Last week I created a learning space designed for the future learning of the refugees in Zaatari. I desinged my space according to the reseach I did and what I thought they would need. However, I can’t stop thinking this might be inapropriate because the truth is I don’t know what they are thinking or feeling or going through.
If you click in the picture below, it will take you to a blog where some of the “what”questions are answered.
I must admit that I love challenges, and this year has been a great challenge on its own.
1. I have learned that learning doesn’t happen in the classroom
2. Space has a huge impact on learning
3. Teachers have power and we can change the future, maybe not for everyone but for someone.
4. I am able to do amazing things, create a website, write posts, reach people or not, connect with people
5. Every child deserves to have an education.
The last assignment has been a great challenge and a big eye opener, I see education and teaching with a different perspective and I will try to pass this perspective on to as many educators as I can. Learning is fun and there is no learning without teaching and vice versa.
I have learned that nothing is set, that anything can happen and everything is possible.
Ashley
To understand this picture you need to read my previous post. Click on the image to play the video which is an image with sound.
Ashley
My future learning space has as a purpose to connect students in Zaatari with teachers and students all around the world. I have set this purpose thinking that this might help them feel unified and feel they belong to the world like everyone else.
I have been thinking and reflecting and I am unable to say what refugees might need as I have never been in their position and I don’t know what it feels like. I have read, thought, about what they might need in order to reach their goals, which is to get papers to be able to be citizens in a new place. But is this what all of them want? And what with the ones that are stuck somewhere without being able to go anywhere? What with those who foresee no future and think they will someday be returning back home? Will then they start from where they left it off?
Connecting with others and feeling like we are all the same, I believe would help refugees accept their present, fight for their future and change their past.
The reality hits hard sometimes and although I would like for the children in Zaatari to have the latest buildings for them to have a better education, my focus goes more to connecting people around the world. To do so, my FLS would have resources that will
enable students to connect with teachers all over the world and students in other countries. The space would still be the same with the difference that it will have internet connection, a laptop per school/classroom and a projector.
My plan includes that rich companies such as Apple, or Google, or Samsung among others will be able to show their kindness and provide the camp with the mentioned resources. This will enable students to change their physical and non physical environment around them.
With the space and the resources ready the idea is to create a timetable that will allow gaps of an hour or two every day for students to connect with a classroom or a teacher that will volunteer somewhere around the world. This can be done using Adobe Connect, which enables real direct communication with image and sound.
Someone would be responsible to organize all this in the camp.
Teachers with different backgrounds and knowledge will be providing students in Zaatari with the same opportunities other children might have. They could learn, maths, English, Spanish, German, Geography, business, economics, health…
Building knowledge would enable children to change their surroundings. They could be part of projects such as Genius hour and redesign their classrooms, their learning space, they could start projects using internet in groups, they could organize markets, festivals…
Also, students will have a task every month: they will have to build a Vertical Garden of Hope that will be set on the walls of their classroom.
This vertical garden will be filled with paper made flowers that students will create. Each petal will contain a goal, a courage message, a worry, a goal, a future plan, their progress…. something meaningful that will help them create a better future for themselves their families and their home.
Ashley
I hope the future bodes safety, a place they can call home, hope and new opportunities.
I have never felt they way I feel when I see what the refugees are going through in the news. I feel useless and hopeless. I can not understand how can this be happening in this century.
I strongly believe this crisis will bring about some change. We can already see humanity in the behavior of some people in Europe, sometimes we forget what is like to be a human, to share, to give, to love without expecting anything in return.
I hope there is enough hope for the refugees to be strong and change the world.
Ashley
We have all heard about the biggest refugee crisis that is happening right now. Who would have imagined that at this stage this could have happened, and so many people would be homeless, devastated, stuck in borders and with a feeling of not belonging.
A lot of those refugees running away from Syria have “settled” in camps. One of those camps being Zaatari refugee camp.
Zaatari refugee camp is located in Jordan and by March of 2015 was already estimated to have 83,000 refugees more than the half being children. The camp has market-like structure and many goods such as vegetables, basic clothes and household equipment can be purchased. The camp also contains a few schools, playground and coffee shops.
I have talked about liminal spaces in a previous, which I relate it with Zaatari refugee 
camp. This is a place where people feel stuck. They don’t feel at home, yet they can’t go back home and they can’t go anywhere else. They have a feeling of not belonging and their present seems to be frozen with the future hope of returning home. However, many of them have already lived there for more than 2 years.
So how can we change this reality? Can education have an impact on it?
Ashley
Image1 and 2. (2015) Retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/search?q=zaatari+refugee+camp&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CC0QsARqFQoTCL2Sq5i83MgCFcUVpgodC44B1g&biw=624&bih=589#tbm=isch&q=zaatari+refugee+camp+jpg&imgrc=_
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, (2015) Zaatari refugee camp. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaatari_refugee_camp
Recently I have been hearing great things about teachers: WE CAN CHANGE LIVES.
Most of the times teaching is not seen as a high profile profession, but we do amazing things, we create our future, we educate those who will someday lead our future. This makes me think and consider that if we don’t like what our present is like something needs to change.
In hope for change, I have a mission to create a future learning space to help the children from the Za’atari refugee camp change their future and hopefully make their present more bearable.
To start with lets understand what does it feel like to be a kid in Za’atari. The video below gives us an understanding of a girl called Sidra who has been over a year in a refugee camp and is waiting to return home. Most of the kids might feel like this, some maybe accept the fact that now this is their home, and some maybe have it worse.
Click on the picture to watch the video.
Image 1 (2015)
How do you feel after watching the video? Shocked right?
I had tears in my eyes when I watched this video and although there is not much I can do about it, every little bit counts.
So mi mission is to be able to connect children from Za’atari with children around the world and volunteer teachers around the world through Web 2 technology.
Mi vision is that of world connected by the same purpose: Teachers willing to provide high standard education to children who desire to learn with all their heart in order to change our future.
Ashley
Image 1 (2015) Retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/search?q=clouds+over+sidra&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAmoVChMIh9CJwrTcyAIVwdymCh3THAia&biw=1252&bih=602#tbm=isch&q=clouds+over+sidra+jpg&imgrc=4bph-3i-oU1YsM%3A
Teachers without Borders (n.d.) Mission. Retrieved from http://www.teacherswithoutborders.org/
Here, I will be focusing on Liminal spaces, which I will explain in a post. I will be focusing on the refugee crisis and how this is affecting their children and our children. I will attempt to design a future learning space for the Za’atari refugee camp and I will be talking about more things.
Today I was inspired by a sentence the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, said while he was giving a speech at the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science. He was talking about teachers and he said “Teachers, good teachers change lives”.
This made me think about another documentary I saw on ABC 24 about a prison in New York state where the inmates have an opportunity to change their lives, THROUGH EDUCATION.
The project is called The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) and it creates opportunities for mean and women who are serving their sentences to earn a Bard College degree.
This initiative is active in six prisons across New York State and they offer over 60 courses each semester. By 2013 more than 700 students were enrolled and nearly 300 degrees were granted.
It is amazing to see how much education and teachers can change lives. Here is a video of BPI participants. And if you want to know more about this initiative here is the link: http://bpi.bard.edu/what-we-do/
Ashley
Bard Prison Initiative. Retrieved from http://bpi.bard.edu/what-we-do/
The truth is that about 3 to 4 weeks ago I didn’t even know this word existed and now, I am working on a project to design a learning space for a Liminal space.
According to Wikipedia (2015) anthropology describes Liminality as a disorientation that occurs in the middle of a stage. The word Liminal comes from the Latin word “Limen”, which means threshold.
We could say then that a Liminal space is that place where you are in transition, in the middle of something or somewhere, in a threshold and you don’t know what is ahead of you. The words “transition”, “waiting”, “unknown”, “now what?” are always connected to the Liminal.
If you think of your childhood and the time when you were at school did you know what was coming next? Where you always wondering what would you be learning next? Wasn’t everything new for you? Weren’t you transitioning through your knowledge? Didn’t you change schools? Weren’t you anxious and nervous and scared and excited?
Well, this is how our students feel almost everyday, and now that I know that I see the importance of setting goals at the beginning of the lesson so students are aware of WHAT will they be learning and WHEN we will be attempting this and HOW are we going to progress through it. Students this way fell safer, they know what to expect and are ready for it. If they are always in a Liminal space/state it might be likely that they won’t be performing at their best and that’s not what we want.
Have you as a teacher ever thought about this? What do you think now that you know it? Will you change anything in your lessons?
We see it everywhere, on the news, in the newspaper, magazines, facebook, twitter…. We are witnesses of the biggest crisis of a refugee movement.
What’s happening in Syria right now is devastating. And families, individuals, humans are making tough decisions in order to seek a better life. Syrians are leaving everything they have always worked for and embarking on a journey that is unknown for them.
That’s where Liminal comes into place. There are refugees in 
Za’atari refugee camp who don’t know how long they will be there, there are refugees all over Europe, some arriving to a destination they know nothing about (with new language and culture) and others are stranded between borders not being able to be in one place nor go to the other one. Others, on the other place will have the chance to live with families they know nothing about.
Have you ever been in a Liminal Space? What did you feel? How did you feel? Did you overcome the obstacles?
You can find more information about Liminal spaces and journeys in http://inaliminalspace.com/phases/what-liminal-journey
Ashley
Image 1. In between. Retrieved from http://danielleshroyer.com/liminal-christianity-event/
Image 2. Path. Retrieved from http://inaliminalspace.com/phases/what-liminal-journey
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Liminality. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality
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