Category Archives: Education/Training

Occupy DC Nonviolence Workshop

This past Tuesday I co-facilitated a three-hour workshop on nonviolence for approximately 40 people who were in town to participate in the Occupy DC demonstrations.  The campaign is organized by a coalition of groups whose agenda and vision can be found on the website, October2011.org.  As the call to action states on the campaign’s website, “October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.  We call on people of conscience and courage—all who seek peace, economic justice, human rights and a healthy environment—to join together in Washington, D.C., beginning on Oct. 6, 2011, in nonviolent resistance similar to the Arab Spring and the Midwest awakening.  Continue reading to learn more about my co-facilitators and to see the entire outline of the workshop.

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Fall 2011 Semester Begins at American University

Link to Peace Pedagogy course website

The Fall 2011 semester at American University began on August 31st.  This semester I am teaching two different courses: Education for International Development (EDU285), which meets on Wednesdays from 2:35pm – 5:15pm and Peace Pedagogy (EDU596), which meets right after from 5:30pm – 8:00pm.  This is the first time that I have taught two courses in one semester, let alone back to back on the same day, so I would be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a bit overwhelmed taking on this course load on top of my full time job.  That being said, the first few weeks have been going well.  I have great groups of students, interesting subject matter, and a “manageable” schedule.  There are also some new teaching tools and methods that I am trying out this semester and I am looking forward to seeing how they pan out.

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6th International Vietnamese Youth Conference (DaiHoi6)

From August 4th – 7th I attended the 6th International Vietnamese Youth Conference (DaiHoi6) organized by the Len Duong International Vietnamese Youth Network. The conference was held in the Philippines and brought together approximately 100 Vietnamese youth from around the world (Australia, United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Norway). The theme of this year’s conference was, “Access Now! Digital Activism for Social Change” (download full program).

While there, I also facilitated two workshops both focused on nonviolent struggle. The first was titled, “Why Nonviolent Struggle?” and it explored the strategic elements of nonviolent action that movements have used throughout history. The second was called “Case Studies from the Arab Spring,” and looked at nonviolent struggle within the context of the recent uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Other workshops offered at the conference focused on topics such as internet circumvention, leadership skills, digital activism inside Vietnam, and social media for social change. Continue reading to learn more about the workshops I facilitated and some of my take-aways from the workshops I attended.

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Learning to Teach Online (LeTTOL)

I recently completed my participation in the online course, Learning to Teach Online, offered through Sheffield College in the UK.  A friend of mine recommended that I take this course a couple years ago and I am glad that I finally found the time to actually do it.  The course began in late February and finished in early July, which was a perfect time for me to delve into this field as I am in the process of designing an online course on nonviolence that I will then be facilitating in the fall.

I learned a tremendous amount about effective online teaching.  Continue reading to see some of my key take-aways.

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2011 Fletcher Summer Institute

From June 19-24, I attended, helped organize, and presented at the 2011 Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolence Conflict. This yearly institute is the only professional level course of its kind offered in the world that explores the strategic use of nonviolent civic action – strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, etc. – as a method of fighting for and defending human rights, social justice, and democratic self-rule.

This year the institute brought together 45 participants from 26 countries and delved into topics such as forming a movement, the paradox of repression, citizen journalism and movement media, negotiations and transitions, and the role of third party actors in supporting civil resistance movements. My colleague, Nicola Barrach, and I co-presented a session on digital and social media in civil resistance, which looked at the uses and limitations of digital technology, social media, and the internet in waging nonviolent struggle.

In addition to presenting, I also helped coordinate various media elements of the institute by integrating the use of our FSI alumni network Facebook group page as a platform for continued discussion and resource sharing; organizing live, communal note-taking on Twitter with the #fsi11 hashtag; curating and sharing key tweets and resources mentioned during the different sessions using Bundlr; recording audio interviews with participants and presenters and sharing those recording on Twitter using Audioboo; and conducting longer video interviews with select participants and presenters for the ICNC website and our On the Ground Interview Series.  Needless to say, I did not get much sleep, but I did have a great time, learning a lot from some amazing organizers, activists, and educators!  Continue reading to learn more about the institute, the various sessions, and some of the key take-aways from each.

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SCA Conflict Resolution Workshop

This Tuesday I teamed up with a friend and fellow peace educator, Tarek Maassrani, to co-facilitate a conflict resolution workshop for 45 crew leaders in the Washington DC Department of the Environment’s Green Zone Environmental Program (GZEP).  We were sub-contracted by the Student Conservation Association – an educational and environmental non-profit that works with youth across the country on conservation and trail building.  They also work with GZEP in coordinating a series of workshops on leadership, conflict resolution, trailbuilding, and teamwork to orient GZEP crew leaders and prepare them for the program.   Learn more about what we covered in the workshop.

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4th International Conflict Resolution Education Conference

I just attended the 4th International Conflict Resolution Education Conference, which was held from June 8 – 11 in Cleveland, OH (download full conference program).  Educators from the United States and all over the world – Korea, Ghana, Kenya, Trinidad & Tobago – gathered at Cuyahoga Community College to participate and present a number of key workshops.  I was joined by my colleagues, Hardy Merriman and Maciej Bartkowski from ICNC.  I facilitated a session titled, “Liberation Tech? The Influence of the Internet and Digital Activism in Nonviolent Struggle.”  Continue reading to learn more…

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School of Authentic Journalism

From May 11-21 I was one of 79 journalists, organizers, and educators who gathered in the State of Morelos in Mexico to attend the 2011 School of Authentic Journalism.  The school takes a unique approach – both with content and structure – in exploring the field of journalism, particularly in its role covering social movements across the globe.  The school was founded and is organized by Al Giordano, the editor of Narco News and a man who started organizing at a young age as part of the anti-nuclear power movement in the United States.  Check out this interview I conducted with him in 2009.  The school consisted of a mixture of plenary sessions where we got to hear seasoned journalists from a variety of mediums (video, photo, and print), contemporary organizers and veterans from nonviolent movements, and scholars of civil resistance.  Below I outline an extensive overview, going through each day, of what I experienced at the school along with links to others’ reflections and articles about the participants and the school.

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AU Spring Semester Ends with Pecha-Kucha

Even with a whopping 58 students in the class, the spring semester has flown by.  Since we like to elicit a lot of participation from the student, facilitate a lot of group activities, get the students moving around, and playing around with different learn space set ups, an increased class size, in a room with auditorium style fixed seating, made for some teaching and facilitation challenges.  But my dad and I made the necessary adjustments and, as far as I can say, had a good time working, yet again, with another group of AU students.

As we’ve done in the past, we ended the semester with students working in teams to design a education/training program that seeks to address one of many development challenges facing the finctional country of Afrinia.  The teams then present their program to the rest of the class, specifically addressing questions related to the major themes and concepts covered during the semester.  We did a little something different this year, however, with the presentations – we asked each team to put together a pecha-kucha presentation.

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Presentation for the One World Youth Project

This past weekend I gave a presentation on skills and approaches to teaching and facilitation for the One World Youth Project (OWYP).  OWYP is a great non-profit educational organization that links schools globally in service-learning to prepare the next generation for the globalized 21st century. In service of this mission they train college and university students  to go into local high school and middle schools to teach and implement elements of the OWYP curriculum which focuses on exploring the Millennium Development Goals and other global issues.  My presentation was filmed and will be put online to be used as a resources for college students who are “educators in training” interested in learning more about specific education approaches and teaching techniques that can help them be creative, culturally aware, and effective facilitators for OWYP.  Continue reading to check out my remarks.

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