TIGblogs - Emily Kornblut

The deluges of rain, snow, and American Airlines cancellations from April 9-12 were no deterrents to a great few days at the National Service Learning Conference in Minneapolis. I still haven’t broken my recent streak of traveling to bad weather (San Antonio, I have my eye on you…) but the NSLC was worth it nonetheless.

A couple months ago, a fellow frequent-conference-exhibitor had tried to warn me about the NSLC, a conference, in their opinion, with a totally dead exhibit hall. In MY opinion, an empty exhibit hall is a sign of a GOOD conference! Not only was I glad to see that the NSLC has such a compelling agenda that people actually went to the workshops, but the booth saw plenty of traffic during breakfast, lunch, and other breaks.

I met a professor from Argentina who coordinates a network of thousands of schools there involved in service learning (Damian, I’ll be putting you two in touch!), made new contacts at organizations looking for online tools to connect the young people in their programs, and shared resources with several hundred teachers and students who are highly active in service learning projects in their schools and communities.

And, when things were a little slow, I took the opportunity to check out all the other great groups who were there to share resources with the young people and educators involved in service learning. I’m still not all the way through the stack of materials I picked up, but here’s a sample:

At the Free Tibet booth, I signed a petition and had an inspiring conversation with a student activist (who is a Tibetan refugee born in India, now living and studying in Saint Paul – he told me Minnesota has the second largest Tibetan community in the US) about Tibet, China, and the Olympics.

At the Peace Corps booth, I learned more about how they connect volunteers in the field to classrooms in the US, and met a staffer who thinks very highly of the TIG Guide to Action, and recommended that their whole network use it in planning events for Global Youth Service Day. It means a lot to have the endorsement of a leading service organization.

The folks from the Shinnyo-En Foundation were handing out t-shirts and DVDs to promote their new Six Billion Paths to Peace initiative, and I talked to a program officer for a while to understand what the campaign is about, since I missed out on the gala that the rest of the GYAN crew attended in New York in March (while I was still recovering from the flu) :)

There was no one at the Project Learning Tree booth, but I was intrigued by this sign, in thinking about our own sustainability practices when it comes to outreach and marketing:

It was also great to meet leaders from Youth Service America and put faces to names I’ve heard around the GYAN office in planning for GYSD.

There were three sessions I managed to attend – both keynotes (awesome move on NSLC’s part to close the exhibit hall during the keynotes!), as well as a panel on youth media.

Pedro Noguera, as much respect as I have for his work, gave a surprisingly generic keynote compared to other times I’ve heard him speak. He made some great points about how unacceptable and sorry the state of our education system is, but with this crowd, he might have been preaching to the choir. Then again, almost every keynote I’ve ever heard pales in comparison to the inspiration and energy and awe that I gained from hearing Archbishop Desmond Tutu deliver the keynote on Friday. How can you beat a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and spiritual leader telling a knock-knock joke in reference to the Bible?

Archbishop Tutu tells a knock knock joke

In all seriousness though, having spent a lot of time thinking about the distinctions between service and activism, Desmond Tutu’s keynote gave a refreshing bit of historical perspective. I’ve struggled with the way service and activism (both of which fall under the umbrella of civic engagement) are often separated from one another, particularly service as a “safe” or non-political term, one used to describe what students do unto other, less-fortunate people, while activism gets pigeon-holed as a more radical thing that happens separately from learning. In limiting what each term means, we also misunderstand and underestimate the importance they play in enabling young people as social changemakers, whether in school or out. Archbishop Tutu reminded us that young people have always been changemakers and activists – from the Bible (it was a young person, David, who stood up to Goliath) to the students who led the civil rights movement, protested against South African apartheid, and now speak out against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Finally, the youth media panel was perhaps a bit long, but I learned about some cool projects:

- thefoshow.com – Run out of the high school for performing arts in Minneapolis, it’s the only commercial radio station in US completely run and produced by high school students.

- Strive Media – print and video production (Gumbo Teen Magazine) out of Minneapolis

- Beyond Green – the latest project from Listen Up!

- Teen International Media Exchange (TIME) – program using media to explore seven global issues, based at Media Academy at Cleveland HS in Los Angeles

I was really honored to meet Sidibay, a young person I’ve heard a lot about through our mutual friends at iEARN Canada, who presented his award-winning documentary about his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

The importance of global perspectives and connections in service learning really seems to be on the rise within the NSLC community, so it was great to participate in that conversation as it expands, and hope we’ll be back next year!

[تيغ] في الوطنيّة خدمة يعلم مؤتمر
Automatically translated into Arabic thanks to WorldLingo
الطوفان المطر, ثلج, و [أمريكن يرلينس] كان إلغاءات من أبريل - نيسان 9-12 ما من روادع إلى عظيمة قليل من أيام في ال خدمة وطنيّة يعلم مؤتمر في مينيابوليس. لم يكسر أنا بعد يتلقّى خطّي أخيرة من يسافر إلى طقس سيّئة ([سن] [أنتونيو], يتلقّى أنا عيني على أنت…) غير أنّ [ب وورث] ال [نسلك] هو ومع ذلك.

كان زوج شهور [أغو], رفيقة [فرقونت-كنفرنس-إكسهيبيتور] قد حاول أن يحذّرني حول ال [نسلك], مؤتمر, في رأيهم, مع ميّتة معرض قاعة تماما. في رأيي, يخلو معرض قاعة إشارة من مؤتمر جيّدة! ليس فحسب كنت أنا سعيدة أن يرى أنّ يتلقّى ال [نسلك] هذا يجبر جدول أنّ الناس واقعيّا ذهبوا إلى الورش, غير أنّ المقصورة منشار كثير الحركة مرور أثناء وجبة فطور, وجبة غداء, وأخرى يكسر.

أنا التقيت أستاذة من أرجنتين الذي ينسّق شبكة الآلاف المدارس هناك يتضمّن في خدمة يعلم ([دمين], سيضع أنا كنت أنت اثنان في لمس!), يجعل اتّصالات جديدة في تنظيمات يفتّش أدوات متوفّر على شبكة الإنترنات أن يربط الالناس شابّة في برامجهم, ويشارك موردات مع [سفرل هوندرد] معلمات وطالبات الذي يكون [هيغلي كتيف] في خدمة يعلم مشاريع في هم مدارس وجماعات.

و, عندما كان أشياء قليلا بطيئة, أنا أخذت الفرصة أن يفحص خارجا [ألّ ث] أخرى مجموعة عظيمة الذي كان هناك أن يشارك موردات مع الشابّة الناس ومربيات يتضمّن في خدمة يعلم. أنا لست بعد كلّيّا الكومة ال [متريلس] أنا التقطت فوق, غير أنّ هنا عينة:

في الحرّة تيبت مقصورة, وقع أنا عريضة وتلقّى يلهم محادثة مع طالبة نشط (الذي يكون لاجئ تيبتيّ [بورن] في هند, الآن يعيش ويدرس في [سينت بول] - هو قالني مينيسوتا يتلقّى الثاني جماعة كبيرة تيبتيّ في ال [أوس]) حول تيبت, الصين, واللعبة أولمبيّة.

في ال [بس كربس] مقصورة, علم أنا أكثر حوالي كيف هم يربطون مت