I am really grateful for the opportunity to attend the Social Issues Day Workshop at Brock on Wednesday. These workshops are great for raising awareness; they make you think and re-examine your set of values and beliefs; they make you question the speaker’s statements and overall effectiveness of workshops. I attended workshops on poverty, grieving children and global education. The first speaker Kalpana Makan talked about poverty. She was a powerful speaker who successfully integrated her experiences into her words. She is a well traveled Canadian/South African woman, whose personal history was tied to poverty. The lesson learned: Never make assumptions about your students. If a student is habitually late for example, simply ask the student what is going on. Sometimes students might live in poverty, single parent homes and their responsibilities might include caring for other siblings. When it comes to parents who live in poverty, do not assume they do not care about their children. Every parent cares about their child. As a teacher, it is our duty to observe our students, learn more about them and try to help them learn. The sad reality is that one is six children in Canada live in poverty which affects many aspects of their lives. One of them is their academic performance. As educators we need to provide these students with care and encouragement to succeed in school as their other financially better off peers.
The second workshop was about grieving and grieving children. To be effective when helping grieving students, first we need to come to terms with our own grief. That means some work on our part. We need to be aware of issues that surround death and our own discomfort as well. We can show care and understanding to students who are grieving without giving advice and compulsively trying to make things better. We can show our understanding by simply listening and being with students. If we are unable to help them, we could possibly refer them to someone who can. Another interesting thing I learned is that grieving doesn’t have to be a linear process. We can grieve at different stages of our lives in different ways. Therefore, the child could grieve over losing their mother when they are 10, 14, 17, as their understanding of the world changes. This workshop helped me better understand my own grief. I think I learned about some valuable tips when it comes to dealing with grief. However, I must admit that when I left the workshop, I could feel many knots throughout my body. The speaker would most likely comment that those are residues of my “un-tackled” emotions which require work.
If we are to follow the natural progression or digression of things, from excellent, to good, to poor, then I would have to say that I was rather disappointed with the last workshop on global education. I might have expected fireworks here, but what I ended up listening to was not about constructive “how” to better the global community, but to an academic deconstruction of the term “helping”. I might be too critical, but that workshop seemed to be an intellectual arena of young minds hungry for shredding everything to pieces. I tend to stay away from that kind of “activism”. Thank you, but no thank you! What I learned from this one: You have to live your words if you want to make them powerful! Otherwise, they are nothing more than voiced textbook, indoctrinated, empty words.
Overall note: I really enjoyed listening to Kalpana. Oh yes, think twice before wearing names brands to school. Think of the message you are sending to your students.
Cheers!
