I have returned from Toronto and it was admittedly one of the best trips I have ever had. I was in Toronto because of the Toronto Dominion bank. TD was celebrating their 15th anniversary of their scholarship and they decided to celebrate with all of their alumni. TD invited all 300 members of their scholarship recipients on their bill. More then half of the TD alumnus replied to this invitation and it quickly became a wonderful weekend of learning, sharing, and reconnecting.
Most of the weekend was focused on education and the reforms that could be brought to education. This topic was of particular interest to me as I have been working on and with education for quite some time. My particular battle is to ensure creativity gets injected in to education. I was very interested in all of the issues going on during the weekend. I was also very excited to hear everyones opinions as they seemed to reassure my notions and my work that I have been doing for quite some time. (I will write more about this at a later date)
One last note about this weekend before I end this post. I was excited to have Erin Gruwell come and speak to the group. Who is Ms. G, you may ask? Well Ms. G is the lady behind the inspirational story of the Freedom Writers. Freedom Writers of course is the story of Ms. G working with a group of "gang" students who were deemed by most of society as some of the bottom feeders to ensure that they would get the education and chances that they deserved as young people. Ms. G encouraged the students to relate their lives to their curriculum and encouraged the students to toast to their new beginnings and to record their feelings and thoughts and to reflect. If you have not seen Freedom Writers the film or read the book I suggest you do.
Finally Ms. G also brought along her team of growing Freedom Writers-what a great group of human beings. All of these teachers are looking for ways to integrate their wonderful abilities and experiences into their classrooms and inspire their kids to do the same.
Rethinking education is a necessity as we have been teaching in the 21st century while using methods from the 18th century.
More to come soon-about education-about the TD renuion
Showing posts with label young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label young. Show all posts
Monday, 3 May 2010
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Project Y takes shape
Project Y is a group of 20 amazing young people coming together with one mission.
The mission: TO DO
One question keeps popping up time and time again-to do what? Well that is just it TO DO anything. This group of 20 young people are all Gen Y folk looking to make a difference in their communities and in fact most of them already are. So the idea behind this project is that hopefully a group of amazing people can support each other and any of the work we decide to take on can be shared.
Project Y started for 2 reasons. The first reason came from me attending a Millennium Scholarship event where I met up with the president and while we were talking he stated, "oh you're one of those." I was a bit bewildered and said "one of what?" The gentleman pointed to my shirt and said "a TD guy, a TD scholar I presume." This made me wonder why there would ever be a separation between all of these amazing people. So Project Y was conceived-bring all of those amazing people together. The second reason I thought Project Y might be a good idea is because of burnout. Yes, burnout, because my thought was that as people volunteer they usually do so as an individual and they do so at many different places often wearing themselves thin. Wouldn't it make sense then that if a volunteer had a group of people to work with and support them that burnout might not be as prominent and in fact I believe that the group atmosphere would do the opposite in energizing people.
Project Y in my mind was becoming clearer and clearer then I had the chance to meet Alicia Dobson and ride in a car with her for over 8 hours-the plan came together. Alicia is a Millennium scholarship winner and she w as thinking along the same lines as me. So staying true to the Project Y mission statement: TO DO, it only took us one 8 hour car ride to figure out this idea had to happen. In only a few days Alicia had reached out to her network and I reached out to my network finding, TD scholars, Millennium scholars, and so many other AMAZING people who have travelled and done some amazing things around the world.
In a couple of days I will make sure and give you the update of how amazing the first meeting went and how Project Y has already become more then I could have dreamed about.
The mission: TO DO
One question keeps popping up time and time again-to do what? Well that is just it TO DO anything. This group of 20 young people are all Gen Y folk looking to make a difference in their communities and in fact most of them already are. So the idea behind this project is that hopefully a group of amazing people can support each other and any of the work we decide to take on can be shared.
Project Y started for 2 reasons. The first reason came from me attending a Millennium Scholarship event where I met up with the president and while we were talking he stated, "oh you're one of those." I was a bit bewildered and said "one of what?" The gentleman pointed to my shirt and said "a TD guy, a TD scholar I presume." This made me wonder why there would ever be a separation between all of these amazing people. So Project Y was conceived-bring all of those amazing people together. The second reason I thought Project Y might be a good idea is because of burnout. Yes, burnout, because my thought was that as people volunteer they usually do so as an individual and they do so at many different places often wearing themselves thin. Wouldn't it make sense then that if a volunteer had a group of people to work with and support them that burnout might not be as prominent and in fact I believe that the group atmosphere would do the opposite in energizing people.
Project Y in my mind was becoming clearer and clearer then I had the chance to meet Alicia Dobson and ride in a car with her for over 8 hours-the plan came together. Alicia is a Millennium scholarship winner and she w as thinking along the same lines as me. So staying true to the Project Y mission statement: TO DO, it only took us one 8 hour car ride to figure out this idea had to happen. In only a few days Alicia had reached out to her network and I reached out to my network finding, TD scholars, Millennium scholars, and so many other AMAZING people who have travelled and done some amazing things around the world.
In a couple of days I will make sure and give you the update of how amazing the first meeting went and how Project Y has already become more then I could have dreamed about.
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