In many parts of the world, including our Peace Corps match village in rural western Africa, girls are unlikely to continue their education. This impacts their health and well-being, and later the health and well-being of their families and communities. We want to make connections and empower them to be healthy, educated women so they can foster vibrant, healthy families and communities. So we have the following challenge: How can we as students in California engage those in our local community and global network to support the ongoing education of girls in our Peace Corps match village in Africa?
As a result of our work, we will develop two things: a community event that includes student-created multi-media presentations and exhibits to share what we have learned with our francophone community in California and to enlist their support for the students' action plan to engage meaningfully with our Peace Corps World Wise Schools match community and increase the education rate of girls there. We also will be preparing a separate multimedia presentation to be disseminated online to the general public, but specifically targeted to organizations that are working in the country to increase the rate of education of girls there and explain how we plan to support their work in the country (exactly how we will support their work will depend on what the students decide to do).
NOTE: If this turns out not to be an issue with the new community with which we will be matched this year, we will examine other francophone countries in Africa, as well as Haiti and Cambodia (a former French colony where French is still an important second language).
Rights of children
Realities that obstruct education of children in central and West Africa.
Working to ensure education for girls: one example
Le cas au Togo
Tasks not specified.
Student-run management
Implementation information not specified.
Les droits des enfants :
Regardez la liste de vidéos. https://vimeo.com/channels/tleodd
Choisissez-en 5 et regardez-les.
Pour les 5, notez :
Affiche pour promouvoir un droit (le droit que vous trouvez le plus important pour garantir la meilleure vie que possible aux enfants) : éduquer les autres et les encourager de faire quelque chose pour aider ces enfants qui vivent dans les situations où ce droit n'est pas respecté.
Have students watch the first video as a class. For the activity where they choose 5 videos, be sure they have technology available (phones with earbuds, or class sets of tablets/chromebooks/computers). Also be sure your school/district doesn't block the video links.
Vidéo : les enfants qui travaillent dans les mines de diamant de la RDC
Recherchez le travail de l'organisme "Toutes à l'école"
Students will work in teams to explore the resources below and create posters for the classroom about the situation in Togo, and about the groups that are working to improve the rate of girls being educated (and how long they remain in the school system).
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnvHiekKFZc (Video from "Education pour tous au Togo" president introduces the organization and why their work is important.
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWWyQUXNNl0 (Video of a girl who was saved from child marriage in Togo). Important content vocabulary: fournitures
3. Explore the links at the bottom of the page http://becauseiamagirl.ca/fr/connaitre-plan (French-language site for the "Because I'm a girl" program and campaign) and note the important information
4. Explore the links with data about the lives of children in Togo: http://www.humanium.org/fr/togo/ and note the information
5. Note the information in this document: http://www.unicef.org/wcaro/WCARO_Togo_Factsheets_Fr_EducationBase.pdf (note also that the region of Kara, mentioned in the document, is the region in which our Peace Corps Village of Baghan is located)
6. Examine how Togo fares in terms of respecting children's rights in general in this document: http://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/session12/TG/IIMA-IstitutoInternationalMariaAusiliatrice-fr.pdf
7. Projet intégré de protection et de promotion des droits fondamentaux des enfants, notamment des filles, en situation d'extrême pauvreté et/ou victimes d'exploitation au Togo (includes testimonials from girls at the end): http://www.kira-international.org/projetsetpays/projets-finalises/enfantsdanslemilieuportefaix/index.html
8. Blog post about statements by minister of Social Action, Promotion of Women and Literacy regarding importance of education of girls, with examples of programs/steps being taken to improve rate of girls staying in school https://raziaka.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/taux-de-scolarisation-des-jeunes-filles-au-togoseule-une-fille-sur-quatre-arrive-a-terminer-le-secondaire-au-togo/
Ensure devices are available for students to explore links. Have them work in teams if they need to share devices or if they would benefit from collaborating with each other to understand the documents.
Because students will determine for themselves what information and events to include in their local community forum, they will also determine the timeline for deliverables and will decide how to divide up the tasks and the management of the forum. This timeline, list of deliverables and roles/tasks will also be provided to the instructor as well, who will assist in the management by ensuring that all information everyone will need is available in our online system (we will either use a Google Doc/Sheet, our LMS (Schoology) or Planbook--the class will decide what they think will best support their efforts).
As deadlines approach for both drafts for review and final products (again, the students will have determined the deadlines), students will receive reminders in our online lesson planner and also via the texting app "Remind."
For drafts, students will have three rounds of review: self-assessment, peer review, and teacher review.
For self-assessment, they will upload their draft document (or photo or video of it) into the Seesaw app and will use that app's features to "comment" on their document. They will indicate to the instructor what they think they did particularly well and where they have questions or would like feedback because they are unsure of their language use (or other skill/knowledge area).
For peer review, there are two phases. First, they will work in groups to first provide stars, questions and deltas to each other: stars for what the peers thought the individuals did particularly well; questions where the reviewers need clarification from the student who did the work; and deltas to recommend changes that the reviewers believe would improve the work. These could be linguistic corrections, content suggestions/corrections, or aesthetic suggestions.
Students will refine their first drafts based on this initial peer review and any feedback they received on their own self assessment.
For the second phase of peer review, they will submit their second draft to their peers (it may or may not be the same group). This time, peers will use the same evaluation rubric that will be used to score their final products and will mark the appropriate language on the rubric to indicate where they believe the student's performance is in the second draft. Peer reviewers should be ready to explain their marks on the rubric with evidence and examples from the student's draft.
Then, they will create their final drafts. Although that comes after this "managing" phase, it is important to know how their self- and peer-assessment will flow into the summative, so I am providing a description here. For their final product, they will again submit a self-assessment, this time by completing the rubric on their own for their own work and including evidence from their text to support their scores on the various parts of the rubric. The teacher will also use the rubric and will provide the summative evaluation by evaluating the student's work according to the rubric
1. Varying abilities of linguistic knowledge of students: being in a fourth year class does not automatically mean they are at or above intermediate-mid. This becomes very apparent when students are asked to look at each others' work. Some strategic groupings on the part of the teacher may be necessary.
2. Students may need to receive some "training" in providing meaningful and kind feedback, depending on the maturity and experiences of the group.
Through letters and emails, students will demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively and in culturally appropriate ways with an audience of readers and listeners. Their letters will demonstrate both linguistic capacity (at intermediate-mid or higher) as well as interculturality, especially with respect to register (formality and cultural knowledge and sensitivity regarding the traditional values and economic realities that currently keep girls out of school. They will also demonstrate appropriate content knowledge in their letters of the Togolese educational system and cultural values and traditions. As a result, they will receive three grades:
1. demonstrated linguistic proficiency
2. demonstrated interculturality
3. demonstrated cultural knowledge
Students have unlimited opportunity to extend this by working to include more detail (and researching to acquire more knowledge) to enhance the quality and impact of their correspondence.
Interested students whose writing demonstrates sufficient proficiency will also have the opportunity to work more closely with non-governmental organizations and communicate in French with them to determine how we can collaboratively support their efforts and even further their success in Togo.
Available technology both at school and in Togo will determine how often we will do traditional letters verses online correspondence.
Time and technology: the fact that we are working with a country so far away and with such limited access to the Internet makes it more likely that each task will take much longer to accomplish than if we were working closer to home.
Money: depending on the kind of assistance my students would like to provide, in terms of educational support materials for example, money will be a factor. There is no budget for this at my school and we have not yet been able to acquire a grant for this.
Students will design and carry out a community forum for our local school community regarding the importance of the education of girls in the developing world.
Students will determine the important information to include (and any research priorities they have in order to acquire the information), the methods of communicating the information (exhibits, panel discussions, short films they create, etc.), design the timeline for the completion of tasks leading up to the forum, assign roles and responsibilities to each other, and work to ensure everything is completed prior to the event. They will also design all publicity and run the event itself. This particular task is bilingual: students will create all materials in French and English and be willing and able to speak and interact with attendees in French and English depending on the native language of the attendees. In addition to reaching out to our school families, we will also invite the local Alliance Française de Sacramento and another local French cultural group to join us. This provides us with an audience of native speakers in addition to our school families.
Evaluation of their work will be holistic and will include rubric-based scoring for their use of French on the piece(s) for which they were responsible and for their content knowledge. In addition, during the forum itself, they will be scored for their use of French with our French-speaking attendees. They will also contribute to the determination of their final grade with a self assessment and reflection, for which they will use the same rubric I am using, mark their assessment of their performance and indicate evidence in their product that justifies their mark.
This has many opportunities for extension. One of the most obvious is for students to assume some leadership roles for the organization and completion of the various components of this task.
Depending on what students want to do, a variety of technology tools and resources may be necessary, including desktop publishing software, VOIP technologies (such as Skype, etc.), and more.
Money: depending on what students want to do, money may become a factor.
Audience: it is an open event. We won't know how many French speakers will attend for sure until the event itself.
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