Time for School

Shugufa in 2009

Our Global Village experience has continued to inform our studies. This week, we watched the documentary Time for School. It's a fascinating project that chronicles the journeys of seven children from around the world as they begin their formal educations. The kids come from radically different cultures and backgrounds, and we've been talking about how different factors can help or hinder an education. For example, Ken from Japan lives in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We watch as he begins school at six years old. He has already learned to read by his first day of class. He has tremendous cultural and family support, as well as a backpack stuffed full of new supplies. 

Neeraj in 2003.

Compare Ken's experience to those of Neeraj. On her first day of schook, she's about 9 or 10 years old (she's not sure), and living in rural India. Her mother takes an extremely dim view of education, arguing that she doesn't have an education, so why would her daughter need one? She also complains that the educated males in their village are unable to find work, and asks why should she bother educating her daughter as well? Neeraj is allowed to go to school only after a full day of hard labor. She attends a night school huddled around a small lantern with other girls from a similar situation. She walks home by herself each night, and arrives in her home after the rest of the household has gone to sleep.

We also meet children from Kenya, Romania, Brazil, and Benin. The first installment aired in 2003, and the filmmakers have followed up with each student twice since. The intention is to check in with each student multiple times over the course a twelve year period. (It's a similar idea to the more famous "Up" series, with a much more diverse set of subjects.)

You can view the original installment here: Time for School (2003). It's about an hour long, and it chronicles all seven children on their first day of school. It's fascinating in its own right. (But we didn't actually watch this in class.) 

Ken in 2003.

The second installment follows up on the kids three years later. It's about an hour and a half long. You can watch it online here: Back to School (2006) (We didn't watch this one in class either, but it's well worth your time.) 

Time for School 3 is available in two parts, and each is about an hour long. They show the students in 2009, and many of them are at crucial points in their educations. It also gives a recap of what we learned about each student and country in the previous installments. We watched these together in class, and you may have noticed your kids revisiting them at home to take notes on each respective student. 

Watch online: 
Time for School 3 (Part 1, featuring Shugufa, Jefferson, Neeraj, and Ken)
Time for School 3 (Part 2, featuring Nanavi, Raluca, and Joab)


There are plans for Time for School 2015, but it has yet to air. We've had discussions in class about where we think each child is by now, and why. 

In the weeks ahead, we'll also be exploring the nonprofits and NGOs that are doing work in these countries and communities to help students succeed. 

Equality, Justice, Harrison Bergeron, and the Global Village

Nick and Eva spy a visitor to the Howell Nature Center Global Village.

We began our week in the spotlight, as it was the job of the 5/6s to lead our Monday morning assembly. Each Monday morning, all of the students, staff, and faculty (and occasional parents, grandparents, and other family members!) gather in the atrium for a community gathering. A different homeroom leads the meeting each week, often taking the opportunity to share something that's been going on in our classes. 

We chose to spotlight our trip to the Howell Nature Center Global Village, and we adapted the skits that they wrote and performed there for the Summers-Knoll community. While writing them, the kids were very thoughtful about how to best convey what we had learned to the wide age range of our audience. The Global Village trip is a fun and exciting experience, but the underlying message is quite serious. The fifth and sixth graders felt enlightened about the severity of inequity in the world, but they didn't want to disturb, for example, their Kindergarten compatriots while sharing what they had learned. We opted to share our direct experiences, and only briefly touch on the larger issues. It allowed us to introduce some ideas, and hopefully generate some conversation and thought. 

As I narrated, the entire group of fifth and sixth graders acted out brief skits about the challenges and triumphs of the trip: Learning to communicate with each other, bartering for resources, starting a cooking fire, trying to cook with limited ingredients, and eventually trying to fall asleep in cramped and primitive quarters. It was a fun and breezy presentation, that will hopefully generate further conversations.

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And since we're talking about equality... 

This image always gets people talking. I'll come back to it in a moment. 

As part of a beginning-of-the-year writing exercise, I was asking the kids about the basic elements of a story. They quickly rattled off "characters, plot, and setting," but when someone said "theme," many had a hard time explaining what it meant. As a result, I did a read aloud of a Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Have you read it? If not, you can do so here. Go on! It's a very quick read. I'll wait....

While you do that, here's a photo of Henry, Niko, Kaz, and Eva celebrating their success at keeping their Global Village balloon baby alive through the night. 

Well, what did you think? Vonnegut really yanks the rug out from under you at the end there, doesn't he? 

Harrison Bergeron is a great story to read with 5th and 6th graders. It's funny, brief, and features a big idea that's played out to an almost cartoonish degree. The idea of mandatory equality appeals to them, just as much as the implementation of concept in the story appalls them. (And I've found that the concept of the ear piece broadcasting thought-scattering noises every twenty seconds is a great thing to reference during the times in the year when interrupting each other becomes an issue. Blurting things out when we're having a group conversation causes everyone to have to mentally reset over and over.) (If you haven't read Harrison Bergeron, and you just skimmed past that link earlier, this sentence made no sense to you. For shame.) 

Kids like to talk about the different handicaps mentioned in the story, which gets us into talk about why the characters in the story would willfully submit to them (and why other characters would attempt to subvert them). The discussion eventually turns to the idea of equality not necessarily being an inherently good thing, as exemplified by the Equality Versus Justice cartoon above. 

Of course, Vonnegut's story is satirical, and being very bright kids, they realized that the society represented in the story didn't match either side of the Equality Versus Justice image. In fact, the equality in Harrison Bergeron was best represented by this image:  

Equal!

One can interpret Vonnegut's story a number of ways (and people have! Not always to Vonnegut's satisfaction...), which is another great reason to read it with kids who are expanding their understanding of social justice, while also developing a sense of the power of writing. 

Howell Nature Center Global Village field trip!

Whew! We have successfully completed our once-every-two-years trip to the Howell Nature Center Global Village! There will soon come a day when I will write up a proper post about our experiences, but it is not today, as I am ready for a good, long nap. To tide you over, please check out the page for our class Twitter feed. There, you will find a chronicle of our adventures (tweeted in reverse chronological order). 

Here's a sampling of the photos that you'll find there! (Captions and context to be provided in a proper post later. Better yet, ask your child about them!)