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“School is boring for kids today because it hasn’t |
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Dear Bridges Friends, Matt is right. But inside the classrooms where Bridges to Understanding is offering kids the opportunity to create and share digital stories with teens around the world, boredom has been replaced with engagement. Watch this recent KING 5 news segment and you’ll see what I mean. Tony Wagner, a senior advisor to the Gates Foundation and author of The Global Achievement Gap writes: “I believe that younger generations have enormous potential either to become lost in an endless web of fantasy and entertainment or to use their skills with these new technologies to make significant contributions to our society as learners, workers, and citizens. What is needed to tip the balance to the positive is an older generation that better understands what drives the younger generation and has learned how best to harness and focus its energies.” Bridges is tipping the balance in just this way through teachers as well as adult mentors serving as Bridges volunteers in our local and international partner classrooms. Using the powerful technology that teens use every day, we are developing cross-cultural understanding to prepare students to become global citizens through the on-line sharing of their personal stories and perspectives. Click on these links to video stories created by Bridges students and find out what Courage means to a youth whose family fled Tibet, or to a brother and sister in South Africa Confronting poverty and health issues. Under the guidance of their teachers and our volunteer mentors, Bridges students probe more deeply into their stories and those of students around the world to understand their differences as well as their similarities. By exercising their mental muscles, Bridges students are engaged, developing a sense of empathy while exploring a new way to look at familiar issues. Bridges’ classroom curriculum takes the students beyond the abbreviated text messaging of “Wussup”, and W/E (whatever), and IDK (I don’t know) to new languages, new cultures, new uses of media tools, and new friends. It’s one strategy that makes school the exciting place it can be. If you would like to help, please click here. Sincerely, Greg Tuke |
