I had only ever seen “Challenge Day” on MTV, but after participating in a Challenge Day activity I wanted to read more into the program and see what it has to offer young people in the public school education system.  I went online to the official Challenge Day website and read up on the program and how it is actually implemented.  http://www.challengeday.org/index.php

Does something like Challenge Day really work to bring peace awareness and education to youth?  I found the answer to this question to simply be, yes it does.  I had never thought something such as a Challenge Day or even one of the activities from it would have an effect on me or allow me to open up to my peers so they could genuinely understand who I was.  Then again, you never know what you are personally capable of until you allow yourself to move outside of your comfort zone and discover yourself.

Challenge Day is best suited for young adults starting at the middle school age and can be used from there on up, in my opinion.  One thing I do believe for Challenge Day to be effective is that the people participating have to be able to understand their emotions.  A reason I don’t think Challenge Day would have as much of an impact on young elementary aged children is because they may not be as developed  in comprehending and expressing their emotions.  Challenge Day goes through a series of activities that allows students who have never talked to one another to share stories, laughter, and a range of emotions throughout the day.  These activities can sometimes start out as weird or uncomfortable because you never know how deep someone will actually go, but the end results are so amazing!

I believe every middle school, high school, and even college level professor should implement at least one challenge day during the semester because of how much time it requires.  It does take 6.5 hours at least, so the professors would have to set aside an entire day to successfully complete Challenge Day.  Here is how it works:  http://www.challengeday.org/how-challenge-day-works.php. 

So here is what I’m going to do…I’m going to challenge teachers that come across this blog to plan and execute a Challenge Day with their schools, whether it’s this year or next year.  I never thought I’d be a believer of the phenomenon “Challenge Day” that was aired on MTV, but it does work.  It gives students the chance to dive into a form of Peace Education that doesn’t require reading books and articles, but gives them the first hand experience in seeing peace at work and them being the peacemakers.

I really wish that Challenge Day existed when I was in middle school and high school.  It is something I strongly believe should be implemented into the public school educational system.  I believe it can bring change and help develop peace education and conflict resolution techniques at an early age.

Here are research and evaluations about Challenge Day from the website: http://www.challengeday.org/challenge-day-evaluations-research.php

Here are some articles about schools and Challenge Day:

http://gilroy.patch.com/articles/gilroy-high-school-to-challenge-day-on-wednesday

http://perkiomenvalley.patch.com/articles/challenge-day-returns-to-perkiomen-valley-high-school

What satisfaction would come out of re-thinking the way we look at garbage? Well, if you ask Vik Muniz, he’d say spirit, pride and timeless works of art.

Waste Land, a documentary created by artist Vik Muniz, depicts the lives of a handful of catadores (garbage pickers), who make a living by collecting recyclable material from the world’s largest dump in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (known as “Jardim Gramacho”). In an area of Rio that is known for violence, drug trafficking, and inequality, Muniz offers a breath of fresh air by using art as a means to transform their trash into inspiring self-portraits.

Context:

This resource would be best served to a community ranging from the high school level onward. In particular, the film would best fit into the curriculum for a social science class (i.e. History). The movie acts as a modern day example of conditions that the marginalized population must endure (in some places of the world) today. It shows an example of how the unemployed resort to unique measures in order to create some source of an income. And, more importantly, it provides a peaceful means to resolve a problem; in this instance art has acted as such means (all the proceeds from Muniz’s work were given right back to the catadores, and used to build a library and create more educational opportunities). It also can help students who are more visual learners to depict what life has been like for the impoverished, especially immigrants in the early 20^th century, and in what (peaceful) means they sought a better life. The movie can also be used in collaboration with the novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Using the novel, along with the movie, helps students to realize the conditions that people even in the United States had to endure through just to make a living. Although the book is fictitious, the original intentions of Sinclair were to portray the life of an immigrant in the 20^th century. Thus, utilizing both resources helps to humanize a part of our nation’s history.

In this regard (using in collaboration with The Jungle), the movie could also be used for an English literature curriculum (at the high school level).

While the movie is very relevant to several aspects of high school curriculums in the public school system, the movie itself could also prove to be a valuable resource for art clubs as well. Muniz’s use of unconventional materials to create masterpieces (for a philanthropic cause) may inspire another young artist to make a difference through art.

Ways to use this resource:

For this resource, one would need to acquire the movie (find out how at the bottom of the entry), and potentially the novel The Jungle. It’s suggested that the curriculum allow the students to engage in a dialogue about the movie, after watching it. Allow them to guide the conversation, which will permit you, as the instructor, to find out the central ideas that most students drew from the film.

Using this suggested model encourages a participatory model of learning. Make the students the “spectactors” (Freire, 1968), instead of the spectators. If they have more control over the discussion, the outcome will be more beneficial to the student and the teacher.

Due to the unconventional nature of the film (a man using garbage from a dump to create art that benefits society), Muniz’s art can help to ignite the creativity within the students, and challenges them to think outside the box. His film also helps to humanize the reality of the impoverished populace, and help students understand how fortunate they are (while also understanding the inequality around them). It displays a very comprehensive, international, yet human rights theme to peace education; while also exploring development education by understanding how to explore economic opportunities in the developing world.

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It’s true. I wouldn’t lie to you! “How?” You might ask. Through organizations like Dance 4 Peace. That’s right, Dance for peace. When this nonprofit popped up on my google search, I knew I had to share this absolute gem. Two of my passions combined into one?! Who doesn’t love a good twofer? And once I found out it all got started in my hometown of Bogotá, Colombia it suddenly became a threefer and just too good to pass up.

Dance 4 Peace was started by life-long dancer Sara Potler. It’s a community education program that promotes mediation skills, anger management, conflict resolution, emotional and civic engagement through dance. They  give youth social and emotional competencies for peace using music, movement, and experiences. With programs in Baltimore, DC, New York, Colombia, Nepal, and Philippines it’s a fast growing movement.

Their lessons are easy to incorporate them into any school day through physical education, music, dance, social studies, art, theater, or global studies. It could even be used as an after school activity. With so many curriculum themes (all found on their website) students are not only motivated to work out, but also develop communication, social and emotional skills that can be applied to their lives in order to promote peace. Empathy, understanding, respect, cooperation, and acceptance are all skills emphasized and developed through Dance 4 Peace. The best part? Dance doesn’t discriminate, so youth of all ages and backgrounds can partake in all the knee-bending and hip-shaking.

A lesson from Dance 4 Peace can be as short as 30 minutes or as long as 2 hours depending on what the educator wants. So, whether it’s a simple ice breaker, a bonding activity, or an entire lesson plan this program is the perfect one-size-fits-all for educators everywhere. Just have everyone grab their most comfortable kicks, open up their minds and hearts, turn up the music, and bend those knees.

In my opinion though, I think the most important thing to take away from all this is that just like Sara Potler, you can use your passions and talents to make a statement and create social change. Yes, you! You can make a difference doing what you love. So get creative, take a risk, and make your ideal twofer a reality. My motto for any such twofer: you had me at two.

In his much-acclaimed book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen evaluates the misrepresentations and often omitting of historical truths in textbooks, explaining how myths of our history continue to be perpetuated today. The third chapter of his book, “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving,” offers a sobering and at times much more interesting outlook on one of our most celebrated holidays.

The “First Thanksgiving” story many of us have been taught involves Pilgrims coming to America on the Mayflower, landing at Plymouth Rock, and sharing in a bountiful feast with the Indians (most likely involving a giant turkey and an overflowing cornucopia, one of my favorite things to draw in elementary school). I have a distinct memory of dressing up as an Indian, complete with a leather dress and feathers in my braided pigtails, while other classmates wore Pilgrim attire, for our very own reenactment of the First Thanksgiving. Activities like these are fun for young students because they involve playing make-believe, dressing up in costumes, and eating yummy food.

But Loewen would argue that there are a lot of mistruths behind this story. What many of us don’t know, or at least what isn’t being conveyed in most American history textbooks, is that a devastating plague had swept through North and South America before the Pilgrims arrived. Loewen tells us that “for decades, British and French fishermen had fished off the Massachusetts coast…it is likely that these fishermen transmitted some illness to the people they met. The plague that ensued made the Black Death pale by comparison…within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England,” (70). The epidemic spread west, not stopping until it reached the Pacific Coast.

When the Pilgrims got to Plymouth, which, as Loewen points out, was likely not their intended destination, they found not “virgin wilderness,” as is it often characterized, but entire established, settled villages decimated and abandoned, the ground littered with corpses because no one was left to bury them. The Pilgrims faced no threat from the Indians when they arrived: “Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader, was eager to ally with the Pilgrims because the plague had so weakened his villages” (72). Loewen goes on to point out that Pilgrims stole food and crops from what few Indians remained alive, some even robbing their graves.

There is also the story of Squanto, who some of us may remember as being the Indian that knew how to speak English and taught the Pilgrims how to plant things. But what many textbooks leave out is how Squanto learned the English language, and the near-mythical journey and toil that he endured under the hands of British and Spanish slave traders. After being captured by a British captain and taken back to England, Squanto served 9 years as an employed slave, then returned back to Massachusetts, only to be seized again by another British slave raider and sold into slavery in Spain. Squanto then escaped from slavery and Spain and returned to Massachusetts by way of England and Newfoundland. When he finally arrived, he found his home village Patuxet – aka Plymouth – in ruins. He had no other choice than to comply with the Pilgrims, and “as translator, ambassador, and technical advisor, Squanto was essential to the survival of Plymouth in its first two years” (84).

Loewen shares other fascinating information about this time, including cannibalism in the early Virginia colony, and concludes this about our celebration of Thanksgiving:

“The civil ritual we practice marginalizes Indians. Our archetypal image of the first Thanksgiving portrays…the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best next to their almost naked Indian guests…The notion that ‘we’ advanced peoples provided for the Indians, exactly the converse of the truth, is not benign. It reemerges time and again in our history to complicate race relations. For example, we are told that white plantation owners furnished food and medical care for their slaves, yet every shred of food, shelter, and clothing on the plantations was raised, built, woven, or paid for by black labor. Today Americans believe as part of our political understanding of the world that we are the most generous nation on earth in terms of foreign aid, overlooking the fact that the net dollar flow from almost every Third World nations runs toward the United States.” (86)

So even though Thanksgiving is a great time to enjoy being with family and loved ones and practice gratitude for the gifts we have been given, it’s important to know the real history behind this holiday. By being cognizant of these historical truths, we are recognizing the marginalization of Native Americans in our history, reframing history and changing the perspective of one of our country’s most significant events. Awareness of these truths, whether in a classroom setting or maybe even integrated into your own observance of Thanksgiving, can also help foster community building. By acknowledging marginalized groups and gaining a better understanding of our collective experience, we are taking ownership of our learning and creating new ties that unite us as a community of learners and Americans.

Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: New Press, 1995.

• Read an excerpt from “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving” on google books

• Find the entire book on Amazon