 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
| | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| India | Mexico | New Zealand and Mongolia |
Country: INDIA
Seminar Title: Understanding India's Cultural Heritage
Dates: Tentative: Pre-departure orientation: June 25-26, 2009
Program in India: June 29 - August 1, 2009
Participants: U.S. teachers, administrators, and media/resource specialists at the elementary education level
Program Content:
The purpose of the seminar is to provide the U.S. educators a broader understanding into India's history, art and cultural heritage, which will help them in identifying reference materials on study of India. India is a country of great diversities. Every region of the country portrays different customs, traditions, languages, manners, habits and tastes. The seminar will also give them an exposure to the richness of this diversity and challenges that the nation faces. The impetus of the seminar is to help these educators understand contemporary India against the backdrop of her history and culture.
The seminar consists of two phases, namely, academic study and field visits. The five-day academic program in New Delhi, using a multi-disciplinary approach, will involve formal lectures, interviews, and discussions with prominent scholars and public personalities. The field visit phase of four weeks will take participants Amritsar, Varanasi, Kolkata, Chennai, Cochin, Pune, Ahmedabad and Agra, exposing them to geographical diversities and cultures. Special effort will be made to include visits to museums and Indian villages to observe life in rural settings.
The seminar is designed to enrich participants' knowledge by combining academic and cultural experiences. Visits to schools, colleges and museums, and rural areas will be interspersed with demonstrations of Indian dance and music. Visits will also be arranged to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) working on developmental issues in both rural and urban settings. Within the group's program, time will also be allocated for participants to pursue their individual academic interests and work on their respective curriculum projects.
Country: MEXICO
Seminar Title: Down the Roads of Southern Mexico: History, Traditions and Modern Challenges
Dates: Five weeks from June 28 - July 30, 2009
Participants: U.S. teachers, administrators, and media/resource specialists at the elementary education level
Program Content:
This program offers a fascinating journey through the labyrinths of Mexican culture by taking participants off the beaten paths to gain a deeper knowledge on the origins and the impact of current issues such as migration and globalization. By visiting both rural and urban settings, as well as remote places usually left aside, participants will have a unique opportunity to mingle and share new experiences with local teachers, artisans, specialists and common people that construct contemporary Mexican society.
The seminar will begin with a pre-departure orientation in the United States and combine visits to indigenous communities, archaeological sites, schools, museums and markets with readings and lectures by specialists. As an integral part of the program, the Seminar will also explore different expressions of Mexican folklore such as the production of hand-made handicrafts, traditional cuisine, music, medicine and religious practices.
By the end of the seminar, participants will have a first-hand approach to local problems and expectations, allowing them a whole different perspective on Mexico they'll be able to share with their students and fellow teachers all over the country through their final projects.
Country: NEW ZEALAND and MONGOLIA
Seminar Title: A Day in the Life of: Exploring the Origins of Communities
Dates: Six weeks from July 4 - August 10, 2009 (Tentative)
Participants: U.S. teachers, administrators, and media/resource specialists at the elementary education level
Program Content:
New Zealand and Mongolia offer significant areas of contrast and comparison in understanding how society is affected by geography, climate, culture, and history. New Zealand's isolation as a set of distant islands in the South Pacific contrasts with Mongolia's landlocked location as a crossroads of numerous cultures and empires in the heart of the Asian continent. New Zealand is relatively young, binding European and Asian settlers with indigenous Polynesian populations into a unified nation only in recent history. Mongolia has a long history, first as the seat of the world's largest empire 800 years ago, and more recently as an emerging democracy and market economy after the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1990. New Zealanders enjoy a relatively prosperous standard of living in a well developed country with a long tradition of democratic values, while Mongolia is a developing country encountering rapid, cultural, economic and political transition. Both countries share similarities in their breathtaking natural beauty, abundant natural resources and predominantly agrarian-based societies. They also invoke perceptions of isolation to outsiders, and struggle to define their own distinct characters against the presence of their much larger regional neighbors.
The goal of the seminar is to explore urban and rural, indigenous and foreign, wealthy and impoverished, and modern and traditional settings in order to understand how communities develop and sustain themselves over time. By comparing different socio-economic conditions and studying their historical roots in two countries with distinct, yet comparable, characteristics, participants will be able to draw out what in the environment influences communities and how communities influence their environments.
The seminar will combine visits to rural and urban communities, archaeological sites, schools and museums, with lectures on different topics. The seminar will focus on the past, present, and future of communities in different contexts and will involve examinations of history, culture, peoples and economy. During the New Zealand portion of the seminar participants will study:
- Maori culture and the multicultural societies (mainly Pacific and Asian) of New Zealand;
- The history and settling of New Zealand;
- Differences between a developing and developed economy;
- New Zealand issues today and in the future.
During the Mongolian portion of the seminar participants will study:
- Mongolian history and the numerous civilizations that have occupied the region, and how Mongolia's history influences current thinking;
- The Mongolian transition from Communism to democracy and a free market economy;
- The intersection of urbanization and traditional society in the age of globalization;
- Mongolian development issues today and in the future.
Participants will be assisted in identifying resources for their individual seminar projects, which enable them to expand and improve their current teaching or curriculum in the social sciences and humanities.
As a result of the Seminar, the participants will have prepared a project and acquired a renewed understanding of universal concepts of society, community, and daily life and distinctive qualities influenced by geography, climate, culture, and history in New Zealand and Mongolia. Participants will thereby be prepared to educate others in the complexities of societies acquiring an improved level of understanding of what contributes to the distinctiveness and diversity of communities.
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
| |
||||||||||||
