Community Education Evening at Bank Street October 30

 

Making Power Visible: Home Grown Community-Based-Learning from Karachi to Philadelphia to You

Wednesday, October 30th, 5:30-7:30 PM.

Join us at Bank Street for this important event, featuring two short documentary films:

One film focuses on the work of Humaira Bacal, founder of a school for girls in Pakistan, and the next film will focus on the work of the non-profit organization Philadelphia Urban life Creators. Following the film screenings, there will be audience Q&A and a panel discussion.

Panelists: Alex Esptein founder of Phialdelphia Urban Life Creators, Sharon  Ahram ’13 , Program Coordinator Need In Deed–  connecting the classroom with the community, Mariam Durrani, joint Ph.D Candidate in Educational Linguistics and Anthropology at  the University of Pennsylvania, and Sehr Karim-Jaffer’12, moderator.

Refreshments will be served.

Organized by: Sehr Karim-Jaffer’12 , who works in the Education Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is primarily interested in multicultural Museum Education, and Yue Fang, current Bank Street Graduate student in Leadership in Community-Based Learning and Council of Students president.

Report from South Africa

Last July, Laura Zellerbach ’11 and current student Emily Soong journeyed to South Africa to observe and report on the workings of early childcare centers there. Here is their report from the field.

Report from South Africa:

Data Collection for the INNOVA Project- Developing an Environmental Rating Scale for Group Care for the “Under Threes”

Laura Zellerbach (Bank Street College, M.S.Ed Infant and Family Development/Early Intervention ’11)
Emily Soong (Bank Street College, M.S. Early Childhood & Childhood General candidate)

Our arrival in the black African township of Mangaung in Free State, South Africa since July 16th has been observably marked by evident lingering divisions between the old world and new.  Early care and education, which also reflects existing race and social class tensions here, serves as an insightful lens into the disjointed, but still-evolving, amalgamation between this country’s historical strife with development and advancement work. 

Where Does Bread Come From? Taking Bank Street Abroad…

posted by Liezel de La Isla ‘99, Prague International School teacher

For the past few years, I have been developing a curriculum on Bread and Bakeries with my colleagues at the International School of Prague, Czech Republic. This is a unit I was very familiar with as it was the first unit I ever taught when I became a head teacher at the Brooklyn Friends School and then had the opportunity to teach it again when I worked at the Sidwell Friends School.

One of the challenges I have found in teaching abroad is developing curriculum based on Bank Street’s framework. It can be tough to locate resources in your local community to support your study, when you are new to the country, don’t speak the language fluently and are still developing your understanding of your host country’s customs.

The children who attend I.S.P. come from all corners of our globe. For most of my students, English is a second or third language. Although our classroom can reflect so many diverse qualities, I did notice, as well as my colleagues and I am sure this happens to you was how the kids love to eat and talk about food! Bread is an important staple in the Czech Republic, and it was also an important staple for 75 percent of my Kindergarten class.

In my dramatic play area, I would observe children setting the table with a tablecloth, arranging plates and silverware, cooking and serving one another. Then at snack time, the children would be comparing their yogurt flavors or their juice boxes and croissants. At lunch, they talked about whether the food looked good or not and why they didn’t like to eat the kinds of vegetables that were served.

Then one day, I asked the children if they knew where their food came from and to be more specific where the bread they ate came from? A few said they got it at the store. Another bunch said their mommy gave it to them. But when I asked them where they thought the bread truly came from, they had no idea that it came from a plant.

Thus our investigation began! We had already been doing some baking in the class, so the children were somewhat familiar with the ingredients, but when I showed them some wheat berries their answers were all over the place. Then I gave them some pictures of tools used to grind wheat and they really had no idea. We gave the children opportunities to plant the berries, work with mortar and pestles and an electric grinder as well. We challenged them to create 4 cups of flour from the berries so we could make pretzels.

We enticed the children further by taking them to some local bakeries around town. We were very fortunate in this area, for most Czech bakeries were not accustomed to school visits and we were often told that the law said they could not have us as guests in their work kitchens. However, we were lucky. We found a bakery with an American manager, who told us the story of how she had decided to become a baker. When she was a little girl, she had visited a bakery on a school trip and since then knew that she wanted to grow up to be a baker. She toured the kids around the work kitchen, where got to see commercial ovens, mixers and huge containers holding the ingredients. They learned more about yeast, the baking process and how the bread was then sold.

We arranged for the children to visit a Pizzeria, where once again we were lucky to have two fine restaurant owners allow the children to see the kitchen, make their own pizzas and learn about a fire brick oven. We then had the privilege, due to a school family connection to visit a bread factory. This was an amazing opportunity for the children to see factory-sized mixers, ovens and conveyer belts carrying crates of bread moving all around us. They also had the chance to see the breads get loaded onto trucks and to this day when they see one of those trucks they know what is inside and where it came from.

At the end of the unit, we took all our new-found knowledge and developed a classroom bakery. Each of the three kindergarten classes had a bakery operating in their classroom for three days the last week before our winter holiday break. The children decided on the things we needed for a bakery, what to bake, the jobs, how much it would cost and then where the money would go. For three days, the children sold bread to the school wide community from pre-schoolers to high schoolers to faculty, they had customer after customer. The halls were just inundated with the perfume of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, banana bread and chocolate chip muffins. Our customers even had the chance to see the children baking in action. The instructions were written out in pictorial form on cards so that the kids could manage independently. When it was finally over, the kids also realized how much hard work it took to make and sell bread to a community.

For the past 10 years I have been experimenting with different ways to develop curriculum for early childhood, and using Social Studies as my vehicle, has often led to creating a meaningful and exciting study in such a natural manner. However, I do find it challenging at times to do this when teaching abroad. I have had to get to know my new city quickly, discover ways to translate information in the native language to my students in English, our language of instruction and understand what is okay and not so okay to do with students when I take them out on field trips. The one thing that I do know is how important it is for children to connect with their community in order to understand their world better and that is especially so in an environment like mine, where some of the children don’t always have much contact with their local host country. The study of breads and bakeries was done a few months ago, but the kids still make comments about the study, refer to what they have learned and they now know that bread does come from a plant!

Joanne Liezel de La Isla is a graduate of the Museum Education program. She has taught in several Independent Schools in NYC and Washington DC. For the past 5 years, she has been teaching at the International School of Prague in the Czech Republic. This is her second international school. Joanne Liezel presented the Bread and Bakeries project at the Apple Education Leadership Summit in March of 2010.

For Nigerian Children: Seeking Books, Dialogue, and a Desire to Learn…

posted by Dena Florczyk ’88, middle school teacher and founder/director of The Nigerian School Project

Hello my fellow Bank Street Alumni,

For those of you interested in education in Africa you may be interested in my story.

Since graduating from Bank Street in 1988, I have been teaching Special Education in New Jersey. In 2004, after a trip to West Africa, I started a non-profit educational organization that provides teachers and school children in Nigeria with resources to teach and to learn. Traveling to Nigeria once a year, I have been able to accomplish a great deal. My projects have included purchasing textbooks and school supplies, sewing uniforms, building furniture, sponsoring university scholarships and building 3 school libraries. This past summer these schools received a shipment of over 6,500 books to fill their new libraries. I am especially excited about my latest project, the building of a school in the river community of Tomaro. This is incredibly exciting because it is this community’s very first secondary school.

In the 5 years that I have been traveling to Nigeria, my proudest moments are when I am in the company of the 3 students I am sponsoring in college. Ojo, is in his third year at the Nigerian Naval Academy. He is studying to be a sea captain. When I met him he was the first in his class at the Ireti Senior Grammar School. He was so shy he couldn’t even look at me. In a letter expressing his gratitude, he told me that with the opportunity I was giving him, he was “no longer afraid to dream”. His words are the fuel that keeps this project going. My other two college students are twins, Ruth and Rachel. One is studying accounting and the other acting. These girls, like my own children are the light of my life. In them I see that even under the toughest of circumstances the human spirit endures.

Nigeria is a very challenging country but what these students and teachers lack in resources is certainly not reflected in their desire to learn or to compete in an ever-changing world. Five years ago I never would have believed that such a small effort could make such a difference. Today, I believe more than ever the power each of us has to make a difference in the world.

Every year I travel to Nigeria I take another teacher with me. The experience for them and for the children they teach is life changing. If you are interested in such an experience please contact me. I am also looking to build more school libraries and, as such, am always looking for books. If you have books to donate or are interested in doing a book drive in your school to benefit Nigerian school children please contact me.

Please check out my website to see the work. I would love to hear your comments, especially from those who are interested in starting international projects like this one. I welcome the dialogue.

www.NigerianSchoolProject.org
201.314.6649

Peace,
Dena

Dena Florczyk is a Teaneck Middle School teacher and photographer, as well as the founder and director of The Nigerian School Project, a non-profit educational organization that supports teachers and students in Nigeria, West Africa.

Early Childhood in South Africa: The Developing Families Project

posted by Virginia Casper, Bank Street faculty member

It is 14 years since South Africa overturned apartheid and became a democracy. As you may know, extreme poverty, unemployment and health challenges, including HIV-AIDS and its stigma, continue to ravage the majority population. During this time, the South African government has designed and continues to implement Grade R (Reception Year), the first year of formal schooling, which parallels western kindergarten. In addition, great strides have been made in the quality of preschool programs for children 3 to 5. Yet, because increasing numbers of children are enrolling in Grade R, and because more mothers are joining the workforce, younger children are entering informal crèches and preschool programs cared for by women who are not yet trained in the group care of infants and toddlers.

Ntataise (“to lead a young child by the hand”) was founded in 1980 to help women in resource-poor rural communities gain the knowledge and skills necessary to establish preschools for vulnerable families with young children. To date, Ntataise has trained over 10,000 women, reaching 350,000 children, and, in the process, has strengthened the capacities of the rural townships it serves in seven of the nine provinces. Our approach builds on Ntataise’s training and support programs, using the integrated, community-based engagement and empowerment model previously piloted with Ntataise.

The Developing Families Project aims to utilize the preschool as the port of entry for addressing both health and education issues. Harnessing South African culturally-based understandings of who infants, toddlers and two-year-olds are with some western understandings of the rich learning and relationship possibilities of very young children is a challenge we and our South African colleagues look forward to sharing. At the same time, we hope to integrate HIV/AIDS training and advocacy into the birth-to-three curriculum. The project will feature Early Child Development (ECD) spirit and techniques to foster engagement and learning (including consensus-building, use of all of the senses, role playing, visual and auditory stimulation, metaphor, use of the arts, hands-on experiences, warm and supportive environment, relationships rich in interaction and nurturance, reflective practice, and mentoring).

In May 2008 we visited four Ntataise sites in four separate provinces that had expressed interest in collaborating. In over 50 preschools we saw programs for children age three and above that reflected the years of training and support that Ntataise has given to these rural organizations. We observed children actively engaged with art, block building, dramatic play, manipulatives, and books (often homemade). We witnessed interactive communications between teachers and children and children with their peers.

In stark contrast, sometimes in the same preschool, the under three’s tended to be in groups of 10-40 with one or two caregivers. There were few materials, children sat closely together with little to no interaction with each other or their caregivers. As always, there were extraordinary exceptions where a few women created warm, home-like family environments with few materials and little support. But, as a general rule, and as one caregiver casually remarked about infants and toddlers in rural care settings, “they are waiting to be 3.” These photos illustrate the stark contrasts we observed.

Finally, and perhaps most important, professionals working in economically deprived communities always run the risk of being seen as powerful and all-knowing, especially in international work. The power differential that automatically exists and can derail any good and well-intentioned work must be brought to mutual consciousness. Therefore, a planned, conscious effort is continually at the forefront of our work toward leveling the power differential and normalizing relationships among and between people.

This summer, informal “Listening and Sharing Groups” (some conducted by Emily Polidore, BSC alum) have provided data that will help us shape the training and advocacy components as we work with our Ntataise partners.  We look forward to continuing this exciting work together.

Five Ntataise ECD trainers will visit Bank Street on Wednesday, December 10th at 6:30pm. These women will share their expertise and points of view about early care and education in SA, and we will provide more details about the Developing Families Project.
Please join us!

Virginia Casper has been honored to work in South Africa in early childhood over the past 8 years and is thrilled to share some of what she has learned with the Bank Street alumni community. She currently is a Bank Street instructor, formerly served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School, and before that directed the Infant and Parent Development Program.

For more information about this work…
Casper, V. (2005). Beyond Feeders and Growers: Changing Conceptions of Care in the Western Cape. Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 77,16 (1) 55-59.

Lamb-Parker, F., & Motseneng, P. (2007). Preschools as Nodes of Support: Case Study of Community Engagement and Empowerment in Rural South Africa. Zero-to-Three, National Training Institute, Orlando, FL.

Making Meaning: A Universal Experience

posted by Beth Norford ’89, consultant and former School for Children teacher

Teaching in Lucknow, India*

I got back to the U.S. last week after five months in South Asia: India, Nepal and Pakistan. I’m beginning work as a freelance educational consultant and my mission was to visit schools and foundations; to talk with parents, teachers and students; to assess (at least superficially) the state of education on the subcontinent; and to figure out how I might play a role there. I started a blog to document my experiences and to engage with others who share an interest in progressive education in South Asia. My initial entry was a short excerpt from a lecture I presented in September at Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan – a very brief first attempt to introduce my own beliefs about pedagogy…

“Since I am, after all, an educator, I’d like to begin by asking you a question – the sort of question that I like best: one that has no single ‘correct’ answer, the kind with many correct answers, the type that (hopefully) causes people to really think.

The question is this: What is the purpose of education? Why should we teach? Why should we learn?

The answers are many:
– We teach so that students will achieve high marks on their examinations.
– We teach so that students can be admitted to colleges and universities.
– We teach to raise the level of literacy among the population.
– We teach to offer students a better lot in life. Better health, better jobs, a better standard of living.
– We teach to offer students exposure to the history and culture of their country.

This morning I will take the liberty of talking about MY favorite answer to this question. Not the ‘correct’ answer remember, but the answer that makes me excited about my own work as an educator, that keeps me going, that gets me up in the mornings. I believe that the purpose of education is the creation of meaning. The creation of meaning. Children are trying to make meaning out of the complex and crazy world into which they are born, a world of relationships, of symbols, of patterns and randomness, a world of things beyond the comprehension of their young minds. They need all of this to mean something, to make sense. They need the tools to create this meaning for themselves. This is why they learn. And this is why I teach – to offer children the tools they will need for this most important life work.”

There is much more to come and I can’t wait to begin making contact with others who are interested in progressive education in the U.S., in South Asia, and throughout the world. Please be in touch.

* The photo is from the city of Lucknow, about 500 kilometers east of  Delhi.  I was working with students at a school called the Acharya  Narendra Deva Academy, which provides free schooling to children from working-class families who can’t afford adequate education for their kids.

Beth is a Bank Street graduate and former School for Children teacher now beginning to freelance as an educational consultant. Most of her current work is concentrated in South Asia (India, Nepal, Pakistan) and she has begun a blog, “Educational Alternatives Worldwide” (with a link from our sidebar), to document her recent professional experiences. She’d really appreciate any and all comments, suggestions, questions, and feedback from the Bank Street community.

Please join the conversation by posting your comment below.