Saturday, April 23, 2016

Brazilian Preschool Classroom


In the video, World Endeavors: Brazil Volunteers 9: Daycare Center Classroom, it showed a typical preschool classroom that had limited resources. They have a couple of tables, a chalk board, one box of broken toys, and two shelves of arts and crafts. The teachers do the best they can with their lessons plans that they make from scratch. Being in a center like this I can imagine how hard it can be for children to learn at their best potential and for teachers to teach at their best. Watch the video below for a visual viewing.

 

World Endeavors. (2009, July 28). World Endeavors:Brazil Volunteers 9 Daycare Center Classroom. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmWKL3AEtrc

Saturday, April 2, 2016

"KaKenya" Woman of Strength!

Kakenya - Girl


KaKenya is a young girl from Maasai, Kenya that decided to continue in school instead of dropping out at 12 years old and becoming a teen mother. She told her father that she wanted to continue school. He agreed if she goes through her woman ceremony. During her woman ceremony, she endured the most painful genital mutilation. She was in pain for weeks, but she did attend high school. After graduation she received a scholarship to a college in Virginia. She is the first girl in her village to attend college and earn her PhD. Afterwards, she returned back to her community to help her people. She found out that it was illegal in Kenya to mutilate girls and they had the right to own land. She founded an organization called KaKenya Center for Excellence. Girls were able to go to school and not get mutilated anymore and gave them their self-worth back (KaKenya Center for Excellence, 2016). Loved this story!

In KaKenya’s story she realized that education was important and would change her life for the better. Even though her mother was not educated she instilled in her children that they should have a better life than her. No matter what country you are born in education gives you a better quality of life (KaKenya Center for Excellence, 2016).

The fact that the men in her society felt like boys were better, KaKenya fought the odds and changed her life and the life of woman in her village. I hated the fact that men thought her scholarship was a waste because it did not go to boy. However, she found a way for her village to get her plane ticket to the USA to go to college. I hope today the men in her village are no longer sexist (KaKenya Center for Excellence, 2016).


KaKenya Center for Excellence. (2016). http://blog.teacollection.com/kakenya-gfc#more-18989?utm_source=GFC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2016MarGiveBackEmail

Watch her story on TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/kakenya_ntaiya_a_girl_who_demanded_school?language=en