The first semester focused on personal issues and issues of relationships, school success, choices about work, recreation, etc. Following a formative process of creating a sense of community within the class, this second semester has involved expanding to the larger aspects of their world. The goal is to help these young people connect to global problems and solutions and those people therein concerned, and to possible career interests. This process of involvement evokes for the students a sense of direction and purpose followed by social action.
The students are connecting to current and future global issues in five areas: human rights, ecology, poverty, addictions, and global powers. Each student selected one of these areas, and the class divided into five "interest groups." Each group is currently exploring information gathered from a variety of sources, including the Internet. Working closely with their teachers and the school librarians, Margot Petagna and Martha McCaffrey, each interest group will soon be making reports or providing activities based on their findings to the class in general, and hopefully, to other classes in the school. They already see the interconnectedness of their five research areas: how a drug cartel (addictions) can contribute to hunger and homelessness (poverty); how a government in league with a drug cartel (global powers) can commit atrocities against its people (human rights); how the drug habit of one person contributes to a larger reality of pain and corruption (addictions and human rights); and how a corporation (global powers) can exploit natural resources, pollute the environment (ecology), conduct business with malevolent dictators (human rights), and get away with paying underprivileged people poverty-level wages (poverty).
Most people involved with human rights education are very aware of the interrelationship of these five significant areas and the importance of getting young people constructively engaged in the process of exploration, discovery, communication, and social action related to these areas in our present world. Bernard and Diamond believe and have found that these young people have the energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to engage, given the guidance, opportunity, and encouragement.
Each interest group is encouraged to bring in pertinent guest speakers and plan meaningful field trips and community actions in which the entire class can participate. During the first semester, the class planned a community action day: one group cleaned up a local lakefront, and the other visited an elementary school to guest-teach several classes. Three students in that group designed a lesson plan on appreciating diversity (see page 14). The children they taught have sent them thank-you drawings and love notes, which reinforces for them the intrinsic rewards of reaching out to others in one's community.
The content of this course, entitled "Contemporary Issues," offers tremendous possibilities and rewards to the students, the teachers, and the community at large because it flexes and changes along with current issues and student concerns. "This teaching methodology has carried over into my more traditional English classes in many positive and profound ways," says Diamond. "It requires that all students be respected as vibrant and very individual human beings who should be granted as much responsibility and choice as possible in their learning environment. The dynamics of such an environment are very exciting when the students catch on and start to claim their role." Some of the students currently enrolled in this class are members of the school's Amnesty International club, sponsored by Ms. Diamond. They are able to extend their interest in human rights issues into this class and offer a unique perspective.
