Considering School Partnerships for Global Learning: A Photo Exchange

The Elementary School Heads Association trip to Kenya was wonderfully enriching for each of us as participants, as we observed and learned about cultures, environment, and education in the country and, particularly, in the Laisamis District of Northern Kenya. Yet, the most meaningful outcome of the trip would be the development of learning partnerships between ESHA-member schools and the Laisamis District primary and middle schools we visited.

What concrete form might such a partnership take? Kathleen Colson of the BOMA Fund made a suggestion that strikes me as having real merit in its hands-on, student-centered focus and relative simplicity.

Consider turning students in your school loose with a digital camera and a list of aspects of their daily lives to capture. Print those photos and have the students label them with their comments. Pack them up with a disposable camera and a return mailer, and send them to our contact in Laisaimis, who mirrors the project there, sending that camera back to you for processing. Voila -- an exchange!

Interested? Contact me at info@elementaryschoolheads.org.

Claudia

(Photo: Claudia Daggett)

Service learning experience: Congressional Schools of Virginia

Discussion about the ESHA trip to Kenya has stimulated many conversations with heads of schools and others about service learning experiences, in Kenya and elsewhere. Here's an interesting example that sends home the notion that service need not be complex in order to be helpful, a learning experience, and in some way reciprocal.

From ESHA member Seth Ahlborn, Head of School, Congressional Schools of Virginia on October 25:

We were looking for a good place to send out old uniforms when we switched. A parent is involved with a local church doing mission work in Kenya – voila!

The orphanage has 52 children and their schools serve another 150 or so from the neighboring tribes – which is quite cool from our standpoint. The priests were visiting the church here on a trip and were able to come and spend time with our students and visit our school.

Claudia

Photo credit:
United Orphanage and Academy, Moi’s Bridge, Kenya, courtesy of Seth Ahlborn