I watched the video, "A night in the global village," on edutopia and I'm blown away. In Perryville, Arkansas they've taken a Heifer farm* and created a global village where students may spend the night as part of a learning experience to walk in someone else's shoes. The villages featured are replicas of what one might see in the following locations: Thailand, a generic urban setting, Zambia, and a refugee camp. Each location is a learning spot, and the students can read about how others live in that location. After the tour, they are assigned groups, and the groups receive a bucket of their resources. They have to cook their own dinner, and work with other groups around them to do so, as people do not have everything they need to make dinner. The refugee camp does not have anything.
Students are learning about others in a classroom, by reading from a textbook, and then for a night they get to actually experience it. "Nothing beats living the experience." The students now have new knowledge they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. They know a bit more about how the choices or decisions they make can effect others, and hopefully they will use it to better the world we inhabit.
I think this is a really neat idea. There are three other places in the US that do this, maybe as teachers we could get one started in Georgia? I recommend watching this 9 minute video.
*This may not actually be a Heifer (a type of cow) farm, but perhaps the company who is doing this is named Heifer. The video wasn't entirely clear.
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6 comments:
What a great idea for young children! For that matter, any person, to be able to walk in a different person's shoes. Most people have become so complacent about the wonderful lives we truly live. Great lesson for children in empathy, and for them to realize how truly wonderful we have it here!
I love this idea. I think the best way for something to make an impact in your life is too experience it. Plus it's been proven that children remember more of what they think about something than what they are told. i think this is a great thing and it gives kids such a great oppertunity to experience a way of life that someone might be living.
Wow, this is a really great idea. How old are the students that are participating in this? I am always for exposing students to different cultures, I hate it when children grow up to be closed-minded. I also wonder where the funding for this comes from. This could be altered for a variety of cultures. It would be really nice if I ever saw any kind of program like this around here-I bet the students learn a lot from it.
What an awesome experience!!!!
It would take ALOT of planning.
Do you think a grant would help cover the expense?
Let me know if you need help starting a program in GA.
Thanks for the information and recommendation!
This assignment sounds awesome. I would have loved to have been apart of something like that. I like those things are not sugar coded in this lesson plan, and students are given the total experience. They learn to work together, think outside the box and most of all, and be more appreciative of the lifestyle they live today. I am definitely interested in starting something like this in Georgia.
This is really interesting I would have loved to do something like that in elementary school. The most exciting things we did were we all made things to sell at an African style market and then we had an English style tea party. Oh and one year we went to the Greek festival.
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