I don't want to live a life of quiet desperation!

I keep coming back to the discussions starting to occur in my class... even though I've done the required work for the week already. Somehow I've stumbled onto something that I think is going to be fantastic. Here's a sample of Dr. Mednick's perspective as we all begin to discuss our feelings on the challenges faced by girls around the world, and the privilege that many of us lucked into through birth...

     It is okay to be doomed with a sense of conscience, to worry, to wrestle with the angels, to never 
     feel that you’ve done enough.  It is a driver; it’s what makes us human; it’s a charge we feel.   
     Don’t mean to sound like a Hallmark card, but I refuse to live a life of quiet desperation.  
     I suppose you don’t want to live one, either.  

We don't need people to give us permission to feel, and to feel about things that we can likely never fully comprehend or empathize about. It certainly is nice though to have someone recognize and validate how tough that place can be... even if it may not compare at all to the challenges some other people face.

"Outside my Window"

The Girls Education class that I am participating in through Canvas is a week-by-week class with reading assignments and discussion assignments to participate in. Because I have Mondays off, I did all my work for the week yesterday. Now, I'm just reading the other comments from all the hundreds of participants in our discussion for the week, posted by Dr. Mednick:

For over a decade and a half, I’ve been asking the same question of teachers, worldwide: “What do you see outside your window?  I've customized that question for classes I teach.  It's a great way to introduce oneself to others.

The responses have been amazing - pastoral scenes, brick walls, bars, a lack of a window, rain, the blur from trains, one from a peep hole in a military vehicle south of Baghdad. In 2000, their answers were so compelling that I dropped everything and founded Teachers Without Borders (Links to an external site.). Last year, I wrote the this piece (Links to an external site.) for a book I am titling: “Outside My Window:  Teachers Defying the Odds.”

THIS year, I want to include YOUR responses.  After all, there are a 1,000 of you.  So, here's the question again:  “What do you see outside your window?”  Start with what you actually see.  Then, try make to a connection to girls’ education.  That's when you can get metaphorical about it.  Let's say you describe a scene in which boys and girls are separated - walls, clusters of separated kids, for example.  Perhaps, then, you could describe what that feels like or what you'd like to see.

I can literally say that all the folks who have participated in this assignment to this point have had great insights to share, and all have been incredibly positive and supportive of each other. We have people in the class from all over the world - the US and Canada, central America, India, Pakistan, different places in Africa, Samoa, Australia.... It's incredible to hear each person's individual story.

I keep pondering one particular comment about the difference between education and empowerment, and that education does not necessarily always lead to empowerment. In many instances when we read media that explores the need for education for girls, it doesn't talk about the deeper need for empowerment... particularly something that would be challenging in male dominated cultures. One poster made the point that where she teaches (Samoa), she's experienced that education alone is not enough to change a male dominated culture - and educated women still may not be able to take action or have agency in the same way as men, even when men have less education.

I recently completed I am Malala - the autobiographical story of Malala Yousafzai. It was a wonderful book. I learned so much more about Pashtun culture and about Islam than I had expected - for instance the word for cousin is the same as the word for enemy (tarbur). What I am now realizing I missed is if she went deeper than education being the key to empowerment. I need to reread the book with this lens in place to see if she distinguishes between the two or if she automatically links the two.

I see in my own work with volunteers at the zoo, that education and empowerment are not always the same thing. What do you think? When are they the same thing and when are they different?

So, what do you see outside your window?

A New Experience - Finishing a MOOC?

Today I embark upon a journey that I hope will be successful. I will be participating in a massive, open, online course (MOOC) that runs from today through November 23rd, hosted by Canvas. It's about education of girls, is being run by the founder of Teachers Without Borders (Dr. Fred Mednick), it is partially inspired by Girl Rising and as a way to recognize the 3rd anniversary of the UN's International Day of the Girl Child on October 11th. 

I realize that to be able to be successful, I must define what that means to me. This is my second MOOC (and really my third-ever completely online course). One was test-driving a new online leadership course for WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), and I made it about halfway through. I'd already learned this content through a session at Nuestra Cabaña 2010 where I was the only young woman from the United States among the around 40 participants. That's hard to top, even when trying to do WAGGGS a favor to test a new course, and even though I was still 'meeting' women my age from around the world. So, I felt a lack of success in that course.

The second course I failed to complete was run through Canvas.net (which Educating Girls is being run through too) and was on the topic of water in the west (US specifically). The expectations of this course were gargantuan, and I never made it past the first assignment (to introduce myself to the class). A few volunteers from the zoo where I work took the class too (upon my advertisement of it!) and every time they came by to say hello and talk about the class I felt like a fool because I could not add any additional commentary. At least the volunteer who finished it all the way through commented on the huge expectations for the course too... and she's retired!

So, whatever the reasons, I have been one of those people who hasn't completed courses in the past. One of Dr. Mednick's comments in his introductory post to this class seemed to be speaking directly to me.

"They say that only 11% of the people who sign up for MOOCs (massive open online courses) actually finish the course. Let's do a lot better than that."

Yes please! I'm hoping that my strong interest in the subject will take me through and meet his goal for us. So, that's one way I'll know I succeeded - if I actually complete the course. This simple-sounding definition of success will certainly take a lot of resolve.

The second hope I have for this course, and a way that I will know I was successful is if I am able to start to generate more agency in myself to make a difference in this world for girls and women. I don't really know what this looks like yet - and I'm hoping this course may give me something that helps me find a path to follow.

I am so excited by the growing conversation about rights for women and girls. It feels like momentum is growing since the first time I saw The Girl Effect years ago (2010?). Perhaps this is just a reflection of the community I've built around myself - mirroring back my own interests (as we know Facebook is prone to do). Even if it is, I'll start with my enthusiasm, and hopefully begin to find small ways to take action.