Global Lives in the classroom? Share your ideas & experiences!

by David Evan Harris on June 3, 2009, 9:32 a.m.

(Global Lives in the classroom? Share your ideas & experiences!)

Students at Anren Senior Middle School transfixed on footage from Malawi, Japan and the US.

Have you shown Global Lives video in a classroom or other educational setting? How did it go? What were the circumstances, what exactly did you show and how did it go? Did you integrate with other lessons or build a custom unit around the content?

I personally have shown our work in classrooms on two occasions in 2008, at Anren Senior Middle Schooll in the small town of Anren, China and at the Kais Academy, an international high school in Tokyo. I also helped organize 4-screen public installations held at the campuses of the United Nations University (2008) and the University of California at Berkeley's Anthropology Department.

In Anren, the classroom was 16 & 17-year-olds and they went absolutely crazy when our Global Lives crew walked in the door of their classroom. It was the night before the Global Lives China shoot with Kai Liu was set to take place and since he is a cafeteria worker in the junior high school, our crew was invited to show our work to a class there and we jumped at the opportunity.

The video crew consisted of people from 7 different nationalities (Japanese, French, Italian, Venezuelan, Chinese, Taiwanese and US), and for many of the students in the class, it was their first time ever meeting a person from a foreign country. We were greeting literally by screaming and clapping from the classroom of 40 odd students. Their excitement was palpable and it made for one of the most amazing and surreal experiences of my life. We showed them videos straight from our DVD with English subtitles (they had been studying English for years and seemed to understand well) and ended up showing the shorts (5-10 minutes each) from the US, Japan and Malawi.

The most exciting part of the session happened after we showed the footage of Rumi Nagashima from Tokyo. Luckily, Nobuhiro Awata, one of the crew members and hardcore Global Lives production volunteer (veteran of 2 shoots and 2 installations!), speaks both Japanese and Chinese and was able to translate between Chinese and Japanese so that he and the other two Japanese crew members, Chieko (also veteran of 2 shoots!) and Hiroko, could communicate directly with the students.

Giddy after seeing the footage, one asked Nobuhiro if he, Chieko and Hiroko would sing a song in Japanese (see photos below). Much applause and giggling ensued. The next question was asked by a more serious student, asking Nobu if he and his compatriots could "explain the war of Japanese agression against China." The tone clearly changed dramatically and Nobu, put on the spot in a dramatic manner, managed to lead a very coherent discussion on the topic between himself, the class, Chieko and Hiroko, as well as Major Tian and Yi Han, the two Chinese Global Lives crew members.

The Global Lives footage became what I had always dreamed of: a platform for a much deeper interchange about cultural, political and historical relationships between nations and people. We left copies of the DVD with the teacher and the school and after the screening it was a struggle to even get out of the class. The students agressively asked us all for our signatures before leaving and bid us a screaming and clapping farewell. During the shoot the following day we ran into many of the students who were quite happy to see us and be part of the shoot.

Global Lives crew members introduce themselves and the project to Anren Senior Middle School. Crew left to right: David Harris, Major Tian, Nobuhiro Awata, Bastien Robillard, Hiroko Sumikura, Chieko Kato.

Students clap along as Global Lives crew members sing a song in Japanese. Crew members foreground left to right: Major Tian, Irene Herrera, Nobuhiro Awata. Background: Bastien Robillard, Ya-Hsuan Huang, Yi Han.

I grab a video camera to capture Nobuhiro and Hiroko singing in Japanese to the students of Anren Senior Middle School.

The Kais Academy screening in Tokyo was not quite as dramatic, but it was very successful. A good model for the screening was used as well—Jonathan Yaffe, the school's principal, had teachers show one Global Lives short per day during the week leading up to my Friday presentation from the same DVD (Malawi, Japan, Brazil, US). I spent most of the presentation then on explaining the process behind producing the shoots.

More information about the UC Berkeley and United Nations University installations can be found on our past showings page. All of the video that was shown in classrooms is available for purchase on our tri-lingual DVD (English, Portuguese, Japanese) and viewable for free online as well. A guide to hosting your own video installation is available as well for educators with access to multiple projectors or screens.

Please post your own stories of using Global Lives footage in an educational setting here, as well as any suggestions for how to complement it with additional curricula or lesson plans. Volunteers are currently in the process of assembly a large format photography book & DVD set with video and still images of the first ten Global Lives shoots, and we aim to have a special section in this book featuring suggested lesson plans for a variety of grade levels using the Global Lives material. The book is slated for release by the end of 2009 or early 2010. If you're interested in volunteering to work on any of this, post your ideas here and also feel free to send an email to info [at] globallives [dot] org . We're open to all sorts of ideas!

by Anonymous on June 3, 2009, 4:09 p.m.

(edumacation!)

Thanks for the great opener, David! It’s heartwarming to read about the China school screening especially, and I like the Tokyo school template for the screenings. In Indonesia, we’ve only screened the shorts from the DVD at a small informal gathering at the Sarimukti village head’s home, with a mix of age groups – but there are already plans to show the finished short of the Indonesia shoot, along with the rest of the shorts, on a makeshift cinema screen in Sarimukti. And for sure we would like to have screenings at as many educational venues as possible! I’m by no means an expert on education, but here are some initial thoughts:

1. I know there are already amazing teachers among the Global Lives crew, so it would be great to hear from you (you know who you are), and to link as many educators as possible to this conversation. J I’ll be spreading the word on teachers’ mailing lists here and linking to this post.

2. In line with the book’s special section, I think the website (which will hopefully be redone by the geek guru team!) should be an active part of the lesson plans. In turn, the site should have the book’s section on education online, and be as interactive as possible in terms of generating a conversation among the audience - including schoolchildren and teachers - allowing them to post their thoughts and images from GLP screenings, and contribute to the expanding convo on using GLPs in schools/museums/art centers/universities/etc. Upcoming versions of the DVD could also include a short with suggestions on how to incorporate GLP in schools at different grade levels.

3. Is there any possibility of collaborating with UNESCO as far as educational initiatives go, and/or to link up with national Departments of Education?

4. An anecdote: I was showing the DVD to potential institutional collaborators here in Indonesia, who shall remain nameless and in any case did not end up working with us. One response to the Malawi short  was “I can’t believe people still live like that!” And in response to the Japan and Malawi shorts: “We should show this to schoolchildren, to show them that they should stop complaining about their lives – some people have it so much worse!” Clearly that’s not the goal of GLP.. I know the conversation about representation has already been going on on the GLP Malawi Facebook group, and it’s a good one to continue as we talk about lesson plans and such. I can just see a group of teachers taking the material and using it unconstructively. Indonesia’s subject, Dadah, for example, is an incredibly strong and intelligent woman, and I would hate to see her being touted as a two-dimensional example of an “oppressed Third World Muslim woman working in the fields”. I hope the footage and backgrounders will prevent that!

That’s all for now.. So much more to talk about J

GLP love!

Okka

by okka on Aug. 12, 2009, 2:29 a.m.

(brainstorming session)

 Hi all,

by okka on Aug. 16, 2009, 11:08 a.m.

(jakarta school screenings)

 hey everybody,

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