Not all was good. My friend Jacob, who also teaches yoga, ended up in the hospital for a week. He had a terrible bacterial infection called leptospyrosis. I highly recommend avoiding that one. He has completely recovered now, though, and is back to teaching and being himself, which is very nice!
Meanwhile, Alistair went to Panama. He took a week-long Spanish course in a town called Boquete, in the north. He really enjoyed it. Now he is back, (just returned two days ago) which is very very nice!
After my last post, we finished the Foundation Course, then had a long weekend. The long weekends are totally necessary between these intense 3-week courses. For the foundation one, we had a paper due during the weekend, which I still needed to finish. So I stuck around, working on the paper, and hung out with some other friends who didn't travel (many students went to the beach). We had pot lucks and did yoga, and...finished our papers!
I wrote mine on the US health care debate, specifically about the values involved. It was pretty interesting to research. I didn't get my grade yet though.
Then we got into our "real" programs! I am now taking the foundation Peace Education course, called Peace Education: Theory and Practice. I must say, I love it so much and am so happy to be studying what I'm studying!
And what am I studying? My initial goal with this blog was to write about what we studied every day. There really hasn't been time for that so far, but I'll try to do better. Here's a recap, though.
The first few days we talked about different "strands" of peace education, including (but not limited to) disarmament education, global education, development education, environmental education and futures education. The following day we looked at different perspectives from different countries, ethnicities and religions: the indigenous Canadian, British, Japanese, and Islamic perspectives. This was a grand overview of what peace education is, what the values are, the methods of teaching it, and the challenges. I just finished writing a paper on this overview.
Then we started getting into the "petals" of peace education. There is a flower diagram that is used to talk about the different aspects of what we need to do to dismantle a culture of war (which, of course, we currently live in). They include eduction for...
....dismantling a culture of war (disarmament education)
....living with justice and compassion (this includes education about globalization)
....promoting human rights and responsibilities (our next course is entirely about human rights education)
....living in harmony with the earth (environmental/ecological education, education for sustainability)
....building cultural respect, reconciliation, and solidarity
...cultivating inner peace.
We've discussed disarmament education, which is not just nuclear disarmament, but also small weapons, which contribute the most to violent conflict in the world. It's pretty exciting that as we were studying this, Obama led the security council to the decision to disarm. It will take time, but it is really exciting to have a leader who can take that step. My hat goes off.
(He is moving forward to put US military bases in Colombia, a plan I am not a fan of, nor are any Latin Americans. I hope he changes his mind.)
The day we talked about living with justice and compassion, we spoke a lot about globalization, which was interesting. We also had a songwriting day! That was most fun. We split into groups and had to write a song about the situations, root causes, and solutions for a marginalized group (our group was street children). When I get time, i am planning to organize some songwriting workshops on campus.
We are learning a lot of interesting educational techniques as well. Peace education is based on principles of participatory dialogue and creativity, on helping learners to develop critical thinking skills and critical consciousness. Our professor rarely lectures, and classes involve a lot more discussion. Then we do fun projects like the songwriting, role plays (on disarmament day we had an "arms fair"), and art, which are great teaching tools. We're just beginning but it's so exciting, and I'm so happy everyday in class to be studying this!
Meanwhile, there was also a yoga festival and the Global Alliance Summit!
The yoga festival was in San Jose, and my friend Janine was teaching a class. Jacob and I went to her house on a Friday night, took a class at her studio, then went to the festival with her and assisted her with a class. It was really fun. Taking the class was great - it was so nice to take a Kripalu class, to have someone do that for me! And the festival was fun. Assisting is really rewarding - you just walk around and be present with people and try to help them get deeper into the class. I loved it.
The Global Alliance summit was interesting. The global alliance is a group who is doing peace work, specifically lobbying governments worldwide to form ministries and departments of peace. Opening night, there was a cocktail party with delicious food and live music, followed by a ceremony, which involved a speech by noneother than Senor Oscar Arias, Nobel-laureate and former and current Costa Rican president. Unfortunately by the time he spoke I was only understanding about 60% of his Spanish (it was late). I know that he did say he was happy that Costa Rica now has a Ministry for Justice and Peace, but that it is only a beginning, and much work needs to be done yet. Here here.
I was able to meet some interesting people, including the woman who is the director of the newly-formed National Academy for Peace in the US. Will be sending her my resume shortly....
Then on the Sunday, the summit had a learning day. It was interesting, but somewhat long, a lot of lectures and not so much dialogue. After weeks of participatory learning, it feels wrong to have someone lecture at you all day! There were really interesting topics though - including a woman from Pennsylvania who talked about green economics. I really enjoyed her talk.
There was also International Peace Day (Sept. 21). Our class was responsible for organizing the activities on campus to celebrate, one of which was an open mic, which I hosted. It was AWESOME!!! It was amazing what people came out with - songs and poetry about social justice, compassion, consciousness...I have very talented classmates, and I really enjoyed playing the role of organizer and host. We will definitely have more of those throughout the year!
Well, it's Saturday, and I'm going to cook breakfast. No papers due this week, so I can leisurely work my way through my (massive) reader and soak things in.
Much love to all of you who are reading this!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment