Holistic Educators in Africa and the Diaspora

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Tune in to the Reggae Voyage Show hosted by Ambassador Donovan Longmore as he welcomes Innovation Fair Chairperson, Ambassador Adirah Aishet-Tsalmiel, for an informative discussion about the 2024 Innovation Fair.

Listen live tonight, Saturday, January 6th from 8-10 pm EST at www.wesufm.org or via the radio.garden app by searching for WESU 88.1 FM. For more details on the Innovation Fair, visit www.au6rginnovate.org.

Calling on all budding engineers! This Friday December 18th, a free robotics demo will be held at 10am for ages 3-18.

Location: The Christian Education Mission for East Africa (CEMEA) near Braeburn, Garden Estate.

LEARNING IN A CULTURALLY RELEVANT ENVIRONMENT

It is my opinion that the best way to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds is to apply a pedagogy that is culturally responsive and relevant to the lived experiences of the students in our care. A Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy (CRRP). I don't think this approach is unique to any part of the world, but it has been beautifully articulated and systemised by scholars from the United States such as Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Dr Nicole West-Burns who is also based in Canada. This approach according to Kugler & West-Burns (2010), recognizes that the schooling system is not fair and equitable to all students. It applies the concept of a teaching and pedagogy that responds to and is relevant to the culture of the students, because it recognizes that students come from diverse backgrounds and schooling does not always meet the needs of each student.

In this context culture has to do with world views, beliefs, language and values. CRRP looks at culture as being complex and tied to the cross sections of identities that students have. These are the things that make us as human beings make sense of life. In examining culture it is important to recognize that there is visible(tangible) culture and invisible(intangible) culture. Tangible culture according to UNESCO (n.d.), consists of “ properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage” of a people such as crafts, art music technology, monuments and collections of objects etc. According to,UNESCO (n.d), intangible culture consists of “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.” They also include our values, beliefs, opinions, perspectives and assumptions.

According to the Council of Europe (n.d.), “different traditions have produced specific teaching practices”. These may involve clearly identified types of exercises such as replying orally to questions, doing written exercises or producing certain types of texts. These practices are not ubiquitous and asking the teacher a question in one culture may land one in trouble. These teaching habits have expected corresponding student behaviour, for example arriving on time, addressing the other learners politely, doing the work asked of them, standing up to reply to questions.

These habits according to the Council of Europe (n.d), create a culture that governs the types of verbal relationship, the rules on speaking, assessment methods, physical behaviour and even acceptable types of clothing that are acceptable in the learning environment. Kugler and Westburn (2010) have drawn up a CRRP framework using seven principles that make learning environments more equitable.

The first area the framework tackles is the classroom ecosystem. The second, is providing students with a voice and space to express themselves. The third is the climate of the learning community. The fourth is the connection to the community. The fifth is how we interact with and engage with parents and caregivers, and education community leadership. And the last is how we as educators are building our knowledge base.

How this framework is applied in the classroom according to Kugler and Burns (2010), is educators taking the lived cultural experiences of students and making appropriate linkages between what students have known and understand in order to come up with examples, comparisons and contrast, to make the connection between the curriculum and the children’s culture. This makes educators bridge builders in the classroom. It recognizes that students will always bring their cultural experiences into the classroom because children are not cultural blank slates. This according to Escudero (2019), is where a “teacher uses their students’ culture as the basis for learning, helps students recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs and practices while accessing and learning about the wider world.” It is learning that builds on a student's prior cultural knowledge to make connections between what is known and what they still have to learn and understand.
There are different reasons why we educate children in my community but one of the most quoted reasons is that education is a pathway out of poverty. Duncan-Andrade (2019), says that the purpose of education, it’s not to escape poverty but to end it. Andrade says that, teaching children that education is a pathway to escape poverty is children to be teach children to distance themselves from their community’s pain and to him this is social apartheid. I agree with this view of Andrade’s. In my context, we tackle this social apartheid through community service. In my learning space, our students are required to participate in community service initiatives in the different parts of our city which are representative of our people.

Food is another way we use to reach children from diverse backgrounds . De Garine (2001) described food is a “social marker. Used positively, it demonstrates belonging to a group, and negatively it provides a justification for discrimination”. To that end, we provide nutritious snacks and lunches that we make ourselves at the centre, so that no one goes hungry, but also so that everyone shares the same meal and those who have less will not feel uncovered. We provide simple nutritious meals from what is locally available in our community.

Kugler and West-Burns (2010) say that educators must allow cultural knowledge to come from students and their community. Drinkwater (2010) writes that “the emergence of many newly independent countries in the 1960s coincided with a tremendous surge in mass schooling as nation-states began to signal their move towards an ideal of Western modernity.” She sees this ideal of Western modernity through mass education as the cause of increasing social, political and educational inequities. She links this westernization to globalization which has served to alter the educational system around the world by blurring the lines between the economy and education. Community values have thus become the values of the market and students are the human capital being prepared for competition in this global market. Our homeschooling practice is an aggressive act of decommodifying education and removing our children from the modern auction block.

Our critics say that homeschooling serves to further divide the gap between the haves and have nots because in Kenya, homeschooling is the enclave of the privileged. They feel homeschooling is harmful to the public education system. I tend to agree with them to a large extent, but my view is that the public education system as it is at the moment needs to be overhauled. Escudero (2019) says as educators we need to think about “our students, their communities and broader social contexts and about our curriculum, our instruction, and our role as teachers... We don’t want our students to fit into inequitable systems but to transform them.”

Class and wealth are huge issues in our community. A practical way we address this is in how we source the materials we need to teach our different disciplines. For our art, craft, makerspace and sometimes music classes, we use recycled and upcycled materials for our projects. We want to teach our children to not only be good stewards of the environment, but that everything is useful if we put our minds together and engage our creativity. We encourage children to find materials from what they already have. Students don’t get rewarded for the expense of their projects, but for the creativity, ingenuity and sometimes team effort they put into their creations. We want our children to learn that there are no such things as rejects. Everything and even everyone has a useful place. Our job is to help everyone have a sense of belonging and beyond that a sense of purpose.

We don’t make distinctions based on s*x, race, religion etc. We give every student the opportunity to pick optional classes beaded on interest and not based on gender or other defining factors. We usually have a good balance of boys and girls involved in STEAM ( science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) projects, sports activities and even tasks and responsibilities. We have never devised activities based on gender. We always allow the students to pick what they are interested in. We make sure that students see themselves and are represented in the materials we use , the books we read, the pictures, the teachers, the administrators within the classroom and the learning space.

Our students are homeschooled but they refer to the learning space as my school. The space is based in a private home with different members of the household. You will often hear the students ( from all tribes, races and walks of Kenyan life), refer to the matriarch of the home affectionately as “nyanya” the Kiswahili word for grandmother. The students identify with her as a part of their experience at the centre in a positive manner even though she is not part of the teaching staff. We take delight in the fact that they see the space as theirs and the people within as family even though they are not related.

We as homeschoolers are an indictment against a system that is crippling the futures of the children of our nation. We could not sit by complacently. For my family in particular, we are homeschooling as a way of discovering how to hack the system. Our long term view is to apply the lessons learned to a learning spaces for children that are equitable and accessible to all children. We have begun that journey by operating a cooperative for other homeschoolers that runs once a week. We would like to be able to partner with local public schools and share our programs, discoveries and initiatives.
We are trying to be a space for educating the whole being. This is not reflected just in the children but in our team. Some members of our team have university degrees and some have not completed high school but are brilliant at their craft and wonderful with children. We have taken a risk to take a chance on educators who embody with values we espouse and that means being disciplined to select team members that may not fit in a traditional school environment but who are experts in the world we are dreaming about and have the passion and empathy to allow children to learn from them and find their voice in a society that is deaf to theirs. It is actually drawing from our African indigenous education system that did not have degrees and diplomas, but relied on the wisdom, knowledge and expertise of men and women of high regard in society.

Lebeloane (2017), says the establishment of western forms of formal schools and the subsequent elimination of the indigenous and or traditional schools, served to promote coloniality in the minds of all learners and made these schools, “laboratories in which social injustices such as class, gender, language and racial inequality were inculcated, tested, implemented and perpetuated.” Our model of selecting educators on our team from diverse backgrounds is us becoming a laboratory of freedom and justice. We draw from our indigenous culture to draw on the experience of elders, and integrate learning with the community’s socio-economic experiences. In so doing we are doing what Owuor (2007), describes as “ acknowledging the values, reciprocal relationships and contributions of all forms of knowledge to the global body of ways of knowing.”

Our learning space is a place for our children to learn how to tell the story of our people which is the story of themselves. It is in our story that the strategies for economic, social, and even democratic emancipation will be found. Through the arts we as a community are discovering and imagining new realities for ourselves and our people. Our imagination is what Drinkwater (2010) writes about as the staging ground for action. On this staging ground we move from shared imagination, to collective action, we become a community of sentiment. A process she refers to as globalization from below. We are thus using the arts according to her “to create “communities of sentiment and promote globalization from below, locally, nationally and internationally.” We use writing, painting, singing and performing to help promote both individual and collective reflection about issues of equity and social justice in our community, country and globally.

To that end, we feel that our role is to disrupt our society. Duncan-Andrade and Morell’s (2008) work draws from Paulo Freire’s critical Pedagogy where learning and teaching revolve around “dialogue, inquiry, and the real exchange of ideas between teachers and students, who, he felt, had a great deal to offer one another.” (Duncan-Andrade and Morell 2008 p66). We don’t take our children to all these places to mirror them, but to bring a different picture of what it means to be African and what it means to be Kenyan. Duncan-Andrade and Morell (2008), describe developing classroom units that coupled the study of film, newspapers, magazines, and music with the study of traditional novels, poems, and plays in his pedagogy. We have done exactly the same at our centre, through our creative writing unit and fine arts unit. We too have created opportunities for students to study their own everyday culture in our urban African setting.

In our learning space we recognize that creating an equitable environment for learning and teaching takes a community effort. We as mentors and teachers are always sharing what we have learned with each other. We are continually studying and researching to learn from others and we take and apply these lessons in our context. We try to create an environment where difference is encouraged and celebrated because it is the diversity of thought, doing so for being that makes our world the wonderful adventurous marvel that it is.

REFERENCES:

Alvarez Francisco. (2019 June 28). Jeff Duncan -Andrade. The Game is Rigged, Inequity by Design. https://youtu.be/iccvmqHYp3Y

Council of Europe Language Policy Unit. (n.d). Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants. Retrieved 21 May 2020 from https://www.coe.int/en/web/lang-migrants/educational-culture-/-tradition-/-background

Denzin, N. K. (2008). Emancipatory discourses and the ethics and politics of interpretation. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (3rd ed.). (pp. 435-471). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

De Garine Igor. (2001). Views about food prejudice and stereotypes. Social Science Information Vol40. pp487-507. Retrieved 21 May 2020 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249732889_Views_about_food_prejudice_and_stereotypes

Dufour Eve. (2015 May 22). Learning Disabilities and Diversity: A Culturally Responsive Approach. Retrieved 20 May 2020 from https://www.ldatschool.ca/culturally-responsive-pedagogy/

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. And Morrell, E. (2008). The Art of Critical Pedagogy. In Kinchelo J.L. And Steinberg S.R. (Eds.). Studies in Postmodern Theory of Education. Peter Lang. Retrieved 20 May 2020 from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ernest_Morrell/publication/324468500_The_Art_of_Critical_Pedagogy/links/5bb9df1ca6fdcc9552d56a0e/The-Art-of-Critical-Pedagogy.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Drinwater Mary. (2010). Critical democratic pedagogy through the arts in indigenous/Maasai rural schools in Kenya. OISE/University of Toronto. Paper for 2nd World Conference on Arts Education Seoul, Korea. Retrieved 20 May 2020 fromhttp://www.unesco.org/culture/en/artseducation/pdf/fullpaper307marydrinkwater.pdf

Escudero Barbara. (2019). How to Practice Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Retrieved 21 May 2020 from https://www.teachforamerica.org/stories/how-to-engage-culturally-relevant-pedagogy

Kaya Hassan and Seleti Yonah (2013). African indigenous knowledge systems and relevance of higher education in South Africa. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 2013, 12(1). Retrieved 21 May 2020 fromhttps://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1017665.pdf

Kugler Jeff and Burns Nicole West. (2010). The CUS Framework for Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy. Our Schools/Our Selves. Retrieved 19 May 2020 from
http://www.easywebdesignsolutions.com/georgemartell/email27/Culturtally_Engaged_Pedagogy.pdf

Lebeloane, L.(2017). Decolonizing the school curriculum for equity and social justice in South Africa. KOERS — Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, 82(3). Available at: https://doi. org/10.19108/KOERS.82.3.2333

Njoya Wandia. (2019 August 15 ). Our Education Problems Come from a Government That Lacks Imagination. Retrieved 21 May 2020 from https://www.wandianjoya.com/blog/our-education-problems-come-from-a-government-that-lacks-imagination

Reed Wayne. (2009). The Bridge is Built: The Role of Local Teachers in an Urban Elementary School. The School Community Journal, 2009, Vol. 19, No. 1. Retrieved 21 May 2020 fromhttps://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ847424.pdf

Owuor Jenipher. (2007). Integrating Africas Inidigenous Knowledge In Kenya’s Formal education system: The Potential For Sustainable Development. In Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education. 2(2) pp 21-37. Retrieved 21 May 2020 from
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/jcie/index.php/JCIE/article/download/1027/684

UNESCO. (n.d.). Tangible and Intangible Heritage. Retrieved 20 May 2020 from https://ich.unesco.org/en/tangible-and-intangible-heritage-00097

Do you know a child who is between 7 and 14 years?

The Discovery Centre is hosting a Science Film Festival AT HOME in partnership with The Goethe Institute.

IMPORTANT DATES: 16th to 27th November from 2 pm to 4 pm (on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).

Registration can be done using the link https://www.thediscoverycentre.co.ke/discovery-centre-registration-form/.

The event is FREE and materials will be delivered to parents prior to the class.

The event is a celebration of Science and involves showcasing films from all over the world, carefully selected to communicate science themes like renewable energy, health, recycling, and many more.

BENJAMIN BANNEKER A SON OF THE STARS
I am intrigued by our African connection to the stars. Africans have always been interested in the stars. Perhaps it is because we know we came from the stars. The Zulu refer to themselves as the people who came from heaven. Ghana, the first African country to achieve independence has the black star on their flag as a symbol of hope and a homage to the “Back to Africa” movement started by Marcus Garvey whose goal was to end slavery and return former slaves back to Africa. The Black Star symbolized freedom, independence and struggle that came with the fight for independence.

Practically the stars were to help our people determine practical things such as time keeping, weather prediction, seasonal calendars for agricultural activities, and navigation; artistic inspiration such as songs, poems, myths, stories, paintings, sculptures, etc.; and metaphysical beliefs such as celestial deities, astrology, heaven and other religious connections; as well as human relationships regarding the scientific studies of astronomy, astrophysics, space sciences, atmospheric science, and planetary science.

We have previously also looked at how our people used the stars and astronomical techniques to establish the seasons or the cycle of the year, by constructing megaliths and other ritual structures. Today we learn about a different kind of African star. His name was Benjamin Banneker. He lived in Baltimore County, Maryland between 1731 when he was born and 1759, when he died.
Banneker was a self-educated mathematician, Scientist, astronomer, compiler of almanacs, inventor, and writer, one of the first important African American intellectuals.

Like his African ancestors he looked to the stars and saw astronomical patterns from which he made successful calculations and predictions about solar eclipses, tides and other astronomical information.

“..Benjamin Banniker, an Ethiopian, whose abilities, as a surveyor, and an astronomer, clearly prove that Mr. Jefferson’s concluding that race of men were void of mental endowments, was without foundation.”

— The Georgetown Weekly Ledger, 1791
https://youtu.be/DpfY66ccoFU

Benjamin Banneker, Astronomer | Biography Naomi Ekperigin talks about scientist and astronomer Benjamin Banneker, his almanac writing, and how he saved Washington, D.C. Subscribe for more ...

If you or your student is looking to delve into your artistic mind, Arts n Crafts with Rose might be just the thing for you.

To register, email [email protected]

Come one, come all!
Global Village School ( ) is back in session with new amazing classes beginning this week:

-African Storytelling with a Craft
-Art (African inspired)
-Journey to Self Discovery
-Critical Thinking
-Media Education
-Digital Art

Digital art integrates art with technology. Digital art is evident everywhere in the
digital world on every screen we look at -emojis, gaming, apps, online content all
rely on it heavily. The student will not only enhance their digital skills but they will
also learn to look for creative solutions to problems and think outside the box.
This introduction can lead to an interest or career in 3D modelling and animation
skills used in professions such as arts and entertainment, gaming, architecture and interior design.

Click on the link to register:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OnRJ6edm7iPnL4fGFnVcleVG3NeF5gCGx6fCCtIacYk/edit?usp=sharing

Have you signed up for Global Village School ( ) yet? You better hurry up and secure your spot as classes begin this Monday October 5th.

This term we are offering some amazing courses that your student will benefit from immensely.

Join us every Thursday at 6:30 PM for Media Education.

Media Education will provide students with the tools to evaluate and analyze the media that they are consuming. It inspires students to critically reflect on the social, political, and cultural impact of the mass media on children.

For students ages 10 and up.

Register here today:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OnRJ6edm7iPnL4fGFnVcleVG3NeF5gCGx6fCCtIacYk/edit?usp=sharing