Doing Social Justice – The World is Your Classroom
Please make every gift count this holiday season. You can find coupons at more than 1,600 top stores AND a percentage of virtually every sale will be donated to Global Village School. Just go to www.goodshop.com, designate us as the cause you support and then click over to your favorite store and shop away! There’s no easier way to support us this holiday season!
Please spread the word.
Part of the process of progressive homeschooling of the type Global Village School engages in is examining the ways in which culture, tradition, and habit guide our choices and actions. The Institute for Humane Education has an interesting blog post about this in the context of food, but it is applicable to many situations.
Check out the blog here:
Tags: culture, habit, progressive homeschooling, tradition
Check-out this interview with two students from our Partner School Outside Now. They discuss their John Muir Trail adventure and other Nature Academy experiences.
Tags: global village school, john muir trail, nature academy, outside now
You can download and print out this short, handy scorecard to help you make ethical choices about your chocolate purchases for Halloween and beyond!
http://www.greenamericatoday.org/pdf/2010ChocolateScorecard.PDF
Tags: ethical chocolate, slave chocolate
Global Village School student Alena produced the following excellent historically based poetry as part of her World History course:
Gift of the Nile
Herodotus knew Egypt
As the gift of the Nile
For when the river flowed strong
All of its children smiled
The river gave its people
Good, rich earth to farm
Gave them water to drink
And protected them from harm
The Nile taught the people
About joy and strife
But it was primarily
A great source of life
Interesting article in the NY Daily News about the debate in the educational community over the effects of poverty on learning.
Text excerpt:
“There has been a fierce, ongoing debate among educational leaders about how to teach poor children: One side has argued that we must address the wide variety of social issues (like poor health and nutrition, mobility, inadequate preparation for school, etc.) that tend to be associated with poverty. The other side has argued that schools serving poor children must focus on education alone and stop making excuses.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been associated with the first camp – and I remain baffled about why we are still debating such an obvious point. We’ve long known that family income combined with parental education is the strongest predictor of how well a student will do on most standardized tests. There is abundant evidence that in schools in the poorest communities, achievement is considerably lower than in schools with more socioeconomic diversity.
Studies on literacy development in small children show that middle-class children arrive in kindergarten literally knowing hundreds more words than poor children.
And schools alone – not even the very best schools – cannot erase the effects of poverty.”
Read the full text here: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/09/02/2010-09-02_accept_it_poverty_hurts_learning.html#ixzz11hoCr9lx
Tags: education, educational debate, learning, poverty
There was an interesting article in the Harvard Education Letter recently about the increasing diversity of the student body and the cultural gap that often exists between these students and their teachers. An excerpt:
Despite initiatives to increase the diversity of teachers in the United States, many do not share the same racial, ethnic, or cultural background as their students. According to the most recent figures available from the National Center for Education Statistics, 83 percent of teachers in U.S. public schools were white as of 2007–2008; while 56 percent of students were white, 21 percent were Hispanic, and 17 percent were black. Charter school teachers were only slightly more diverse: 73 percent were white, 12 percent were black, and 9 percent were Hispanic.
Tags: achievement gap, cultural gap, diversity
This topic has been in the news a lot lately, catapulted into the mainstream most recently in the New York Times. Now Ode Magazine tackles the issue:
“Scientists are discovering an unexpected side effect: The higher digital input we receive, the less time our brains get to process information, learn and become creative. In other words: We need downtime to get new insights and new ideas.”
Tags: digital age, learning
http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html
Take a look at our curriculum samples by grade here:
Tags: k-8 curriculum, k8 curriculum
Tags: educational resources
