by Dinah Armstead
The “A Day to Inspire; A Lifetime to Learn” one-day teacher’s conference
in Chicago certainly lived up to its title. It was very exciting, fast
paced, and packed full of stories, lessons, tools and networking
opportunities for teachers. Here I’ll describe one of the workshops I
attended, but first I’ll pass on some information that may prove to be
very important to educators reading this blog.
Part of what I did was to help out by sitting at the University of
Illinois European Union Center booth to talk to teachers as they came
by. Please find below opportunities whose deadlines are fast
approaching:
Opportunities for high school teachers and students through the EU Center at the University of Illinois
-
Euro Challenge: The Euro Challenge is an exciting educational opportunity for high school
students to learn about the European Union and the euro. Come learn
about how to prepare for the Euro Challenge competition at an
expense-paid teacher orientation/info workshop in Chicago on November 5,
2012. Travel grants and substitute teacher fee are also available. The
deadline to apply for the workshop is October 22, 2012. For more
information about the competition, workshop, and how to register, see
the competition website.
- High School Essay Contest: This year’s essay is all about “Competition & Cooperation,” and what
it means for European countries to compete and cooperate within the
European Union, across the Atlantic, and beyond. The top three student
winners will receive cash prizes, and the winning student’s teacher will
win a place on the summer study tour to Europe in June, 2013. Entries
must be received by December 17, 2012. For further information and
submission form, please see the contest website.
- Illinois High School Translation Competition: The Center for Translation Studies and the European Union Center at the
University of Illinois will hold a translation competition from EU
languages into English for Illinois High-School students in the spring
of 2013. The winners will be brought to the Champaign-Urbana campus for
the one-day program, “Translation Day at Illinois”, on Thursday May 2,
2013. Teachers must register their schools by March 1, 2013. For more
details and contact information see the competition website.
- Summer Curriculum Development Workshop: “The Timeless Mediterranean and the New European Union: Transnational Spaces and Integration,” June 10-12, 2013. Housing is provided, travel grants and CPDUs/CEUs are available. The
deadline to apply is May 6, 2013. Seats are limited, so register early!
For more information and on-line registration visit the workshop website.
Opportunities for High School Students to Study Abroad
Every year the U.S. Dept. of State sponsors several prestigious
scholarships, such as the Fulbright awards. I am an “alumna” of the
“Critical Language Scholarship Program”, which allowed me to travel to
Morocco for a summer to study Arabic. But, one doesn’t have to wait
until college to take advantage of some of these government programs.
I’ve listed information below that was sent to me for dissemination
among high school students and those who work with them.
The Department of State is currently recruiting for several study abroad
scholarship programs for U.S. citizen high school students:
The National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) offers
merit-based scholarships to U. S. high-school aged students for overseas
study of seven critical foreign languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin),
Hindi, Korean, Persian (Tajik), Russian and Turkish. The NSLI-Y
program is designed to immerse participants in the cultural life of the
host country, giving them invaluable formal and informal language
practice and sparking a lifetime interest in foreign languages and
cultures. Applications for summer 2013 and academic year 2013-2014
programs are due November 1, 2012.
The Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Abroad Program offers
scholarships to American high school students to spend the 2013-14
academic year in countries that may include Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali (semester), Morocco,
Oman, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey. This post-9/11
program focuses on increasing understanding between people in the U.S.
and countries with significant Muslim populations. The application
deadline is January 10, 2013.
Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program (CBYX) was established in 1983
to celebrate German-American friendship based on common values of
democracy. Secondary school students live with host families, attend
local schools, and participate in community life in Germany. Young
professionals (undergraduates) and high school graduates of vocational
studies aged 18-24 study and participate in practical training.
Scholarships are now available for academic year 2013-14; application
deadlines vary by U.S. region and range from September 2012 to January
2013. For more information and application deadlines, visit the
organization in charge of recruitment for your state.
The American Youth Leadership Program offers opportunities for American
high school students and educators to travel abroad on a three to
four week-long exchange program to gain first-hand knowledge of foreign
cultures and to collaborate on solving global issues. Several
different organizations implement this program, and each has organized
an academic and experiential educational exchange focused on dialogue
and debate, leadership development, and community service. Recruitment
areas and application deadlines vary, so please check the American Youth
Leadership Program website for more information.
Other Sessions/Highlights: "Immigrants, Refugees and Children: Acceptance and Understanding"
This session was conducted by a Chicago public school teacher who had
won a small grant for “Teaching Social Justice through Literature”.
She used the grant to purchase a small library of children’s books on
the topics of refugees and culture differences. A couple of the titles
in her library (which she brought her for our viewing) were, “Four
feet, two sandals” and “Mohammed’s Journey: A Refugee Diary”. Students
read and analyzed these books throughout her unit. She began her
presentation by leading us in an activity which she often used with
her students to jumpstart this unit. We had only two minutes to think
of and write down three things that we would grab in our homes if we were
suddenly told that we had two minutes to grab anything
before we left our house for good, never to see it again. We then
discussed what we took and why, and the stress we would feel by being
put into such a situation. The children would then be led in the
activity to consider that sometimes this is the case for someone who is a
refugee. They were encouraged to be empathetic, and consider how upset they
would be, and understand how upsetting it must be in the life of a
refugee. The unit went on to use other engaging activities, including
having the students make passports, learn about Ellis Island, and learn
basic stats on refugees today. The teacher utilized a free lesson plan
online designed to guide students toward understanding how it might be
to be in someone else’s shoes. She found resources for teachers
including lesson plans and videos on a United Nations website:
She also shared some other resources for teachers to teach on this and related topics:
I really liked these lesson plans and the unit as a whole. I believe
they could be particularly helpful across many different student groups.
The unit could be adjusted to different ages by choosing books
appropriate to the target age. Also, the teacher explained that winning
the grant was something that she felt was especially useful because
after working with the classroom books she was able to purchase with the
grant money, and developing materials to go with the unit alongside the
books, she felt that her time was well invested because should she ever
change schools, she would be allowed to take the books and materials
with her. Finally, she also shared with us another website that had free
stuff for teachers teaching this topic:
All in all, I learned a great deal. I was reminded of what great
resources exist in Chicago and what great people work in Chicago Public
Schools. Plus, it was special being back in the high school where I had
been a student oh, so many years ago. Even better is the fact I
learned in 2008, that before I was ever a student there, a certain other
Chicagoan had gone to school there as a teenager, First Lady, Michelle
Obama.
"Story-in-a-can"
In the main exhibition hall, there was one exhibit called,
“Story-in-a-Can” that demonstrated a lesson plan where the teacher
guided students in the construction of a physical medium- an empty paper
towel roll cylinder placed inside a large cylinder- shaped box (like an
empty oatmeal box). Several sheets of paper containing a story were
taped together in a long strip and then rolled onto the roll and placed
in the box. The box had a slit opening where one could pull the story
paper out, similar to how we would pull paper towels.
They had a handout that explained how this medium could be used to teach
anything that required sequential events from personal narratives, to
how-to-books, to experiments to history, to math.
But the best part was the student participation. There were four high
school students, three girls and one boy who were at the conference that
day, even though it was a conference for teachers. They proudly
demonstrated and explained their (history) stories-in-cans to anyone
who would listen. Listening to them was informative and an absolute
delight.
Dinah Armstead works in the Division of Instructional Development at the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois. She is currently working on a Ph.D. in Global Studies in Education in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois. Her interests include Educational Rights for North African (and other) Immigrants, focusing on females in the European Union and Language Policy.
Photo credit:
"Globe" (c) 2009 Groume, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
A Day to Inspire; A Lifetime to Learn: Chicago Foundation for Education (CFE) Teacher Workshop at Whitney Young High School
Mr. Sullivan was one
of the most entertaining speakers we enjoyed on the tour. He combined his erudition with regular doses
of puns and humor. As he was describing
to our group a set of tips he had for being successful on the foreign service
exam for the US State Department, I asked him who it is that grades those
exams. I told him that I had helped my
students be successful on the AP World exam because I had heavily picked the
brains of readers of the AP World test, and so I thought knowing who grades the
State Department test would be an added tip for those taking it. He responded by saying that he wanted to walk
out with me after the meeting, because his daughter was going to be taking AP
tests soon! 
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