Yesterday was very interesting not only for me but for the kids as well...I was able to teach one of the English classes. After the kids finished their Bell Work we split off into groups all of the kids range in cognitive levels. I was working with one of the lowest groups. As I looked around the room to figure out my approach I thought it would be a great idea to work sitting on the floor so we could spread out our flashcards and the students notebooks. When I sat down on the floor and invited the boys to join me, I could see it in their faces they were not sure if this was OK. I assured them that they would be able to learn just as well sitting on the floor as they could sitting at the table. Fredrick in his broken English says, "On the floor? Me work on the floor?" I responded, " Don't you think your brain works just as well on the floor as it does at the tables?" The fact that I joined them on the floor I think was a new concept as well-both boys looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders and sat down. WE went through a stack of English flashcards, I asked the boys to use a few of the words in complete sentences and then they wrote 6 sentences using the words we reviewed.
The next class I was a part of was the Video Viewing class, we watched a movie called-Mighty Pawns. It is a movie filmed probably back in teh early 80's, a documentary that follows a inter-city chess team that ends up qualifing for the Nationals. Freddie (main character) is faced with temptation in the movie and has to choose to do right or wrong. After we watched the movie I lead a talk about how even in times of temptation that we as Christians must remain strong and reject the Devil's ways. ( The kids made the parallel of the temptation and of the streets to the antaganist in the movie-Miles) We had a lot of fun with our discussion. They asked if I would be back tomorrow (today) to watch another movie...we shall see.
Today (Wednesday) I will hopefully be working with the girls during excersise time. I plan to teach the girls how to play basketball and Jerram and I want to teach all of the kids how to play kickball.
We are working away in the computer lab today, the boys hit a few glitches yesterday but they eventually made progress. Some of the boys have really shown an intrest in what we are doing with the computers, which brings smiles to all of our faces.
Showing posts with label streets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label streets. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Settling In
Picture this:
Dirt paths (really roads) with two hardened tracks from vans and mule carts, not straight but with an obvious destination, intersecting at what appears to be random places at first. Along the roads are some large houses with tile roofs, some tin shacks where families live, a few shops (with self made speed bumps to slow down traffic ... for increased business?) and a variety of goats, a few donkies and cows. Roosters crow and the sound of six pair of boys shoes, tattered mostly, creates a percussive beat in the cool, misty morning. An older boy, Joseph, leads the pace with an obvious sense that if alone, he would be running twice as fast. Following the pack, keeping 'pace', is me - a tall white guy with longer strides that do not match the boys rhythm and are echoed with the sounds of burning lungs. They know it means a slower run, but they love waking me up to come along.
Aside from establishing a morning running routine, we are settling in now that we have our bags and have really started to get to know both the children at the farm and the team members that we are working with. Staying at the boys facility, we see them more often and they eagerly wait for us to return from our tasks at several points in the day. Names are becoming easier to match to the many faces and it is easy to see that these boys who were forced to act like 'men' at such a young age, crave interaction with adults, crave the feeling of being able to be a child amongst elders.
After my run (and without a shower), we ate a quick breakfast and attended chapel with the whole crew of students and team members. Charles gave the team members a very 'on target' talk before class about rules and procedures and encouraged each teacher to be cautious of letting rules 'rule' our environments. Like the pharasies, this becomes dangerous. 'Relationships come first,' he spoke. The Coulston's have done an amazing job at making this facility a well run place. They give appropriate guidance when needed, but leave the program to be run by Mbuvi, a former street kid turned program administrator. Made in the Streets is run not only by Kenyans, but by people who grew up in the street environment and have taken the opportunity to change their lives. They know what they are up against in so many ways. In addition to having the right people in place, the program has an amazing sense of sustainability from the food grown on the farm, to the students cooking their own meals every night, many ways of empowering the kids to take responsibility and support the whole group and the list goes on. Whether this was pre-planned and well thought out or whether it just had to be this way in order to make it work, Made in the Streets empowers kids who have nothing. In addition, the Coulston's both work in the relevance of Christianity in ways that reflect the nature of Christ.
After this afternoon, we have some what of a gameplan which is helping me feel a bit more settled in as well. Tomorrow morning, Darren will observer some classes to assess what areas we can best help the team members, Emily has plans with Darlene (as well as plans to put her experience with teaching tough kids to work in working with the teachers here) and I will be helping Charles weld a pole to extend an antennea in the hopes of establishing communication between a few of the facilities. None of know exactly what we'll be doing, but we know when to show up.
One other intersting note was talking with two older boys, both nineteen, who are not technically in the MITS program but are staying on one of the piecs of property (the 20 acres) for different purposes. Evance ran across MITS serindipitously and Mbuvi saw a sharp kid that could help with the farm and help with the boys. Kennedy was forced out of his home about 1 1/2 hours north of Nairobi during the violence this past December/January after the elections and was able to clarify what has been happening in Kenya between tribes and how many people are being displaced as they are threatened with their lives to leave. Simply because he is of a different tribe, he was chased from his home, spent 3 nights in the forest and was able to get a hold of Mbuvi. If not for Mbuvi's open doors, he very well could be in a displacement camp, truly a humanitarian disaster with people living in tents with very little to eat and nothing to resolve their violent removal from their homes. We get snippets in the U.S. - in fact, we saw CNN at the airport today when getting our bags, reporting on none other than the UFO 'mystery' in Texas?!?! Reporters live at the scene, money spent on 'experts'?! When you see that after driving past a displacement camp filled with thousands of hungry and beat down people, after watching a man high on who-knows-what spinning through a sea of cars in the slums, after seeing men pulling carts stacked with more than a thousand pounds of weight, after hearing the story of a girl who is at MOST 13 years old (probably younger as her feet swing from the chair when sitting) who just had her second baby one week ago while living on the streets... you start to wonder why we think so much of ourselves back home.
Dirt paths (really roads) with two hardened tracks from vans and mule carts, not straight but with an obvious destination, intersecting at what appears to be random places at first. Along the roads are some large houses with tile roofs, some tin shacks where families live, a few shops (with self made speed bumps to slow down traffic ... for increased business?) and a variety of goats, a few donkies and cows. Roosters crow and the sound of six pair of boys shoes, tattered mostly, creates a percussive beat in the cool, misty morning. An older boy, Joseph, leads the pace with an obvious sense that if alone, he would be running twice as fast. Following the pack, keeping 'pace', is me - a tall white guy with longer strides that do not match the boys rhythm and are echoed with the sounds of burning lungs. They know it means a slower run, but they love waking me up to come along.
Aside from establishing a morning running routine, we are settling in now that we have our bags and have really started to get to know both the children at the farm and the team members that we are working with. Staying at the boys facility, we see them more often and they eagerly wait for us to return from our tasks at several points in the day. Names are becoming easier to match to the many faces and it is easy to see that these boys who were forced to act like 'men' at such a young age, crave interaction with adults, crave the feeling of being able to be a child amongst elders.
After my run (and without a shower), we ate a quick breakfast and attended chapel with the whole crew of students and team members. Charles gave the team members a very 'on target' talk before class about rules and procedures and encouraged each teacher to be cautious of letting rules 'rule' our environments. Like the pharasies, this becomes dangerous. 'Relationships come first,' he spoke. The Coulston's have done an amazing job at making this facility a well run place. They give appropriate guidance when needed, but leave the program to be run by Mbuvi, a former street kid turned program administrator. Made in the Streets is run not only by Kenyans, but by people who grew up in the street environment and have taken the opportunity to change their lives. They know what they are up against in so many ways. In addition to having the right people in place, the program has an amazing sense of sustainability from the food grown on the farm, to the students cooking their own meals every night, many ways of empowering the kids to take responsibility and support the whole group and the list goes on. Whether this was pre-planned and well thought out or whether it just had to be this way in order to make it work, Made in the Streets empowers kids who have nothing. In addition, the Coulston's both work in the relevance of Christianity in ways that reflect the nature of Christ.
After this afternoon, we have some what of a gameplan which is helping me feel a bit more settled in as well. Tomorrow morning, Darren will observer some classes to assess what areas we can best help the team members, Emily has plans with Darlene (as well as plans to put her experience with teaching tough kids to work in working with the teachers here) and I will be helping Charles weld a pole to extend an antennea in the hopes of establishing communication between a few of the facilities. None of know exactly what we'll be doing, but we know when to show up.
One other intersting note was talking with two older boys, both nineteen, who are not technically in the MITS program but are staying on one of the piecs of property (the 20 acres) for different purposes. Evance ran across MITS serindipitously and Mbuvi saw a sharp kid that could help with the farm and help with the boys. Kennedy was forced out of his home about 1 1/2 hours north of Nairobi during the violence this past December/January after the elections and was able to clarify what has been happening in Kenya between tribes and how many people are being displaced as they are threatened with their lives to leave. Simply because he is of a different tribe, he was chased from his home, spent 3 nights in the forest and was able to get a hold of Mbuvi. If not for Mbuvi's open doors, he very well could be in a displacement camp, truly a humanitarian disaster with people living in tents with very little to eat and nothing to resolve their violent removal from their homes. We get snippets in the U.S. - in fact, we saw CNN at the airport today when getting our bags, reporting on none other than the UFO 'mystery' in Texas?!?! Reporters live at the scene, money spent on 'experts'?! When you see that after driving past a displacement camp filled with thousands of hungry and beat down people, after watching a man high on who-knows-what spinning through a sea of cars in the slums, after seeing men pulling carts stacked with more than a thousand pounds of weight, after hearing the story of a girl who is at MOST 13 years old (probably younger as her feet swing from the chair when sitting) who just had her second baby one week ago while living on the streets... you start to wonder why we think so much of ourselves back home.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
What Will We Be Doing, You Ask?
Um... Well... We THINK that one thing we will have the opportunity to do will be to work with both kids and faculty on how to teach using their computer facilities. Just like we try to model here in Irving ISD, we've thought about how to walk through some sample lessons that encourage kids to think and that empower them through the use of technology. So, one hope is to use the digital cameras that we're taking to teach a PhotoStory lesson. Something like this:
Thinkfinity PhotoStory Lesson
Overview
Students are introduced to concepts of social justice, such as diversity, tolerance, equity, and equality, through a literary text, class discussions, and guided research. Students plan a service-learning project, then work in small groups using Photo Story software to produce a multimedia presentation designed to foster community support for the project. Students also use the ReadWriteThink.org Printing Press to create informational flyers about the project. The lesson concludes—and the service-learning project begins—with a showing of the Photo Story productions for parents and other community members.
Instructional Plan
Preparation
1. Download Photo Story 3. Familiarize yourself with the Instructions: Using Photo Story 3 to Create Persuasive Slide Shows handout, and practice the steps involved so you can demonstrate the process to students. You may also wish to refer to Create Your First Photo Story. Make a copy of these instructions for students.
2. Bookmark the Persuasion Map and the ReadWriteThink Printing Press on your classroom or lab computers. Familiarize yourself with these tools and be prepared to assist students, particularly if the class has not used them previously.
3. Decide how you will gather images for the Photo Story slide shows and make the necessary arrangements for these activities [e.g., an Internet search for appropriate images (Session 5) or a field trip to take original photos (Session 6)]. If you plan to have students conduct an Internet search, bookmark any search engines and Web directories you would like them to use on your classroom or lab computers (see Search Engines and Web Directories in the Resources section).
... The lesson goes on and on (you can see it on the main page) and it will require some quite obvious modifications. I chuckle thinking about showing these kids a video from street kids in San Diego - considering that they come from the streets of Nairobi. Maybe we could help them make their own video of themselves/their lives?
At any rate, this is really doable with what we'll have access to. I'm curious to see what they will come up with.
Thinkfinity PhotoStory Lesson
Overview
Students are introduced to concepts of social justice, such as diversity, tolerance, equity, and equality, through a literary text, class discussions, and guided research. Students plan a service-learning project, then work in small groups using Photo Story software to produce a multimedia presentation designed to foster community support for the project. Students also use the ReadWriteThink.org Printing Press to create informational flyers about the project. The lesson concludes—and the service-learning project begins—with a showing of the Photo Story productions for parents and other community members.
Instructional Plan
Preparation
1. Download Photo Story 3. Familiarize yourself with the Instructions: Using Photo Story 3 to Create Persuasive Slide Shows handout, and practice the steps involved so you can demonstrate the process to students. You may also wish to refer to Create Your First Photo Story. Make a copy of these instructions for students.
2. Bookmark the Persuasion Map and the ReadWriteThink Printing Press on your classroom or lab computers. Familiarize yourself with these tools and be prepared to assist students, particularly if the class has not used them previously.
3. Decide how you will gather images for the Photo Story slide shows and make the necessary arrangements for these activities [e.g., an Internet search for appropriate images (Session 5) or a field trip to take original photos (Session 6)]. If you plan to have students conduct an Internet search, bookmark any search engines and Web directories you would like them to use on your classroom or lab computers (see Search Engines and Web Directories in the Resources section).
... The lesson goes on and on (you can see it on the main page) and it will require some quite obvious modifications. I chuckle thinking about showing these kids a video from street kids in San Diego - considering that they come from the streets of Nairobi. Maybe we could help them make their own video of themselves/their lives?
At any rate, this is really doable with what we'll have access to. I'm curious to see what they will come up with.
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