SID: I went to the Title I meeting at El Carmelo Elementary School to pass out my survey. They had a record attendance evening so I got to talk to lots of parents and hear an old friend from elementary school days (our kids are the same age), Janet Rose, who is still a 2nd grade teacher at Palo Verde. She did a great job teaching the parents Math tips for helping the kids. We had an interpreter and about 5 of the elementary school principals showed up and I got to talk to several of them. It was really a very nice event. I think we had about 25 families - they brought all their kids. It was really nice. I passed out most of my 50 flyers - I also went to the YMCA event I missed and asked Danny Koba, Director of Youth services including the Ventura Center, to give the flyers to the 6 kids they have there.. I don't think many will come back. I will have to make another 25 for the 2nd meeting on April 5 on writing skills at Barron Park Elementary School. The principal, Catherine Howard, was very interested in my project and said she would be happy to work with me. She took about 5 of the surveys for her 5th graders. I also received the 5 Max Weber books I bought and finished the page on his work in my overview. I have not had time to start on my indepth - which is the Digital Divide survey, but I will next week.
Second Life: We had a group information meeting last week, and I have signed my contract. I also got to meet 2 people (Tina Montemer and Heidi Maston) and one faculty (Dr. Joyce Germaine-Watts) at lunch at the RRI last weekend and we discussed what we want to do in the simulations.
Public Policy/Systems: Dr. Leonard Beckum confirmed that Dr. Bernadine Chuck Fong is interested in helping me. She is currently consulting in Hawaii so I'm very excited about connections she can help me make there. I have also starting finding a date for lunch with Carolyn Wilkins-Greene and Jerry Rosenberg to discuss Math Performance Success (finally some movement there). I am also very excited about the information I got at the RRI last weekend - I interviewed Pam Luster, a fellow doctoral student who is the VP of Student Services at Los Positas Community College in Livermore. She helped me a lot with my question: California Community College System's ability to support underrepresented minorities and specifically what the Foothill-De Anza Community College District has done to support these groups. Pam said she would introduce me to Rob Johnstone, Vice President of Instruction & Institutional Research at Foothill College who knows all about the Pass the Torch program and how the budget works there. She also told me that Jeanine Hawk, Vice president of Finance and College Services at De Anza College would be able to help me with the issues they have with budgets/financing of these programs from the state. I will work on that next month probably.
Dissertation: To prepare for my lunch with Dr. Bernadine Chuck Fong, I have been reading literature I searched for last month on my dissertation problem: Cultural misunderstandings happen every day in business settings. Because global technology has made the world much smaller creating everyday situations at work and at school requiring people of different cultures to interact without leaving their countries, young people who are in college today, aged 18-26, need to learn skills and have tools when entering the workforce that previous generations did not need to have.
Here is some of the results of my reading:
Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution
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One of the articles was written by Jeffrey Krivis, an adjunct professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law since 1994, Krivis teaches negotiation and mediation skills to lawyers and judges. So after reading the article called " Can We Call a Truce? Ten Tips for Negotiating Workplace Conflicts." that was published in Employment Relations Today in 2006 that I got from Wiley at Fielding, I looked up the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.
The institute looks very interesting and has a seminar in October 2008 called:
Faith-Based Facilitation and Reconciliation
Church Leaders Dialogue
FOCUS ON "Ministry"
Friday evening October 24, 2008 from 6pm till 9pm
Pepperdine School of Law, Malibu, California
The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ)
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I'm making my way through Dr. Eboo Patel's book "Building the interfaith youth movement : beyond dialogue to action." I am about 1/3 of the way through the book and I think it will continue to be the basis for my dissertation work.
Dr. Patel references his work with The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ).
NCCJ today has more than 55 regional offices in 32 states and the District of Columbia and has over 400 full and part-time staff members.
The National Conference of Christians and Jews, changed its name in the 1990's to better reflect its mission to build whole and inclusive communities. The historic name confused many, who believed that NCCJ was an interfaith organization. Therefore the new name is not a change in vision, but rather an affirmation of our abiding commitment to embrace the diversity of our nation.
NCCJ is the only national human relations organization that focuses on a broad range of "isms," the multiple manifestations of discrimination and oppression that are based on one's religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, bias crimes to racial profiling - the challenges ahead are real. To confront and overcome them, NCCJ maintains an abiding commitment to work with decision-makers and leaders to support their work to build an inclusive society.
I plan to buy two of their publications funded by the Ford Foundation:
Research Perspectives
Research Perspectives summarizes a cross-section of various social-scientific literatures that have examined intergroup relations: sociology, social psychology, public opinion, and public policy. The editors endeavored to present the cutting edge academic thinking and research in the country's academic sphere to those who would benefit the most such as trainers, grass roots activists, advocacy groups, local human-relations commissions, elected officials, and community leaders, among others. In addition, the report offers academics a practical understanding of methods practitioners use in their day-to-day activities and gives them an opportunity to benefit from the experiences and perspectives of those who grapple with intergroup relations every day.
Seven Promising Practices
Seven Promising Practices, the latest and most in-depth of the three book series, articulates criteria for evaluating intergroup programming and presents models for practitioners to use in improving their own work. A handful of programs across the country are examined that seek to foster multiracial, multifaith, or multiethnic collaboration through a variety of approaches. The volume highlights and provides full details about programs and organizations that utilize models and methodologies which embody many of the principles NCCJ considers to be promising practices.
World Conference of Religions for Peace: Global Youth Network
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This is a very good video and not too long (16 minutes). This is exactly the kind of experience I think that young people (undergraduates) should have the opportunity to experience as a requirement for graduation. Dr. Eboo Patel was elected the WCRP International Youth Committee chair in 1989. The group has changed the name and slightly the focus, but it is still student-led. They just had a conference in 2006 in Japan.
Global Youth Network
To view a Religions for Peace Global Youth Network informational video, click here!
Religions for Peace Global Youth Network harnesses the energy and commitment of religious youth leaders all over the world to advance the mission of multi-religious cooperation for peace.
The Global Youth Network gained full momentum in 2006 when the six regional inter-religious youth networks were launched in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, as well as in Latin America and the Caribbean. Concrete success in mounting action programs among six regions has inspired donors to award funding to carry out similar projects around the globe. Today, the Global Youth Network is developing pilot programs to confront some of our most urgent challenges—building peace, addressing environmental issues, and coping with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Concurrently, the youth are working to mainstream youth and youth issues into Religions for Peace programming activities at the local, regional, and global levels. This important work is led by the International Youth Committee (IYC), comprised of fifteen members representing the world's faith traditions from six continents. The IYC was first established at the Sixth World Assembly in Riva del Garde, Italy, in 1994, and the current members were elected at the Religions for Peace VIII World Assembly in Kyoto, Japan in August 2006. Currently, the Religions for Peace Global Youth Network is led by its newly elected Youth Coordinator, Ms. Stellamaris Mulaeh, who also serves as Pax Romana's national coordinator for peacebuilding in Kenya.
The Global Youth Network seeks to advance its work of mobilizing power of religious youth, building strategic partnerships with the United Nations, inter-governmental institutions, and civil society organization, and implementing action programs through national and regional inter-religious youth networks.
The Ignorant American/National Geographic -Roper study 2006
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I was reading this week's US News and World Report, and there is a new book out by Susan Jacoby, "The Age of American Unreason". I plan to get it later probably next month.
"I was particularly shocked, in a recent National Geographic -Roper study, by how many Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 don't think it's important to know a foreign language or to know the location of countries in which important news is being made. Not knowing these things is ignorance. Being proud of not knowing them is something else. It's being both antirational and anti-intellectual. To say that it's not at all important to know a foreign language is just plain stupid."
I looked up the National Geographic -Roper study and downloaded it. It is fascinating.
In the Highlights it goes on to say:
"On this survey, most young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 demonstrate a limited understanding of the world beyond their country's borders, and they place insufficient importance on the basic geographic skills that might enhance their knowledge.
Six in ten (63%) cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East, despite near-constant news coverage since the U.S. invasion of March 2003.
Three-quarters (75%) of young men and women do not know that a majority of Indonesia's population is Muslim (making it the largest Muslim country in the world), despite the prominence of this religion in global news today.
Three-quarters (74%) believe English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world, rather than Mandarin Chinese. Although 73% know the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of oil, nearly as many (71%) do not know the U.S. is the world's largest exporter of goods and services - half think it's China.
Taken together, these results suggest that young people in the United States - the most recent graduates of our educational system - are unprepared for an increasingly global future. Far too many lack even the most basic skills for navigating the international economy or understanding the relationships among people and places that provide critical context for world events."
This is exactly the problem I am trying to address in my dissertation.
1 comment:
Hello TennisMom! My name is Amber Hacker and I work with the Interfaith Youth Core. That's awesome that you are reading "Building the Interfaith Youth Movement" and using that as the basis for your dissertation. I'd love to chat with you move about the interfaith youth movement and give you more information on how to get involved (or more resources to use for your dissertation-we have a great media archive) My work e-mail is amber at ifyc dot org (I do it like that to avoid the spammers). Thanks for writing about us!
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