Exchanging for Change
Above: Students wait for class to start in a classroom in Layibi College
Riddled with holes like some sort of structural Swiss cheese, the ceiling in one of Layibi College’s older classrooms stretched out over us, offering those below glimpses of the building’s innards above. The physics students—all sixty of them-didn’t seem to notice: their eyes were focused on the teacher before them. With chalk in hand, Melody Russell, 33, moved back and forth in front of the chalkboard. As she wallpapered the board with equations, the students scribbled away in their notebooks. Each question she asked was met with a field of raised hands. For ninety minutes, students gave her their undivided attention. No one passed notes; no one whispered to his neighbor; no one did anything but think, write, and answer questions. Amazing as this sort of sustained, class-wide focus sounds, it’s par for the course among students working with Invisible Children’s Teacher Exchange teachers.
Above: Physics students in Melody’s class
This past summer, 45 visiting teachers from the U.S. and Canada team-taught for six weeks with their Ugandan counterparts. Working for free and paying for their flights and expenses themselves, the visiting teachers sacrificed large chunks of time and money to help students at all of IC’s eleven Ugandan partner schools. Class after class, students enjoyed the charged, high-energy classroom atmospheres that team teaching creates. Students, however, aren’t the only ones who benefit from the summer teacher exchange. Like the kids they instruct, teachers, too, draw inspiration from the experience and head home with added arrows in their academic quivers.
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Melody has been teaching for 10 years. In that time, she’s walked thousands of students—in both public and private schools—through lab experiments and countless chemistry equations. I wasn’t surprised when she told me she didn’t have a single major struggle during her six weeks of team teaching this past summer—she’s a pro. What I was surprised to hear, however, was how her partner teacher, a Ugandan named Robert, was able to command a class of 105 students with little more than raw charisma. Robert, she explained, supplemented his lecture-heavy, resource-light classes with smiles and jokes—things that, thankfully, are far cheaper and easier to issue to students than textbooks. “Even with so many students, he’s able to create warmth in his class,” Melody explained.
Because most students in Uganda don’t have their own textbooks, teachers spend large portions of class time copying information from a textbook to the chalkboard. (”Here, with so few textbooks, dictating is what needs to happen,” said Melody.) Robert knows this style of teaching isn’t ideal. For what he lacks in lesson diversity, he compensates for by making himself available to students outside of class hours. Homework is easier when you know your teacher wants and is available to help you.
I asked Melody about the lessons she’ll take with her back to the states once her time in Uganda comes to a close. She told me about how the experience has raised her confidence level and shown her that she’s capable of teaching high-level physics. (In Uganda, she’s teaching high school students who are studying at university level—something she’d never done before.) She told me about how amazing it’s been to talk over her lesson plans with Robert, to get advice from a peer on a regular basis. Perhaps most powerful, however, has been the perspective she’s gained from her students.
Above: Melody doing her thing
“I’m teaching kids in Uganda whose hopes of going to university are lofty dreams,” said Melody. “I can’t wait to tell my students back home about the kids here; about how students work so hard to do well in school; about how they don’t take their education for granted. Who knows what my American students will do with this type of news?”
Rock Music and Invisible Children: Working Together to Change the World
Last month, IC’s artist relations gurus, Kenny Laubbacher & Alex Collins, took it upon themselves to swing together an inspiring night of acoustic music at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. It was dubbed A Very Merry Benefit Concert and very merry it was indeed. An eclectic group of guys took the stage that night. Before the show went on, we sat them down for one big interview. What came out of it was an honest conversation about rock music, social activism, and a lost horse.
In the order they performed for the show, we want to introduce you to each of the musicians and share some of the stories we took home from them. (more…)
TRI’s a Winner
Our iconic TRI podcast from the spring 2007 tour just won a judge’s award for Best Fundraising Video from the Progressive Source Awards.
Watch it again, sing along with Camille, and join TRI.
Angelina Jolie can’t do everything.
For the recent Webby award that Invisible Children won, acceptance speeches were limited to 5 words. IC’s speech created some recent buzz in The NonProfit Times.
Award Wrap-Up
On Tuesday, IC’s Displace Me website was honored with the People’s Voice Webby Award under activism; we felt it was only appropriate to share some other awards the site has won. So, without further delay, here are the awards we were honored to receive this past year for Displace Me:
The American Advertising Federation handed us an ADDY award this past week.
The 7th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards gave Displace Me & Schools for Schools both awards under public service.
At the 2008 Summit Creative Awards, Schools for Schools took home an award for non-profit website, while Displace Me won under youth websites.
We’re very grateful for all of the recognition for what we’re doing online.
People’s Voice Winner
In celebration of our recent Webby award, we decided to create a new category specifically for awards that Invisible Children has been fortunate enough to receive. It gives you a chance to check out some of the different organizations recognizing what we’re doing, starting with the Webbys.
We Won the Webby.
Invisible Children’s Displace Me is the winner of the Webby People’s Voice Award, in the Activism category.
Nearly 500,000 votes were cast in the Webby People¹s Voice Awards and the people have spoken. This is a tremendous honor indicating the highest level of loyalty and commitment from our online community. In its biggest year yet, with nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 US states and over 60 countries around the world, our work represents the best of the Web.
Along with Digitaria, we’ll be honored at the 12th Annual Webby Gala in June, hosted by SNL’s Seth Meyers.
Congratulations to our web director, Javan Van Gronigen, and to all of you who helped make the website, and the event itself, such a success. Thank you.