Perspective Does Make a Difference

Anita Wilson and Annalisa Marks (Project Ambassadors, UG)

OWYP Experience

Anita: Working as a Project Ambassador for One World Youth Project has opened many doors for me that I never envisioned before and, more importantly has helped me to develop skills and interpersonal skills which I believe will take me a far way through life. When I first signed up to be a PA, I was somewhat clueless about the organization and the work that they do in promoting interconnectedness and relationships across continents. I was quickly exposed to and able to meet and converse with persons in countries such as Pakistan, which I had only heard about on television or in the news. I am also honoured that through this programme, I have been given the opportunity to be an ambassador for my country, sharing details of our rich culture and diverse backgrounds with the friends that I’ve made both far and wide.

Classroom Experience

Annalisa: One World Youth Project has offered me the chance to find passion about something new in life. After signing up for this project, I instantly doubted myself; could I actually teach secondary school students every week for what I considered a long time?
I soon found out that being an OWYP Project Ambassador is extremely different from what I believed it to be. The experiences are real, the students are knowledgeable and the content of the curriculum is relevant to many of the things we face in life.

My experience has been rewarding for the majority of the time I spent thus far. Yes there are a few challenges, but this can be expected when working in the real world. By becoming a volunteer with OWYP, I learned more about my country’s culture and was able to share this with persons from the other Universities participating in this project. I gained skills to aid in me being a facilitator, a teacher, a role model and to some extent a friend to those in my class. This experience has also allowed Anita and I to strengthen the bonds of our friendship, as we learned to support each other when needed and to seek advice when necessary. In instances where my strengths were tested, it was good to know that my PA partner was just a phone call or message away or that we are in this together.

Hiccups? Challenges?

Annalisa: Working with such a large number of students is challenging at times. A few students require constant attention and means of discipline. We have yet to find a disciplining strategy that works well for all the students so we improvise at time at take turn addressing classroom issues.

Anita: It sometimes poses a challenge to keep everyone engaged, however this is a challenge which Annalisa and I have accepted and somehow seem to conquer week and week again.

Most exciting moment:

Anita: The most invigorating moment for me thus far was to be greeted by a loud round of applause when returning to the classroom after the two week Easter break. At that moment, I was filled with pride because I believe that was the students’ non-verbal way of applauding the work we do. At that moment, I was proud to call myself a Project Ambassador with the One World Youth Project.

Annalisa: As Anita mentioned, it felt great to be greeted by applause when we returned to the classroom after the break. It is difficult for me to choose a single most exciting moment, but over the past two week I would say my most exciting moment was when the students sat silently and listened to our perspective story, “Moral Fiber”, and afterwards were able to relate and make constructive comments about the content of the story, showing that we were indeed making an impact in their lives.

Keeping Students Engaged in Unique Ways

Eren (Project Ambassador, IBU)

I would like to write about our last two weeks with our students and how we have kept them excited.

During the last two weeks in our classes we have covered perspective, empathy and we have linked empathy with identity. Students were tired because of their exams, but that actually helped us to explain perspective better and try to change their perspective about exams and to make them more optimistic. After our first lessons with our second class we realized that some of the students are very good at drawing, and to make them more involved we told them that they can create drawings to go along with their stories which kept them interested. Both of our classes really enjoy when we film video, so we chose a story that they can act out easily in order to make a short film with them. Videos and drawings are very good tools to keep the students involved and to explain topics more effectively.

We have a really very connection with students (better than first semester). It is good to hear that they have missed us even in one week and their interest makes everything easier. We have planned to invite the students to our university to lead a lesson there, and their school accepted this idea. We are very excited about bringing them to a university campus!

Creating a Safe Space: Sharing Experiences from Outside the Classroom

Brittany Schwartz (Project Ambassador, BU)

Hello from Boston!

One of the highlights in my classroom so far this semester was the exchange activity on food. My students were excited to write out recipes for their favorite meals with their own personal touches. My classroom has a high Latin American population and about a quarter of the class picked pupusas. To my students’ surprise, I had never heard of this dish before and they taught me that it is a type of stuffed tortilla. Even I am learning a lot during our exchange activities!

On a serious note, my classroom was amazingly receptive to the lesson on bullying. Even the students who typically don’t speak up in class wanted to share their personal stories about witnessing a bullying scene or even being bullied themselves. One student told me that no one had ever asked her to talk about bullying before because she just doesn’t talk about it with her friends but that she was really grateful that she had the chance to share that day. This precious comment warmed my heart, and I am so glad that OWYP is providing these students with a safe space to reflect on such serious issues. The students quickly saw repeating themes pop up and started brainstorming strategies to stop bullying before I even prompted them to get their thinking caps on.

I was very impressed by the level of respect the students gave each other during this lesson (the classroom had never been quieter than this day) and am excited for them to continue with this powerful engagement as we build on this lesson with the one that focuses on empathy.

Understanding our Personal and Group Identities

Nora and Dorina (Project Ambassadors, UPR)

Every week of facilitating during this semester has been a pleasant and beneficial experience not only for us as PAs, but also for the students. We have been enjoying the active participation of students during the classes, and the students have been enjoying the lessons while gaining knowledge about the lives of their their counterparts, while also communicating with them through their Project Ambassadors.

Two of the students’ favorite lessons were Lesson 5 and Lesson 6, where they were able to demonstrate their creative skills. Lesson 5 was about “Identity Poems,” and we recorded a lot of this lesson because each students created and read their own poems.

Before entering the poems phase, we started with a revision of the last lesson about the definition of identity, and we asked the students what they learned. After the definition of identity was clear to the whole class, Dorina and I told the students that we brought some poems to read, and after they read them, we asked them to write their own identity poems.
After they were done, we recorded a few of them reciting the poems. Then, we asked them if they enjoyed writing, was it fun, what surprised them etc.

We had time for the exchange activity as well. The topic was about their favorite music and musicians. They enjoyed the topic, and we recorded their responses.

Lesson 6 was “Our Class Identity”. Firstly, students we required to give opinions of what they thought the word “collaboration” meant. After they shared their thoughts, we wrote the exact definition on the board, while pretending to argue between ourselves. We then helped the students understand how our arguing was a problem and how you can instead establish respectful communication and collaboration. After that, we worked on understanding and creating our class identity together, in a collaborative manner.

This is all about lessons 5 and 6. We look forward to continuing the remaining lessons, and facilitating them as successfully as possible.