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).

1. Brainstorm with your class about what poverty is and what we can do personally to help one individual.
2. 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.
3. 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

I know that the first development goal is eradicate extreme poverty but this entry is about ensuring environment sustainability.

Recently I was engaged in a conversation with a friend about recycling paper. Into this conversation my friend told me about a video called the story of stuff. This video can be accessed from www.storyofstuff.com

It is a twenty minute video that has several topics in it that can facilitate conversation. I have included a copy of a teaser for this short film on the website but I definitely recommend that you take twenty minutes to check out the video and maybe even use part of it in your classes to facilitate conversation. Below the teaser is a very short list of conversations that this film can encourage.

1. Break the video down into the 6 parts of the video and talk about one part of the materials economy per class (include the intro as part of extraction and give another way its own segment).
2. Ask the students the following questions, “Do you think this is true?”; “What are your thoughts on this video?”; “Have you experienced any of the steps personally in the material economy (with the exception of consumption)?
3. For the final step of another way have the students come up with ways that they can cut down on their consumption and how they can be more environmentally friendly.
4. Make it into a jigsaw project and assign different people different areas of the materials economy to look up. At the top of the “Story of Stuff” film on the website they can click the various tabs at the top to get more information about the different areas. At the end have the students share with each other what they found.

These are just a couple of quick ideas that you can do with this video. Be creative and hopefully you will encourage your ESOL students to impact the planet in a positive way.

While researching the first Millennium Development Goal I came across this video. I think it is genius and needs to be shared. It is put out by Good Magazine (http://www.goodmagazine.com/).

Please Comment on this piece.

In the year 2000 the United Nations (UN) established eight development goals (MDG) which the UN hopes to complete by the year 2015. These goals are:

1. Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child morality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat AIDS/ HIV, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Establish a global partnership for development (UN Millennium Goals website, 2005)

These goals form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions . They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest (UN Millennium Development Goals Website, 2005). With this blueprint in place we are going to explore each one of these goals and how we can partner with the UN through our TESOL practices to further these goals.

Please give comments and feedback as much as possible as I am hoping that these articles are actually joint ventures and will give credit where credit is due. I am aiming to properly reference all sources and will reference names or pseudonyms.

References

UN Millennium Development Goals. (2005). United Nations. Available December 31, 2007 from http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/index.html