Starting the second week of the HiA program, we were joined by the First Achievement Teacher Fellows. First Achievement runs highly recognized charter schools and has succeeded in providing good education to underprivileged children in New York City. Charter schools promote greater independency from the district board of education. We enjoyed having the teacher fellows and their insights into the education and appreciated their critical questions.
After finding out about the new faces in our already beloved Packer Room, our first speaker had made his way through the jungle of New York’s public transport. As a double Pulitzer Prize winner David Levering Lewis challenged our concentration and linguistic skills with his highly sophisticated speech on the Civil Rights Movement and its Legacy. In his critical view of American politics and society the idea of diversity has not yet succeeded in solving all the problems. He surprised especially the Europeans that some Americans do believe that state action can do good. We mean, if we understood correctly.
As a second speaker, we welcomed the celebrity Joel Klein and his bodyguard. After a career in law, government and business Joel Klein is now New York City schools chancellor. Talking about Education Reform in Public Schools he explained his magic formula a (ccountability) + e (mpowerment) + c (ompetition) = r (esults). He continued to emphasize: “Education has to serve the needs of the kids”. However, the German delegation was extremely skeptical if the American corporate economic model would indeed serve the “consumers”. Despite the criticism, we think it is remarkable that graduation rate increased from 30,000 to 38,000 students in the past five years. This number includes a lot of Afro-American and Hispanic students.
After a very relaxing and delicious MTAsubway lunch we found ourselves at the National Dance Institute on the West Side. Unlike the rest of the days, children who are living up to our HiA mission inspired us through their passionate body language and thrilling moves. We watched the famous and award winning Jacques d’ Amboise putting together a performance of HipHop and Bali dance with students from around the US and Bali. To see them communicate through music was very moving, so were the conversations with budding artists. After shy attempts to define HiA, Koen spoke their language with eloquent Jumpstyle dancing from The Netherlands. We all got up and participated. Now we hope that Mexican sun dance will be mixed with Dutch moves.
To not make us feel not too untalented, Judy thoughtfully treated us with ice cream. We needed the sugar high to keep us quiet during the Danish presentation on free speech. We learned about lacking laws against racism, the meaning of free speech in Denmark and the cartoon crisis. The final event of the day was an introduction of the research projects by Matt.
We hope the soccer game went well. Other than minor injuries like bruises, we are happy to announce that none of our teammates is severely injured. We are looking forward to the upcoming days.
Shauna, Pawel, Julia
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
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