The Edible Schoolyard and A Night in the Global Village

The Edible Schoolyard video was about students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California learning how to succeed outside of the classroom. The students would garden the first period of school time. This program was actually created by a lady that wanted to improve school lunches in Berkeley. This helped the students learn about planting, harvesting, and eating. It also helped with subjects such as social studies, math, science, and even life. The teacher uses everything to teach the students. The teachers are trained to make the garden the center of their teaching. The students learned to cooperate to do projects together. The students would grow the food and cook the food and this made them want to eat the food. They learned to use concentration and they learned how to be generous. The benefit of growing the garden comes to the students senses. This is basics for students to learn, which students used to be taught at home, but they are not anymore. Not always the book smart students excel when it comes to hand-ons activities such as this. The students that struggle in the classroom may adapt better to this because it is something that they can achieve.

A Night in the Global Village is a video on students at Rocky Mountain School Expeditionary Learning in Perryville, Arkansas learning how to live as other countries. There were homemade villages created for the students to stay in. All the students voluntarily traded their privilege as Americans for the less fortunate. This program allows students to walk in others shoes. They learn about poverty, hunger, and development. The students were separated into groups and each group has an adult with them. The adult got to choose whether to act as an adult or act as a child. This helped the children to stand up. Each group is sent to a different homemade village. All of the groups received resources for their stay, except for the refugees. They received nothing at all and they could not speak to other groups. The students all received resources but not all the resources that they needed for survival. The students had to begin to cooperating with each other to provide each group everything needed. Students learned to work together. The students also had to do chores such as cutting wood and feeding the animals. Each student had choices to make to survive. This helps the children learn how other countries live and nothing beats living a lesson.

I think these were really great videos. Only if I could have done this during my school years. I think these kind of experiences need to be experienced by all students. I could use these podcasts as a teacher to show my students how developed our world is, especially the United States. This can help all students begin to learn about different cultures(and don't you know we need that) and help them learn how to survive in real life.

Teaching is a great responsibility. Teaching is not only in the classroom, it is also outside. The videos are great examples of this. Teachers can use these videos to publish to the world that our students are becoming educated through new technology. I think that this is great, but we really need to get all of our students involved so that they are not so far behind that they give up.