKEI website. Dut-da-dah! (Still not done...but cool anyways.)
If everything works out, KKEI teachers will be creating their curriculum before the school year starts, under "KKEI Principles," but as appropriate for each of their classes/schools/communities. If everything works out, teachers will come to the U.S. in October and connect to schools in Spartanburg, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. If everything works out KKEI will facilitate action research in the coming year to better define the goals of their own and others' teaching -- and problems that they face. If everything works out, KKEI will have a more concrete presence in the general public, through facilitating concrete, strategy-driven activities.
It's a lot to work out, and I wish I were there for all of it.
***
Rather, I'll be taking a 6-month sabbatical (haha) in Kentucky -- or however long my pocketbook can take it -- working on a human rights project with the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE) and with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC). This sabbatical may give me the opportunity to combine much of what I love: organizing, human rights, schools, and maybe even farming...? I won't really know what's up till I get there in early May. I hope I get to dance, too. I hope I find a totally integrated approach to life!
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