Other Cultures

This page is connected with www.SATVideos.com -- I encourage my SAT students to crate a portfolio of their ideas, dereams, accomplishments and projects. I hope that they will create webpages to describe what they learned when they linked with people from other countries. Here are some comments that I received from students.

"You can send me ANYONE, Steve. I added some of your facebook friends but maybe I added some that don't speak English well, so they did not understand me or just might not want help. I'm always at your service."

Hamilton (an enthusiastic student) Find him on Facebook at chevezgame@gmail.com

He is part of an interesting group. Here is the description:

We often meet on Mondays right after school, from 2:45 to 3:30 at Flanagan High School room 165.

I actually intended to video the teachings, because I wanted to start making a portfolio, because I teach.

The First Priority Club is a Christian based club made by students, for students, and controlled by students. We work the month around the acronym TEAM. The first week is Training week, the leader (Kevin Arriaga) gives a message to those who are there about how we can interact with others when telling people about God. E stands for Encouragement, the second week, we talk about struggles that we face as youth, how we deal with them and what wisdom God has to share with us from the Bible. The third week is Accountability, trusting and building long and strong relationships. For example, on accountability week we might teach with the idea that some relationships are like bananas! They are sweet to eat, but the relationship is a good relationship while the banana is whole. Lets say we grab a knife and cut a piece of the banana, so the relationship was damaged and may never be healed because there is no way of uniting the two pieces of bananas together back.

The last week is Mission week. This week, we have a party, the First Priority Sponsor for our school brings free pizzas, while other students bring chips or sodas. We try to play like an icebreaker just in case there are people that don't know each other. Then the Message is delivered, mostly an evangelistic message because Mission week is the week to help save lives, and those that were saved or not saved, we can ask them if they would like to remain in the club for the next three weeks so they can learn strategies about how they can show God's love to their friends.

All in all, this is an ideal plan. It never goes exactly like this. Somethings we change because we are guided by the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes certain parts of the meeting don't work or don't happen because there is bad communication between the leader and those that help him.

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John Lipkin is on the Advisory Council of Building International Bridges. He sent the following message:

Steve, i think you may find this interesting

Kevin Correa January 25 at 12:53pm Reply

hey guys so today i was talking to Yosimar and he was telling me how he actually graduates high school this year!! its crazy, the kid is super smart and he was telling me how he wasnt to go to college to be a systems engineer. He was telling me how hes going to go to la universidad de cartagena which is like a BCC i guess in our sense, and apperently the only thing stopping him from going to a better school is money. i looked it up and one semester of university is 800 dollars, i know were all poor and have hard times with money but maybe like ina a years time we can see who else wants to join in and maybe help him out with half or somehting so he can go to a better school...let me know what you think guys...its still a year away but just a thought i had.

This is about one of the kids from one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Colombia (nobody goes to college from this neighborhood). I received this from one of my friends earlier today and actually talked to the kid about this. What's amazing is that he speaks more English than the "bilingual" tour guides (nobody in that city speaks English) and is incredibly intelligent if you strike a conversation with him. He has also been a community activist of sorts by taking a leading role in trying to dissuade the other kids (he is 15, but mostly aged 7-12) from joining the gangs and taking the "expected" path. I am not forwarding this to you to ask for a donation or anything like that, but more to give you an idea and possible poster child to what you're trying to achieve I think. I would like to get this kid involved with our organization as I believe he can teach other kids about his community and country.

P.S. I have relayed your sentiments to some friends and have some people interested about getting kids from less than optimal circumstances signed up in Cali, Colombia, Medellin, Colombia, and Quito, Ecuador. I believe I know some people from both Mexico and Panama whom would be interested as well. I think we are on the right track in Egypt and if I had more connections outside of Latin America (I don't think Karim's private gymnasiums in Munich apply) I would tell you.

Chao de Espana! (John wrote this message on 25 January 2010 on his way to study in Cairo).

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Cultural Curiosities

Some photos that might be new to you.

These photos came from Wikipedia's Commons files