Using theater in education as a tool for transformational discussion and learning

2014 Guatemala

One thing that makes Global Visionaries (GV) unique is how all participants receive the same experience, no matter their background. This used to be only true for our Seattle participants, but this year GV has moved towards equal programming for our participants both in Seattle and Guatemala. One example of this programming is in GV’s use of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), a form of popular community based education that uses theater as a tool for transformation.

Originally this form of theatre was developed by actor and activist Augusto Boal, through his work with peasants and other worker populations. Boal was inspired by the vision of good friend, Paulo Freire, and Freire’s landmark treatise on education “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Boal’s work has inspired others around the world to work toward social and political activism, conflict resolution, community building, and even government legislation.

Up until now, TO had primarily been utilized in Seattle by GV staff and its participants. But this year GV incorporated TO into its intensive program allowing both Guatemalans and “Gringos” to engage in an interactive theater based forum. Led by long-time GV friend and counselor, Marc Weinblatt, the group talked about sexism in Guatemala as experienced by our staff. The result was the creation of a play titled, “Lo que la vida me robo,” (translation: “what life stole from me”).

The play, and TO, is about analyzing rather than accepting what is presented and questioning rather than giving answers.  It is also about “acting” rather than just talking.  Throughout the experience of “Lo que la video me robo”, audience members were transformed from spectators into “spect-actors”.   Through the evocative language of theatre, everyone was invited to share their opinion on the issue at hand – sexism. And even though the play was in Spanish, it didn’t stop Seattle participants from engaging with one another as “spect-actors.”

Interested in learning more about Theatre of the Oppressed? Join us for a workshop December 6-7, where we partner with Marc Weinblatt’s organization at The Mandala Center for Change, on “Diversity: Evolving from Reality to Truth.” We’ll explore how our gender, ethnicity, and other social group memberships affect our experience in the world. Register here, and get a glimpse of what our students’ experience.

By Emma Shull, Global Visionaries

Global Visionaries views its youth as leaders of today, inspiring the leaders of tomorrow. As we strive to become a youth-led organization, we involve our young people in many facets of our organizational practice. Youth engagement and inspiring action to work towards a just and sustainable future are generated by conversations and participation in activities such as TO.

More about Marc Weinblatt

Marc has been a professional educator, theatre director, activist, and workshop facilitator since 1980. He is an internationally recognized leader in the use of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and has trained thousands to utilize these techniques across the U.S. and from Afghanistan to South Africa. Most recently, Marc joined Global Visionaries (GV) during our intensive program and worked with the Guatemalan staff in creating a play for our GV participants.

GV joins Treehouse in supporting youth in foster care.

This year, GV has entered into a new partnership with Treehouse, a local organization providing youth in foster care the academic and socio-emotional support to help them graduate high school with a plan for the future. With the support of the CFOS and Seattle Foundation, Seattle International Foundation and major donors, four Treehouse students were able to participate in GV’s First Year Leadership Program and two of the participants will be continuing on with GV for a second year as members of the Youth Board.

Our participants write below about their transformative experience in Guatemala.

“On my way to the airport my body started shaking with excitement and fear. This was my first time on a plane, my first time in another country. I couldn’t help but think that maybe this trip would be the trip that would change everything. And I was right; it was the trip that changed everything for me.”

“Thanks to Global Visionaries, a big part of me changed that night and I will never forget it.. This experience has inspired me to want to go to college and study physical and mental disabilities so that one day I can help people who are not able to help themselves.”

“My experience in Guatemala was unforgettable. I can now find the beauty in almost anything and I feel like I found who I am. The groups reflections were the most powerful for me, hearing others’ questions and theories makes you think about your own. They help you let go of whatever you have been holding back for years. There was this one reflection in particular, I could never forget about. We just got done with the hospital and we were talking about what happened and what you would have done differently. I thought of my experience with one of the Abuelas (“Grandmother”, the name given to female, elderly patients) at the hospital. I could not speak with her because I didn’t know what to say in her language and she was a woman without speech. I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there and did nothing. Later on, I realized that if she had been my grandmother, I would have wanted someone to talk to her, help her out, or push her around in her wheelchair. Realizations like this one, made me and my group cry. It was great because we all became so close during the trip that we were able to comfort each other. I also realized that we weren’t just pointing out what we did wrong in the hospital, we were pointing out what we can do next time, what we can change.”

About the partnership

Due to the unique challenges faced by youth in foster care, less than half graduate from high school on time, and fewer than two percent will continue on to graduate with a four-year degree. GV’s programming engages youth in a manner that supports Treehouse’s goal to ensure that by 2017 foster youth will graduate high school at the same rate as their peers and will have a plan for their future. Participation in youth-led advocacy and leadership programs like GV have been shown to significantly impact foster youth’s sense of identify and community. GV is proud to work with Treehouse to help foster youth get to graduation day and beyond.

Our supporters

Scholarships were funded by support from the CFOS, Seattle Foundation, Seattle International Foundation and individual donors.

 

New school year, new approach.

With summer winding down and a fresh school year rapidly approaching, teachers across the state are working to fine-tune curriculum and establish educational goals for the year ahead. As part of this preparatory process, nearly twenty educators traveled from all corners of Puget Sound and beyond in early August, to participate in the very first Global Leadership Summer Institute.

One participant emphasizes the positive impact of the Summer Institute’s content on their existing teaching plan:  

“It was really great to revisit my plan for the beginning of the school year in the context of the Institute and in conversation with others. I was able to strengthen the beginning of my year and add rich flavors that I otherwise would have missed out on.”

Another participant asserts,  

“This is what I came to learn. I am excited to implement these tools in my classroom.”

Facilitated by Global Visionaries Executive Director, Chris Fontana, and experienced global educators, Vicki Weeks and Noah Zeichner, this weeklong program was created as a result of the enthusiastic response to last year’s single day workshop.

About the Summer Institute

The Summer Institute provides educators from all backgrounds with the tools and techniques to cultivate a climate of mutual respect and shared ownership, in which student leaders become engaged global leaders, both in and out of the classroom. The Institute is interactive and allows participants to collaborate with each other, discuss the pedagogies presented to them, and practice their implementation throughout the course of the workshop. At the end of their weeklong experience, educators come away with a myriad of ideas and resources to bring back to their school and fold in to their current pedagogical practices.

The Institute from GV offers educators professional development in the field of global studies and youth leadership.

• Presentations and discussions center on how to engage youth in social and environmental issues pertinent to our culture today.
• With a combination of face-to-face training and mentorship, the Institute demonstrates how to develop an atmosphere of youth entrepreneurship and leadership amongst student bodies.

Outcomes for teachers returning to their classrooms include the opportunity to lead school transformation through global awareness, volunteerism, and youth led initiatives.

Our supporters

The Summer Institute is the result of continued collaboration and support from GV’s sponsors, Seattle University School of Education, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Seattle Public Schools; as well as GV’s educational partners, Center for Teaching Quality, World Affairs Council, Global Weeks and Facing the Future, all providing facilities and resources to the Institute. And with funding in part from the Bezos Family Foundation.

To find out more about our teacher programs visit our website.

Haley’s Blog – Post 6

In the final hours I spend in Guatemala, I reminisce on the lessons I’ve learned, the places I’ve visited, and the people I’ve met. This place will, inevitably, have a lasting impact on my global perspective and understanding.

I’d like to thank Global Visionaries for this unparalleled opportunity to live and work among the Guatemalan people for the last five weeks. It’s been a privilege getting to know this town and its people, coming to embrace its culture, immersing myself wholly and shamelessly. Parting with all I’ve so quickly become familiar with will be bittersweet.

Below are a few of the memories I’ve shared with the Intensive group.

 

Haley’s Blog – Post 5

By definition, development is “the state of being created or made more advanced.” Inherently, our global society has developed with the passing of time, but what characteristics embody this “development”? What or who has the ability to define what “development” is?

On Sunday, half of the Intensive students visited Segunda Cruz, a rural farming village among the hills of Pastores, a town just shy of an hour away from San Miguel Escobar. Here, the steep rocky ascent gives way to lush green hills speckled with tall, cartoonish trees and tin-roofed shanties. In the distance, a red schoolhouse establishes the center of the village. Seven years ago, Global Visionaries constructed this building, with the physical and moral support of the local community. The families of Segunda Cruz greeted us warmly as we gathered in the lot next to the schoolhouse. After being introduced to the members of the village, we divided into three small groups. Each group followed a separate family onto their rolling plot of land where their corn and beans sprout from the earth. These plants, in essence, are the livelihood of these families. The wealth of the family solely relies on the health and growth of their produce.

My group worked with a woman named Doña Juana and her three youngest children. With her dainty, delicate hands, she demonstrated how to properly uproot weeds from the groomed furrows that comb through the hillside. The rest of us followed her demonstration and proceeded to remove the weeds that scourged the crop of beans that sprawled before us. After completing our task, we had the opportunity to share lunch with Doña Juana and her sons. The students had prepared a few questions to explore but, instead, decided to engage in conversation with her family.

As many had astutely noticed earlier, there had recently been a road paved that carved itself through the village. One student began to ask if this had improved or declined the development of the village’s productivity or well being. Doña Juana paused and pensively glanced downhill toward the white concrete below. The road ends halfway through the village, trailing off into a rigid path. Originally, the road had instilled hope in the people of the village, creating means for access to healthcare, clean water, and jobs. But its incompletion acts as a symbol of their disconnection from Western society. The road is a vehicle for change, but with this change, the people of Segunda Cruz may just lose their cultural identity.

Doña Juana told us that among traditional Guatemalan villages, like Segunda Cruz, this type of development isn’t always necessarily beneficial for the community. While it provides opportunity, it also physically and metaphorically creates a barrier between the village and their livelihood. The road, and the change that naturally follows, is not something they’re yet willing or ready to embrace. But who’s to say the people of Segunda Cruz need to conform to the Westernized idea of “development”?

Haley’s Blog – Post 4

Not long after they deplane, the Intensive cohort loads onto two separate buses, both of which shortly arrive at the Guatemala City Cemetery. The students are undoubtedly exhausted from their 12+ hour travels the night prior, but they muster the ability to observe the dilapidated shrines that line the path to our tragically powerful vista.

Monstrous mounds of garbage occupy the canyon below. Allegedly, over 4,000 people live and work in the dump. All of Guatemala’s garbage accumulates in this one central location. It’s then sorted and claimed by its inhabitants. Because the Guatemalan government has failed to recognize, let alone represent, the people of the dump, it has become a city in itself with its own laws, customs, and social structure. These unfortunate souls have been merely cast away, among the garbage that consumes them.

Nearly twenty years ago, a young woman from Maine named Hanley Denning experienced the City’s dump. Upon her return to the United States, she sold all of her belongings and used this money to establish her own not-for-profit organization that she named “Safe Passage” or “Camino Seguro.” The organization provides the children of the dump the opportunity for education. Today, it’s served over 550 children who’ve been given the tools and the confidence to surpass the poverty their families have faced for generations.

It’s with this anecdote that we inspire GV students to see beyond themselves and ask what they can do to improve their local and global communities. As Hanley Denning did, it’s with one idea that any person can create positive impact on a global scale.

To read more about what Safe Passage does, follow the link attached: http://www.safepassage.org/.

Haley’s Blog – Post 3

In the process of documenting the group’s ventures, I interviewed over ten students. I wanted to gain a better sense of the transformation they were experiencing. There was one question I asked, in particular, that seemed to provoke them. I asked, “What is a global visionary?” Their reactions were raw and genuine. It took many students a few moments to process the question, but they each answered to its true essence.

“A global visionary is someone who understands more than their own country; they understand the states and needs of other countries and they understand how they can affect those countries and cultures.”

“A global visionary is someone that doesn’t just look at their own local community or country; they look around the globe and see what they can do to benefit the entire human species.”

“A global visionary is someone who has a bright idea and wants to make the world a better place. Even though they may not have the means to do it, they want to try.”

Today, the students return to the United States. They return not only with a shift in cultural and social perspective, but a sincere understanding of who they are as local and global leaders. Through their immersion, they’ve each become a true global visionary.

Haley’s Blog – Post 2

This immersive experience provokes a number of seemingly unanswerable questions for the students involved. Often, they begin to discuss among their peers, in hopes of clarity or reassurance. However, approaching these daunting questions in this manner doesn’t necessarily allow the student to find satisfactory answers. So, last night, students participated in a five-minute writing exercise where we challenged them to document between five and ten profound questions regarding Guatemalan society and culture that hadn’t yet been answered for them. In each work team, we accumulated more than thirty questions. Ultimately, we narrowed it down to five questions per work team — fifteen questions total — to create a platform for them to begin asking these questions to a variety of resources. The students have committed themselves to utilizing their host families and other Guatemalans to delve deeper and begin to find some answers.

“What is the role of government in daily life?”

“What are the gendered expectations, socially and behaviorally, at home and at work?”

“What role does religion play in the life of the Guatemalan people? How does this differ from the United States?”

“What is the general attitude towards the LGBTQ community?”

“What is the United States-Guatemalan relationship like currently?”

 

Haley’s Blog – Post 1

This cohort is one of natural leaders. It’s a group of young adults who are willing and able to exceed the expectations of not only the staff and their peers, but also of themselves. Each student is provided the opportunity to be a leader of the day (or “LOD” as we call them at GV). The students set a realistic goal for themselves and their work teams and, throughout the day’s course of events, they strive to accomplish them. We encourage students to take ownership of their words and actions in order to develop a genuine and meaningful leadership experience. We ask them to reflect on their successes once their day finishes. The results of these reflections truly articulate the transformational experience we yearn for students to undergo. Below are a few excerpts from students’ reflections:

“Today I learned that sometimes I underestimate myself.”

“I’m really proud of everyone for keeping such a positive attitude and making sure that everyone feels included. This trip has been a wonderful learning experience that I feel has enriched my life; and for that, I am very grateful.”

“I’ve never been one to make the decisions and the calls to action. In a world where we are always assigning leaders, and some are continuously left out, it’s a whole different environment when everyone has a chance to be a leader — a chance I usually don’t get.”

“I want to be the person I have become on this trip always…I’m so grateful to GV for giving me the opportunity to open up [again] without the fear of being ostracized or scorned. My goal for the day was to ensure that everyone was gaining an appreciation for their culture and effectively and successfully experience and understood the culture. I feel like this goal was, for the most part, accomplished.”

 

Noah Zeichner featured in Rethinking Schools’ Fall 2013 issue for his article “Rethinking Shit: Excrement and equity.”

Erik Ruin

Noah Zeichner teaches the Global Leadership Class at Chief Sealth International High School, which was developed by Global Visionaries for students to have a safe environment to discuss the issues of our world today and what can be done about them. Zeichner often addresses global poverty in his class sessions, and his unit on rethinking shit has quickly become one of his favorites.

Approaching the topic of human waste is uncomfortable at best, especially in the classroom setting. However, Noah Zeichner has found a way to make a lasting impact on his students by approaching the world’s sanitation problem with an immersive perspective, by making his students delve into the topic of shit and how it affects our world. In the early moments of his class session, Zeichner shows his students a clip from the film Slumdog Millionaire of a boy delving through a latrine in Mumbai in order to meet a famous movie star. Zeichner comments, “The latrine scene is disgusting, and our natural reaction is often to laugh. It relaxes the students enough to be able to talk seriously about a seriously gross topic”.  Showing documentaries and film clips that show how truly horrific this problem is, he is able to trigger emotional reactions in his students to interest them and inspire them to learn more.

The spark of inspiration is as simple as learning key facts, such as the scary truth that 40 percent of all humans have nowhere to defecate. To those who have never had to worry about having a place to go to the bathroom besides waiting in a long line at a busy place, this fact may seem shocking and hard to hear; but for those who have to go to the bathroom in the same water they use to cook their food with, it’s all they know. However, Zeichner makes it clear that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Zeichner stresses the importance of looking at the causes and consequences of this global issue, and not just possible solutions that don’t address the root problem. Simply delivering toilets to those in need without educating them on the consequences (and benefits!) of their own human waste isn’t going to do enough. Addressing the imbalance of power and wealth within our world is a necessary step towards change. Altering our current economic policies that favor the wealthy is a crucial element to think about when discussing what can be done to help places in dire need. For Zeichner, change is a possibility through educating his students and inspiring them to educate their friends and families, to one day inspire change globally.

Here at Global Visionaries, we’re focused on the idea that youth leadership can inspire change throughout the globe, and we believe empowering today’s youth is the key to economic and social action. New and innovative ideas spread like wildfire through groups of young people who are truly inspired. We’ve found that one of the best ways to reach youth is by bringing these programs straight to their schools. To find out more about the Global Leadership Class, check out the description found on our website.

To read the full article featured in Rethinking Schools, you can subscribe via their website.