ITSA International: critical thinking

Showing posts with label critical thinking. Show all posts

Wednesday, 30 January 2013

ITSA Goes to Latin America!

New team member Isabel Sacks blogs about working with ITSA and her project in the Dominican Republic.

Before starting my freshman year at Swarthmore, where I am now a sophomore, I took a gap year and spent four months living and teaching at a beautiful, bright blue school nestled among the sugarcane fields of rural Dominican Republic called Santa Maria del Batey. Founded in 2000 by Augusto Casasnovas and run by several nuns, the school serves the children of Dominican subsistence farmers and Haitian sugarcane workers, who live in housing clusters called bateyes (hence the school’s name). SMB is the only high school in the immediate area and provides its students not only a quality education from grades K-12, but daily breakfast and lunch and health care. From August to December 2010, I designed and taught my own English curriculum to the third and fourth grades and served as an assistant teacher to the school’s full-time foreign language teacher for the fifth through twelfth grades.

The school’s logo, painted on an outside wall.

In December, I was lucky to be awarded a Lang Opportunity Scholarship work with ITSA to spread its methods quite literally across the globe, from Ahmedabad to Hato Mayor. The Lang Opportunity Scholarship, which also supports ITSA, is awarded annually to six sophomores at Swarthmore College. It provides funding and resources for Scholars to “conceive, design and carry out an Opportunity Project that creates a needed social resource and/or effects a significant social change or improved condition of a community in the United States or abroad” (http://www.swarthmore.edu/lang-center-for-civic-and-social-responsibility/lang-opportunity-scholarship.xml). This summer I will be working with the ITSA workshops, in particular the new Faculty Fellowship Program, and then implementing the method at Santa Maria del Batey in the summer of 2014. The ITSA Faculty Fellowship Program, currently under construction, will incorporate teachers directly into the ITSA model; they will work side by side with ITSA interns to conduct the workshops.

In my mind, the ITSA method is really important in any school or community, anywhere in the world, for two reasons. First, it raises awareness of social justice issues—blatant or invisible, across the world, next door, or in our own lives—and what we can do to address these issues. Second, the development of critical thinking skills through participation in the ITSA workshops makes learning more interesting, empowering, and useful for students. Although I believe that any school could benefit from ITSA workshops, they are particularly applicable to Santa Maria del Batey because of the school’s context (based on my observations and interactions during my four-month stay and three shorter trips). Many students face poverty, malnutrition, violence, abuse, and/or gender discrimination. Religion and Haiti/DR relations cause tension in the community. Electricity and running water are unreliable and most of the students’ parents are illiterate. Despite hardship, though, about 20 teachers and 400 students of all ages travel daily to the school on foot or by motorcycle, sometimes from several miles away, and make learning happen. The students are highly driven to succeed, while the teachers are committed to their students’ academic and personal well-being and the state of education in the DR on the whole.

I have enormous respect for the teachers of Santa Maria del Batey, most of whom have been teaching at the school since its founding, and I will therefore be partnering with them to replicate ITSA at the school. Their dedication and knowledge of the students, school, and community will facilitate the success of the project. I can’t wait to work with ITSA this summer and then return to my home away from home at Santa Maria del Batey!

The fourth grade class in 2010, with me and four of the elementary school teachers.

Me and several girls from the eleventh grade class in 2010, in front of the school.

The eleventh grade class in 2010, with me and several of their teachers.

The class of 2012 (eleventh graders in 2010, as pictured before) at their graduation last June.

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

3 Idiots & ITSA Reflections

From Natalia Choi's Blog, the Little Yellow Dandelion (www.littleyellowdandelio.wordpress.com), as she reflects upon watching the Bollywood movie 3 Idiots & her inspiration to work with ITSA:

From what I gathered from the cover photo (three men on silly chairs that looked like butts), I expected a comedy of sorts with maybe some feel-good message about life. But a student of mine also had told me that the movie really represented what was going on in India. She didn’t tell me exactly what that was, but I was intrigued.

The 3 idiots DVD Cover

Like any Bollywood hit movie, there was inevitably wild yet coordinated dancing scenes with songs that get stuck in your head for days. That was obviously to be expected. There were also lots of comic scenes with cleverly engineered pranks by the three main characters of the movie. But the movie also contained honest depictions of the real danger of mental stress fueled by the Indian education system and other societal expectations. I thought the movie exposed lines all very familiar to most Korean students: “Study your way to bring your family out of poverty,” or “Choose a stable lucrative careers so as to not burden your family who’ve sacrificed so much for you.” The movie shows that such educational mottos not only were hindering students from following (or even finding) their passions, but also were causing them to end their lives. This is an issue that is not just unique to India. According to Wikepedia, India had 43rd highest suicide rate in the world, whereas S. Korea has the 2nd highest and the U.S. 41st (I was surprised to discover that Lithuania had the highest suicide rate in the world). It seems to me that this issue is getting worse and worse each time I come back to Korea. I hear of suicides by celebrities, young students, working dads often enough to keep it lingering in the back of my mind. Banners declaring a bully-free zone hang in front of schools and swimming pools. “How do we stop this madness?” I wonder and wonder thinking a banner won’t do. The key line in the movie “All is well” was repeated throughout the movie in times of frustration, panic, and stress in order to give the courage to find a solution in such times.

So I must say “All is well” while patting my chest so as to not get too disparaged when lost for clear solutions.

Remembering my experience leading ITSA workshops in India, I feel that what ITSA did was part of the solution: creating a friendly, supportive, and open environment for learning about ourselves and society. A place where questions and mistakes are as valuable as knowing the book answers and getting a high grade (or “mark” as it is referred to in India), where classmates are fellow friends and learners rather than competitors, where students could learn material they’ll actually remember the week after their exams.

When signing up to intern with ITSA, Korea had been in my mind. I had always wanted to do something to reverse the crazy cycle of the Korean education system in order to allow students to enjoy learning and make an environment where classmates weren’t regarded as their competitors. I just didn’t know how… until I ran into ITSA. I remember reading about ITSA in an email and thinking “This is it, I can be a part of the change now. I don’t have to wait until I’m in a high position in the government to make such a change!” Recalling the faces of the high school students I’ve met (looking younger than expected since they say that in India kids look younger longer) and the conversations in which I learned about their education system (how they have to declare their track in 9th standard and take standardized Board exams which determine their college admission), I remember feeling frustrated by my inability to rescue them out of the constricting education system. Students knew that it was too early to decide what to do with their lives, that standardized tests were not effective measurements of knowledge, but I couldn’t offer them a way out. But later I realized that maybe just exposing them to an alternative classroom experience in which they question questions, learn from their fellow classmates not just their teachers and books, and relate their knowledge to themselves and their lives is enough to re-energize their curiosity and keep an open mind, the key to being a true learner.

As usual, I’ve rambled on for much longer than I intended to when I sat down to write this blog post while the movie was still fresh in my head… So to wrap it up… GO WATCH THE MOVIE IF YOU HAVEN’T YET! Though it addresses some serious issues, it does so in a remarkably human way, weaving comedy so naturally and giving you laughs and hope throughout the movie!

Until then, thanks for reading my rambles!

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Student & Teacher Workshops at SN Kansagra School, Rajkot Photo Journal

Here's a photo journal by team member, Natalia Choi, about her experience in Rajkot where ITSA went to work with The Galaxy School.

Here is a brief recount of the trip:

Monday: 5 AM rickshaw-ride towards the bus stationt, 3-hour bus ride to Rajkot with booming bollywood music from movies, student workshops with 30 students at TGES school for 4 hours, dinner at Chokhi Dhani (an amusement park-like, “traditional village” experiencing place where you watch shows, ride camels, get your fortune told, dance at a discotheque with chaperones...)