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Spring 2014 Volume 19 Number 2 ▪ About This Issue▪ 1995-Teacher Talk...By Nancy Fortier▪ 1995-Changing the World: One Child At A Time...By Caroly
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Spring 2014
Volume 19
Number 2 |
 Larry and Jane Levine |
This is a very special issue of the newsletter as in reality Jane and I never in our wildest dreams thought that KIDS would still be an operating organization for twenty years. Not only do we celebrate our 20th Anniversary, but the program continues to grow and continues to fulfill its mission to help young people understand that it is within their power to make a difference in their community and world.
We have selected a few articles written by educators/teachers from the hundreds that have appeared in the newsletter since our first issue was published in 1994. In that time KIDS has grown from a subscriber base of 20 to current 13,000. The following selections demonstrate the power of the KIDS Teacher Guide when in the hands of creative teachers. Some of the educators are still active members of the KIDS family while most of the core base in the 1990s have moved on and we have lost touch with them.
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In preparing to write this article, I started to reflect on “how did we get here from there?” A profound question without a good answer, except to say that our involvement with KIDS probably reflects life. Through a series of chance encounters, conversations, and events we found ourselves at York Middle School trying to increase the awareness among our students about the vast problems of world hunger.
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To a sixth grader, the world often seems out of control, bodies are changing, emotions are in a whirl, junior high is looming. Then there are the world’s problems- pollution, violence, drugs, poverty, war, a seemingly endless array of worries.
I teach sixth grade, and last year I decided I would try to help my students feel that they could take hold of at least one piece of the world and do something to change it for the better. Maybe then, they would realize that they could be in control of their own lives and destinies.
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 Ava McCall |
Teaching to make a difference in the world is often a lonely endeavor. Most educators are not dedicated to addressing social problems in their classroom curriculum and encouraging students to work together for social change. It is immensely challenging for teachers to focus on such concerns as hunger and poverty in the local community and the world when such a focus is not encouraged in the school curriculum. Sometimes parents do not feel it is appropriate to teach their children about such seemingly depressing topics. Teacher accountability, performance measures, and state and local standards can also draw teachers’ attention away from teaching about real world problems.
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"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
Chief Seattle speaks of the interdependence of man in this quote. The life we have created in all its societal complexity demands that we look to the well-being of each strand in the web of life. As a member of this society, I am emotionally moved by the state of my fellow men, but as a teacher I am compelled to act.
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 Judy Huynh |
If you drove through Palo, Michigan, you might think that there was nothing much happening there. There is only one store (Joe’s Market), two churches, and the school. However, if you visited the school, you might be surprised at what’s happening. Students at Palo Community Schools, a rural K – 8 school district, are actively involved in learning about child labor, refugee issues, environmental concerns, and world hunger, and in doing something about these issues.
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I am perplexed and sometimes left speechless by some of the things people say to me. I find it difficult to answer questions whose answers seem so obvious. The title of this article is such a question.
Throughout my thirty-five years in education, it always seemed apparent to me that the primary reason for all that I did was so that the children I was teaching and the adults I was influencing in myriad ways would eventually go away with the idea that they were responsible for more than themselves. Samuel Johnson once said that knowledge without goodness is dangerous. Thus, it would seem implicit that all of the information and skills that we convey to our children is without merit, if we do not simultaneously give them a purpose for having that knowledge.
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 Deanne McBeath |
It all really began in July of 2011 when I took an online Global Collaboration course through the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN). We were asked to pick a project and create plans to implement that project in our school. It was a difficult decision. iEARN has over 150 projects to choose from and many were well suited for The Village Charter School. The Kids Can Make A Difference® (KIDS) Finding Solutions to Hunger project drew me into its tenacious web from the start. I could see ways to work this project into my technology curriculum for my middle school students. They could create Excel spreadsheets from food diaries and PowerPoint presentations from research on hunger in the world and their communities. They could conduct data analysis on hunger statistics, take virtual field trips, and best of all---collaborate with students around the globe.
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 Barbara Nye & Lynn Simoneaux |
Don’t you get it? That’s us … we ARE the ones at the Red Table!” This was one student’s response to a simulation experience highlighting the unequal distribution of food around the world. Students at McCulloch Intermediate School in Dallas, Texas participated in a “Hunger Banquet” put on by 6th grade teachers Barbara Nye and Lynn Simoneaux. The simulation was a powerful learning experience. Students learned firsthand how unfairly food and other resources are distributed in our world.
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 Mary Brownell |
The Philadelphia wind is harsh; it is seven fifteen on a Monday morning in early April. The unzipped jackets of middle school girls flap open against their uniform shirts. They can’t even feel the wind against their arms. They’re carrying buckets of water, a small brown basket lined with a blue kitchen towel, a plastic pail of layer’s grain, a handful of spinach, one shovel, one rake, and armfuls of straw. One fifth grader has my key ring in her pocket; next to a house key, a car key and a classroom key is, now, one that fits the small wooden door to a hen house. On one side of its thin metal surface is a sticker of a blue butterfly, so we’ll know which key is the right one, another girl had assured me the day the hens arrived.
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