Today I stole a couple more minutes of rest at the expense of breakfast. At about 10:00 am I was hungry and my stomach made rumbling noises to remind me of how it had missed breakfast and did not want to miss lunch. At lunch I ran out the door and grabbed my sandwich to quiet the sounds of my angry stomach. After two bites of my stomach I had to think and reflect, what if I wasn’t able to eat at lunch? What if I had to go several days without eating, how angry would my stomach be then? Do I truly know what hunger is?
Stephen Lewis (2006) once said “We have Kilimanjaro to climb before we meet the needs of Africa” (p. 32). What he means is that this goal is far from being met but more importantly he is saying “we” have a mountain to climb. The question thus becomes what can “we” do to help climb this mountain more importantly how can we become porters to help our students climb Kilimanjaro with us.
Depending on our teaching situations some of our students know what it means to go without and will/ are experiencing this. I currently help in a Canadian refugee center. Some of the students that I have contact with have experienced extreme poverty and some have even told their stories to me. But the question remains what can “we” do to help climb Kilimanjaro with in our ESOL classrooms.
Let me offer a couple suggestions for getting your students to cognitively process the goal of Eradicating Extreme Poverty and please send me your own suggestions so that I can add them to the list (As stated before you will be credited for your ideas).
- Brainstorm with your class about what poverty is and what we can do personally to help one individual.
- Have your students listen/ read/ read in small groups to The Starfish by Loren Eisley (which can be found at http://www.rogerknapp.com/inspire/starfish.htm) after reading the story have the students get into groups and discuss what they can do to help the Starfish (people in poverty) of the world.
- If you want to make the lesson apply more to the affective side of the language learning have students share about what their experiences with poverty have been (ie personally or observantly). They can share their experiences verbally or written. If you chose the written assignment you can have the students create a writing piece the goes through the writing process and could be made into a future writing assignment for future classes.
These are just a couple of things that we can do with our students and welcome ideas from other people on how we can better implement this Millennium Development Goal within our ESOL curriculums and classrooms.
References
Lewis, Stephen. (2006) Race Against Time (2nd ed). Toronto, ON: Anansi Press
Eisley, Loren (n.d.) The Starfish (adapted by Roger Knapp). Retrieved February 25, 2008 from http://www.rogerknapp.com/inspire/starfish.htm
