Connecting Students to the World: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Participating in the discussion are Harry Kreisler, Executive Director of the Institute of International Studies; Nanou Matteson, Program Coordinator of Connecting Students to the World; and San Francisco high school teachers Barbara Brewer, Gale Ow, and Thais daRosa.
From the "case study" site:
"What better way to enrich the curriculum on the electoral process than through an online civics lesson focusing on the life of California's former Senator Alan Cranston? Cranston is one of many distinguished political figures from all over the world who have participated in the Conversations series. Let's begin by understanding the steps of one teacher who used our archive."
Gale: We had the students focus on the life of Cranston. What we did was my usual steps of having study questions. First of all, I prepped the students on the whole idea of working with Cranston, who he was. And giving them a background in government.
Nanou: So when you refer to talking to them about Cranston and who he was, did you use additional sources other then the interview?
Gale: No, it was mainly the interview, because there is some general information that I have but not specific. So I had to read through the interview and then create the study questions, and then, in mind, think about the students having enough background so that they could read through the interview. After they went through the website, there was talk of an email exchange. I asked the kids if they were interested in talking to Senator Cranston through UC. And they were very much interested in talking to him. In preparation they wrote journals about experiencing the website, and navigating through it, and what they learned about him, and what was interesting. And so their comments are posted on the web. And for them that was quite an experience. They were just really so happy. We got an email from Nanou, and I told the students that their journals were on the web and we just ran right to the web, to where their comments were. They were really excited to see them up. And reading each others'.
Nanou: Because they hadn't had a chance to read each others'?
Gale: Right. And they liked different parts of the interview. Each student had a different response to different parts of his life. And the students, of course, can't imagine how that picture of that very old man looked like that as a young man, so they responded at their level as well as to the study questions, etc. And they like the part when he talked about how he carried this quotation from Lao-tzu.
Harry: That was part of answer to a student question. Here's something that's really fascinating. The student asks, "Do you have a guiding principle or philosophy that you live by? What is it?" And then Cranston said, "I carry around the quotation [by Lao-tzu]." And on the program of the memorial service for Cranston, there is the poem! The memorial was at Grace Cathedral. It was a gathering of important anti-war people. And, I'm sorry, but it gives me goose pimples ...
Gale: Yes, it does me too ...
Harry: ... that students in a school actually ...
Gale: ... partook of that!
Harry: Yes, partook of that shortly before his sudden death.
Gale: And when the students read all this stuff in the newspaper, they couldn't believe it was stuff that they had known. And that there was so much space given to him. He is really a local hero. And it embedded in them also, how important that whole experience was.
Harry: So, your students wrote the emails, and when we got the emails we were able to group them. They fall into themes, and so then we're able to create: Life History, Politics -- and then we got the idea of lifting out a quote, a pull-quote that comes out of one his answers. And then we talked about nuclear weapons, and the idea here was that he's very interested in that and it was something that wasn't discussed in the campaign at all. And then finally, Lessons Learned. So, the students wind up, by this process, creating categories that can be organized and are accessible. And it was done through email, it was not done in real time, because he was pretty busy.
Thais: And it was done at Lowell.
Harry: And here is a really great thing Cranston wrote at the end: "P.S. My father graduated from Lowell in 1897." And we didn't know that at all. Now, Gale could you tell them about the students commenting -- the other phase of the students' work.
Gale: They found that their emails to Cranston were online. And I said, "Let's go down to the lab and see it." So, it's at that moment that they saw their emails on line. And they reacted to reading that.
Thais: That must have been an amazing experience.
Gale: It was a really wonderful thing.
Barbara: So when you did this, they were responding how, in the computer room? They were sending emails here?
Gale: Yes, when they saw that their emails to Cranston were on the web.
Barbara: And they were sending them to you?
Gale: To Nanou. It was a spontaneous thing. I just thought, "Well, let's go see, and let's respond."
Barbara: And it happened all the same day? The day they went to look at the emails, did the responses happen that day?
Gale: Yes, in the moment.
Harry: And then it took us a couple of days to put it up.
Barbara: I understand that.
Gale: That's why you see that there are shared names, because they shared a machine.
Barbara: Oh, I see.
Harry: What's interesting about Cranston's life is that he's been focused all his life on the nuclear issue. He got in with a crowd of leading intellectuals -- Einstein, Norman Cousins, whom we have an interview with on the web, by the way -- who saw the danger after Hiroshima. And then this was something that he kept in the back of his mind and then he came back to when he retired. And he talks about that, that this a long-term issue. And it really fits that [Lao-tzu] quote. So we sent him all of this, and told him the URL. But then, and again this was completely spontaneous, we did not ask for this, Mr. Cranston put a link to the student email exchange from the website of his organization, the Global Security Institute. And it's still up. Here is "link of the week" and it goes to the email exchange.
Gale: My students saw that too, and they were just blown away.
Harry: It's a really empowering thing. You say, "We're going to publish something," and they get published! It's universally accessible.
Gale: And the idea that this guy cares enough to do it for no other reason than just to further his ...
Nanou: ... cause.
Gale: Yes, thank you.
Thais: Non-commercial cause.
Gale: Yes, and the students really need to get that sense of commitment.
Thais: Altruistic. Oh my gosh, do they need to know that there are other motivations than making money!
Barbara: What I find interesting about this is the fact that he's coming back to topics from the past. This is what I want to show my students. That we can ...
Thais: ... continue history.
Barbara: Yeah. And that we can do many things and come back to things. Because they are just thinking one thing, there's only one path.
Harry: I think the two most interesting things for students in our interviews are "Background: I was a kid, I didn't do well, I was in a gang, I was whatever." And then at the end, "Lessons Learned," where the guests reflect, "You know, in retrospect, I wouldn't worry as much about where you go to school." So there's a lot of human experience here and then they're also talking big ideas, so it makes it interesting.
Thais: And then the values are coming through implicitly, because you're not talking about, "What are your values in this post-modern world and let's clarify them." You know these people obviously have values and you look at them over a life-span. They have a commitment toward democracy, and global peace, and environmental protection. You see these values in action, without actually saying, "these are my values."
Harry: Nanou and I gave a talk in New York. One of the things we were arguing is that we had created a human interface on two ends. One human interface is working with you teachers. When you say, "The way you put it up doesn't work," or, "This is the way I would use it." But the other human interface is the one that I do, if I'm the one who's doing the interview. You take a person's life seriously. They don't know what they're involved in, but then, for example, Cranston said, "Hey, these pictures are neat." And that's really what makes the website. It's not what you can do technically, but what you can do on both ends in terms of the human element.
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