This past weekend I gave a TEDx talk at American University. The theme of the event was “Exploring Our Global Future.” The title of my talk was, “Bridging the Distance: Teaching and Learning Peace Online.” In short, the talk laid out my reasons for believing in online learning as a valuable development in the field of education and how online learning can be infused with the values of peace and nonviolence. I also lay out in the talk what I have come to call, “The Seven Blossoms of Peace Education,” which is a pedagogical framework that any educators can apply to their work to integrate peace and nonviolence into their classrooms.
This weekend I gave the keynote presentation at the Teaching about Global Conflict and Peacebuilding Seminar at Montgomery College. The conference brought together over 30 community college professors from across the country teaching in a variety of fields and all interested in incorporating peace and conflict studies into their work. I was invited to give the keynote address by the conference organizer, David Smith, an education and peacebuilding consultant who has for many years now been working with community college helping them build and develop peace and conflict studies program.
The title of my presentation was, “Teaching Our Way Out of the Cave: How Peace and Conflict Educators Are Challenging War, Violence, and Human Suffereing.” The title at first might seem a bit obscure, but for the past few years I have been using the metaphor of a cave to explain the differences between direct violence and structural violence and the difference between negative peace approaches and positive peace approaches to addressing those different kinds of violence.
On July 16th and 17th, 2013 I helped organize and facilitate a 1.5 day intensive workshop for DC area teachers to learn about peace education programs and initiatives being implemented in the DC area. In this effort, I worked closely with Laurie Segel-Moss, Assistant Director of the Center for Peacebuilding and Development (CPD) and Maura Scully, Program Coordinator for the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace.
The purpose of the gathering was to elevate the peace education work that orgs, schools, and teachers are already doing throughout the DC area; escalate the work of peace education by integrating the skills, methods, and models developed by the featured organizations into the teachers’ educational practice, their classrooms, and schools; and spread these methods, models and programs to other teachers, classrooms and schools after experimenting with what was shared through this gathering.
This above interview with Barbara Wien is one of the many interviews I conducted over the course of the Spring 2013 semester at AU speaking with professors about the work they do, the courses they teach and how they relate to various elements of peace education. I had the pleasure of working with Katie Kassof, an AU staff member and former student from my 2012 peace pedagogy course, to do the actual filming. Katie filmed the actual interviews and I devised specific sets of questions for each interviewee, scheduled times with each of them in the studio, conducted the actual interviews, edited them into a series of shorter movies, and uploaded them my personal YouTube channel. Click here to see a playlist of all the videos edited to date.
This week I had the opportunity to give a presentation and lead some exercises around peace education with a group of 35 high school students (9th and 10th graders) from two schools in Queens, NY. They were visiting DC as part of a Global Kids trip. Global Kids is an “educational organization for global learning and youth development – works to ensure that urban youth have the knowledge, skills, experiences and values they need to succeed in school, participate effectively in the democratic process, and achieve leadership in their communities and on the global stage.” This was a unique and valuable experience for a number of reasons I will outline below and I very much appreciated the time I got to spend with the students.
The above podcast was recorded on Wednesday, November 14th 2012 during the Peace Pedagogy (EDU-596) course I facilitate each year at American University. As a final assignment for the class I asked each student to develop what I called a “Peace Learner Commitment.” A Peace Learner Commitment is:
“…a pledge to yourself, and shared with our community, to achieve a goal that seeks to build and foster peaceable learning environments. This environment can be built in the classroom, your community, among your peers, with your family, in the work place, or for yourself. The choice is yours.
“The key is for an element of this course that resonated with you – skill, content, activity, attitude, technique, perspective, etc. – to bear fruit outside of the (tiny) classroom we shared this semester.”
In the podcast each student shares what their commitment is. And listening to this podcast, I can honestly say that it has been a privilege spending an entire semester with this outstanding, kind, and inspirational group of learners. The 14 students all came to the course for different reasons, with different needs, and from different professional and academic backgrounds. Given the diversity of the learning goals and needs, as the professor for the course I really had to give deep thought to what kinds of assignments were going to actually be useful to the class.
This weekend I organized a Peace Education Exploratorium – a full day with my students and some guest educators talking about, experimenting with, and modeling, and learning about different approaches to teaching and understanding peace education. This was the final class of the semester for my Peace Pedagogy class and it was a great way to conclude the course. Spending an entire day with these friends and colleagues and basking in the joy of peace education made my heart glad. I must also acknowledge my good friend and fellow peace educator, Arthur Romano, who came up with the title, Peace Education Exploratorium, and organized one of these full day events in the Spring with his peace education class at George Mason and invited me to be a guest presenter/facilitator. I also want to send much appreciation to the two other guest facilitators who joined the class for the day – Amanda Munroe and Johonna McCants (pictured above). Click to read more about each of the guest facilitators and the various sessions that they facilitated.
From December 2-4, I was one of 8 participants in a peace education master class facilitated by two of most prominent peace educators in the world – Betty Reardon and Tony Jenkins. The class was held at the La Casa de Maria Retreat and Conference Center located in the coastal mountains of Santa Barbara, CA. I had first met Tony Jenkins at the National Peace Academy’s Peacebuilding Peacelearning Intensive back in July of this year. As my blog posting from that intensive describes, it was a inspirational and transformative experience where I got to learn from and work with a number of peacebuilders. I had met Betty Reardon briefly at the Gandhi-King Conference back in October, but this was the first time that I had an opportunity to actually take a class with her. So needless to say this opportunity was a dream come true and it did not disappoint. If you want a quick, tweeted, overview of some what we covered and discussed throughout the class, check out my Bundle of key tweets and resources. Continue reading to learn more…
From Thursday, October 20 to Sunday, October 23 I attended the Gandhi-King Conference in Memphis, TN. This was my third time attending and presenting at the conference and, like always, it remains one of the highlights of my year. This year the conference was organized in partnership with the Peace and Justice Studies Association, which brought in even more outstanding presenters and scholars. I was part of two sessions this year. The first was a panel organized by Michael Nagler, president and founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. The topic was, “Nonviolence: Principled and Strategic,” which looked at the ongoing conversation that seeks to clarify the distinctions and commonalities between the two orientations to the practice of nonviolence. The second session was a participatory workshop I designed and facilitated called, “Teach the Struggle: Nonviolence in the Classroom,” which engaged participants in a variety of activities and exercises they can use with their own students to explore various concepts related to nonviolent action and civil resistance. The amazing thing about that workshop is that about ten minutes into it, Dolores Huerta walked in to join us!!! More on that later. Continue reading to learn more…
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.
This is a professional resume blog that highlights different elements of my career and provides more information about the skills, passions, and interests I bring to my work.
RT @AccotinkFriends: Wonderful Fall day for a walkabout on the trails at Lake Accotink Park! Grab your rain jacket and your four legged bud… 2 years ago
Daryn R. Cambridge 