I attended an O Ambassadors presentation and it was amazing and inspirational. Here's some background on the organization. Oprah's Angel network collaborated with Free the Children and created O Ambassadors you can look on Oprah's site or freethechildren.com for more info, but the main idea of this organization is to promote social change through education. If a teacher wants her class to become part of this organization he/she can log on to the site and fill out the application and I believe there is an interview process and the teacher has to explain why he/ she would like to be involved and what they have done in the past as far as social justice is concerned.
Two people from the organization came to the Brooklyn New School and did an amazing and artistic presentation. The gentleman was a former child soldier in the Congo and the woman was from NJ and was a survivor of a home filled with drug abuses and she overcame many odds. As they presented to my class and one other fifth grade class that my CT invited the gentleman began to cry as he shared with us that he was forced to murder his best friend when he was just 5 years old. They didn't share all of this information with us for sympathy rather it was to educate us about many of the injustices against children that are taking place around the world. I felt so empowered and so did my students. My CT who I think is simply amazing has been involved with O Ambassadors for a number of years and I have had such a profound opportunity watching her discuss 'difficult issues' with our students and she does a phenominal job every time. We were informed about child labor that takes place around the world and the poor quality of water that many children are facing every day along with the many issues that prevent children from attending school in Africa. As a teacher I will absolutely apply to be an O Ambassador with my students. I saw my students become so empowered and unsettled about many of the things that they saw. Most importantly to me though I listened to them ask big idea questions which showed me that they were thinking about what they were seeing from higher level and deeper perspective than what they could see on the surface
No comments:
Post a Comment