Vow of Silence

Free the Children have an annual awareness campaign called The Vow of Silence. 





The main goal for the Grade 8 Teaching team at Sargent Park was to make our students aware of why it is important to stand in solidarity with the millions of child labourers in the world.

The Students in our school need to know that they do not need to  stand by while children are subjected to exploitation, poverty and the denial of their basic rights.

The Vow of Silence is a way to make them aware.  So on November 30th this year all of the Grade 8 students and many of their classmates went silent for a day.  In the school teachers did not talk, annoucments were not read and silence reigned over all.  It was amazing.  For a loonie or a toonie the students were allowed and encouraged not to talk, use cellphones, text, connect on the internet for a day.  Many passed the test.  Hallways were silent during classtime, during class change and even during lunch.  Ordering lunch was difficult when you do not have a voice but students managed to communicate even without a voice.

The Grade 8 team passed out information for other teachers to use in their classes.  Articles talking about the exploitation of children around the world were used as language arts and social studies lessons.  As a school we became more aware.

At the end of the day when it was all over students and staff were more aware of what was going on around the world. We had also raised over $300 for Free the Children. 




Did you take the Vow of Silence this year? It is never to late.
Here is what our day sounded and looked like.

We Day Wrap up

It is just under a week ago that 45 of us from Sargent Park School attended We Day in Winnipeg.  What a wonderful event.  If your city does not have a We Day I highly recommend becoming a Free the Children School and traveling to the closest city that has one.  It is a life changing event for many students.
Starting early in the morning the students arrived at school and prepared to go to the MTS Centre.


cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

We decided to go by transit bus due to the ease of getting to and from downtown.  This proved to be the right decision. The bus picked us up right out side the school and had us at We Day in under 15 minutes. Yeah bring on We Day.

Before the concert the students went to the various t shirt outlets and souvenir kiosks and purchased many items to remember We Day.  These souvenirs would go with the We Day shirts we created at school.  Being dressed as a team was a gave us that togetherness feeling. 

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
It should be noted that other divisions bought tshirts for their entire crew that went to We Day.  These florescent yellow  shirts really glowed in the black light of the arena and would be standing out on TV and the simulcast.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
We Day then started in earnest.  This concert was designed for youth.  It was amazing.  You had 5 to 6 minutes of high energy music and dancing followed by a short video and then a speaker.  This kept the attention of all those in the audience.  Amazing messages were soaked in by all the students in the audience.

Memorable speakers were The Honorable Paul Martin, Mia Farrow, Hannah Taylor, and Rick Hansen.  But it was Spencer West and the Kielburger Brothers.  The ability of these speakers to stir emotions inside todays teens and make them want to be agents of change shows the power of the day. 

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
Kids walked out of the Arena wanting to do more.  Asking questions about how they were going to change things at school, in their community and around the globe.

Arriving back at the school we had a debriefing session and started with the next stage of this process.  The Vow of Silence.

This will take place on November 30.  Our goal, to silence our school, raise $500 and stand in solidarity with those who do not have a voice around the world.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
Updates to follow!

We Day Challenge

With We Day fast approaching we are needing to choose 30 of you to go to We Day. This will be a very hard to choose. Here are some things you can do to make it easier for us.

You can Create a Poster

You could also learn the We Day Dance


Or even enter the contest. But the deadline is fast approaching.

It is up to you to act and create awareness for this event. What will you do to go to We Day.  We await your actions.

Halloween for Hunger... The Results

Today is November 1st and the students have returned from Halloween for Hunger.  Over half of the students participated.  I am very impressed.  These students decided to forgo candy at houses to ask for donations to Winnipeg Harvest.  We have great kids.  One of their comments this morning was...
"The people in the neighborhood were all saying WE LOVE Sargent Park Kids".  Well so do I.

I set the bar high when I asked these students to participate.  I asked them to try to get 1400 items for harvest.  They almost made this goal.  They brought in 1281 items for Winnipeg Harvest.  It is all sitting in my computer lab.  Tomorrow we will package it up and send it up the street to the food bank.

Way to go Sargent Park.  You are truly amazing.  Great group of kids and fantastic team of teachers pushing you to bigger and better things.  Keep it up... soon we will be doing more great things. 

Here is a movie of the students creating a wall with 1300 items of food.

The Power of Teaching Citizenship

Well it is the end of October, the temperature is cooling off here in Manitoba but it is rising inside the Grade 8 classes at Sargent Park School.  We are embarking on our fourth year of Teaching Citizenship and we have added a few new twists.

One of the first twists is that we have asked the students to participate in an activity called Halloween for Hunger.



We have had 3 meetings with the students so far.  Of the 140 that we teach between 60 and 70 are willing to do this activity.  Wow if each student brings in 10 items for our food bank that would be over 700 items.  Our class food drives have been successful so far and we have brought in between 100 and 200 items.  I am proud of our students.  Great cause too.  Helping hunger at Halloween instead of helping tooth decay.

This year we are a We School.  This means that we get to participate in We Day in Winnipeg and do activities for Free the Children.  This has opened up many opportunities for our students to see the power of youth in action. We get to take 45 students to this event.  So they are showing us actions they are doing to be chosen.  Sadly there will be lots of competition. and not enough seats.  The rest of the rooms will watch the simulcast on Much Music back at the school.


Here is what we have done so far....

To inspire the students about the power of humanity we showed this X-Factor Australia clip. If  you have not seen it you need to. Warning you will need some kleenex at the end.  Powerful stuff. When showing this to your students stop it at the 50 second mark.  Talk about what they have seen then play the rest of the video.  (The crafting of this video by X-factor is also worth noting.  For a film class it is amazing how powerful the soundtrack and editing is)



Our first We Day activities focused around Spencer West and Craig Keilburger.  Spencer is a motivational speaker for a group called Me to We.  It is affiliated with Free the Children and pushes youth to become active in their community and around the world.  We showed a video of Spencer


Following that we had the kids read a biography of Spencer we had found online.  The students read the biography and highlighted the key words.  We are going to have them put all the words into a Word splash like a Wordle.

Once the students complete this task they are doing a few different activities, found on the second page of the document.  Most importantly we want the kids to go from I COULD to I WILL statements.  Following the I WILL statements we will take a photo of the students eyes and I WILL statement over their mouths.  This will be made into a movie and photo mosaic like the one found at this Ewan McIntosh post. Instead of hands we will use our I WILL statements.  It should be powerful.

http://yfrog.com/kljbhxuj

We also introduced the students to Craig Keilburger.  In my opinion one of the most important Canadians of all time.  At such a young age Craig is the founder and spark behind the Free the Children Organization.  This is a group he started when he was but.... 11 years old.

As we were studying and learning about Craig the idea was to draw parallels between his life and the lives of my students.  We used a 3 column approach to attack this issue.  I found a biography of Craig online and the students read and watched the video to find out key characteristics about Craig's life and passions. It was interesting to see all the interest in what he had accomplished and to see them struggle to see similarities between what their lives are like and what his has been.  Once the students had done this note taking we asked them to choose 4 character traits they admire in Craig and write a few sentences explaining why they had chosen them.

Lots of work for a morning but it was amazing.  I had two classes in my room.  That is 70 students.  All of them were on task and talking about what we were doing and the people they had just met on video and print.

We will continue this lesson on Monday morning.  Following this we will show Pay It Forward and inspire the students to do Random Acts of Kindness!! Wow they will really start to change soon!!

We Day Activities Day 1

Here are some interesting videos to get your into the mood for today.
Why Free the Children

Emmanuel



Craig Kielburger

Spencer West




 

We Day Dance

Part of the festivities at We Day is doing the We Day Dance.  Here are the dance moves you need to learn.  Teach a friend, teach a teacher... just have fun.



Keep practicing

We Day 2011

A fabulous event is coming to Winnipeg on November 23rd.  The Grade 8 team is able to take some of you to this event!!



Why do you want to go to We Day! Actions speak louder than words.  What will you do to make us choose you to go to this event...

There is time to make a difference.