SYLLABUS
INSTRUCTOR
Fred Mednick, Ed.D
Founder, Teachers Without Borders
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University School of Education
206-356-4731
or
FALL: November 4th – December 21st 2013 SPRING: March 10th – April 25th 2014
Table of Contents
Course Overview
Credits and Grading Criteria
Technology and Public Blog Posting Requirements
Essential Course Policies
Course Readings and Media
Online Public Events/Webinars: Conversations with Colleagues
MODULES
Getting Organized | Getting Acquainted
The Wrong Place at the Right Time: Introducing INEE
If Only: Gaps and Connections Between International Development and Global Aid
Drilling Down, Digging Out, Delivering Education: The INEE Toolkit
Momaland: Case Study and Assessment Strategies
Support from Viewers Like You: Emergency Education Public Appeals
Key Links to Share with Colleagues
Background: Teachers Without Borders and Education in Emergencies
Course Overview
The news about large-scale emergencies is inescapable and all-too familiar. ASAP: Education in Emergencies was designed to help the public explore the complex issues of education in emergencies. We will explore “national” and “natural” disasters, as wellas the space in between, and evaluate the relationship between education, international development, and global aid. The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) shall serve as our guide.
This course will cover (1) a review of basic elements surrounding the vast field of education in emergencies (2) the work of INEE, along with examples of INEE’s Toolkit in action (3) an exploration of a case study designed by practitioners, global agencies, and stakeholders, and (3) how the global community of development personnel, aid workers, and donorsintersect with education in emergencies.
The subject of education in emergencies is not for the faint of heart. Most likely, this course will challenge, exasperate, anger, and raise more questions than provide answers. For example, many claim that it is near impossible for schools to function adequately or establish any semblance of normalcy. NGOs, well-resourced individuals, and global agencies attempt to address these gaps, but some states have been known to rely on foreign aid rather take on the chief responsibility of protecting and educating their people. In an alarming number of cases, schools have served as havens for criminals, warehouses for arms, and targets of attack.
More specifically, let’s say that an earthquake has just struck a seismically vulnerable country. Thousands are crushed by their homes. In many under-resourced, densely populated communities living atop shallow fault lines, close to 50% of the children who die in these earthquakes perish in their schools. When is a “natural” disaster a truly preventable “national” disaster? How have poor or unenforced building codes and policies, a lack of transparency, wholesale neglect, misinformation, or a lack of preparedness and planning contributed to the catastrophe? Have the tyrannies of the urgent plaguing that country made it such that disaster risk reduction is unaffordable or a secondary priority?
On the positive side, how have countries prepared themselves and their people to address these crises? What can we learn from them? Are their practices portable, replicable, and sustainable?
We hope you will raise several such questions. I hope we can all agree on this: in emergencies, children are especially vulnerable to the ravages of human trafficking, disease, and recruitment into paramilitary gangs.
At the onset of a crisis, human necessities must be addressed ASAP, triage style: stop the bleeding; protect, feed, clothe, and house the people; seek more aid; rinse and repeat. One may assume that education in emergencies is less urgent. This is where the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) comes in.
About the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies
INEEhas pioneered the notion that education is a basic necessity and cannot wait, and that education is an indispensible and parallel component of relief. Even more, INEE stresses the importance of prevention and planning, as well as coordinating and connecting those working in response, recovery, and reconstruction.
INEE gathers and supports global stakeholders to build and maintain Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies. Thanks to INEE, educators are now part of first-responder teams. Education clusters coordinate activities, assess needs, accelerate normalcy, and make it possible for other emergency work to continue. INEE has made it clear that education is the currency that drives communities and simply cannot be separated, sheltered, or subsumed during an emergency. In short, INEE is an extraordinary example of collaboration.
Collaboration is essential in this course as well. We shall emphasize learning from and with one’s new online colleagues and with organizations working in the field.
Finally, I cannot stress this enough: this course is an introduction to the field of education in emergencies, not a comprehensive training program. It is impossible to do justice to these issues in a single course. All emergencies do not look, feel, or act alike, requiring a complex interplay of culture, history, power, language, local assets, global resources, obstacles, and opportunities.
Expertise in the field of education in emergencies requires in-depth training, mentorship, and professional development – impossible to achieve in the short time we have together. But you have to start somewhere, and I say we must do so ASAP.
Credits and Grading Criteria
CREDITS: This non-credit course professional development course is available for Continuing Education Units (CEUs).
To receive CEU credit, all assignments must be completed. The professor may require that students make edits before determining the completion of any assignment. In addition to the written assignments, students are required to respond to the readings and to each other throughout each week by posing or responding to issues or comments. This cannot be saved up until the end. Should there be any issue about making deadlines, please contact me in advance.
“Attendance” is determined by student engagement with the classroom content and tools, with other students, and with the instructor.
GRADING: We’re going to be using a point system. You’ll get feedback on discussions and assignments.
Please know that your work will NOT be judged based upon the style or grammar of your writing, especially because a significant number of colleagues will not be writing in your first language. That would not be fair. Students’ submissions for assignments shall be evaluated based upon the following criteria:
[6]: Exemplary: Clear incorporation of research, an extra effort to learn more, proper acknowledgment of material other than your own, creativity, and clarity. All of this would be worthy of sharing to educators around the world and makes a contribution to our knowledge of teaching and learning. Mentor status.
[4-5]: Meets Requirements: Satisfies the expectations of the assignment with professional use of sources. Core competency
[3]: Needs Work: Basic treatment of the ideas, but needs to dig deeper in order to show core competence. To get credit, I would be asking for a revision
[0-2]: No Credit: (a) Student uses others’ ideas as her/his own without attribution, and/or (b) does not address or respect the assignment.
Technology and Public Blog Posting Requirements
You will need to get technologically organized so that you can know where to go for information and what to do to access required technologies. Once I receive your email address from the registration office at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, I will send more information about these required technologies, including invitations to various sites you’ll need to access (or form accounts on) so that you can meet course requirements.
- Course Platform (ELC): This is where you will go to access course content, get assignments, hold discussions, and receive comments/grades on papers.
- Blog (Required). All students are required to have a blog so that your writing can be made available and accessible publicly. You can use any blog service that you like: WordPress.Blogger, Tumblrare all good examples. If you’re new to blogging, there are plenty of great tutorials and great advice to help you get started. Each assignment description will clarify whether to post it to your blog as well as to the ELC Gradebook.
Essential Course Policies
Policies on Sharing Intellectual Property
The Internet represents a new, intellectual social contract. Today, learning requires the sharing of ideas, but it must be done honorably. You might write something that someone, somewhere needs. Post it and share it.[1]You might alsofind the perfect article to address an issue you wish to explore for an assignment. Go ahead, post it, but you must cite it and give credit to the author — direct us to the URL so that we can all benefit. The assignments are not roadblocks to conquer, but opportunities for growth.An article you may have just found is a means, not an end, to a point you want to make. Use it to reinforce your point, not in place of your point. Plagiarism (copying and pasting the work of others without appropriate attribution or credit to the author) is theft, plain and simple.
Plagiarism: Your Reputation is at Stake
On occasion, I will spot-check for plagiarism, but I don’t want to chase after you. That’s not learning — it’s policing. At the same time, your blog posts will be public. If you copy and paste others’ work without proper attribution, someone will notice. Your reputation, even your job, could be at stake.As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously observed,“sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”[2] Your reputation should be the driving motivator for doing one’s best in this course.
Official Language from Johns Hopkins University onAcademic Integrity
“Violations of academic integrity and ethical conduct include, but are not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, unapproved multiple submissions, knowingly furnishing false or incomplete information to any agent of the University for inclusion in academic records…” For full policy and misconduct proceedings, see the Academic Policy section of School of Education.
Late Work Policy
Educators are some of the busiest people in the world. I understand how the tyranny of the urgent can play havoc with deadlines. At the same time, many assignments require collaboration, and group work entails obligations to each other. Whether it is an individual assignment or a collaborative project, please be reasonable, and I will be as well. Whatever the circumstance, please inform me (and others you may be working with) so that no one is caught off guard. Excessive lateness could result in notification of no-credit for the assignment and/or the course.
Religious Observance Accommodation Policy
While this is an online course, religious holidays are valid reasons for exceptions to deadlines. I simply ask that youlet me know as early in the term as possible in order to ensure there is adequate time to make up and respond to the work.
Participation
Participation and discussions are included in student grading and evaluation. The instructor will clearly communicate expectations and grading policy in the course syllabus. Students who are unable to participate in the online sessions for personal, professional, religious, or other reasons are encouraged to contact me to discuss alternatives.
Statement of Academic Continuity
For any of us, things happen. In the event of issues (serious personal matters, no access to the internet, or other extraordinary circumstances) preventing active participation in, and/or the delivery of this online course, we’ll do our best to make accommodations. If it happens to your course instructors or the School of Education’s platform goes down, for example, we may have to change the normal academic schedule and/or make appropriate changes to course structure, format, and delivery.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
If you are a student with a documented disability who requires an academic adjustment, auxiliary aid or other similar accommodations, please contact the Disability Services Office at 410-516-9734 or via email at .
Statement of Diversity and Inclusion
Johns Hopkins University is a community committed to sharing values of diversity and inclusion in order to achieve and sustain excellence. We believe excellence is best promoted by being a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff who are committed to creating a climate of mutual respect that is supportive of one another’s success. Through its curricula and clinical experiences, the School of Education purposefully supports the University’s goal of diversity, and, in particular, works toward an ultimate outcome of best serving the needs of all students and the community members. All of us (faculty, mentors, organizations, students) are expected to demonstrate a commitment to diversity as a measure of our mutual strength.
Course Readings and Media
There are no required textbooks or materials. All readings have been selected from available sources freely available on the Internet and are listed here in the syllabus.
Online Public Events/Webinars: Conversations with Colleagues
This course will likely include students from around the globe. We all share a passion for the subject, but will rarely share the same time zone. Therefore, my courses stay away from bandwidth-heavy, real-time teaching and focus. Instead, they focus on individual scholarship, local action, and group collaboration.
Nevertheless, I still do miss live discussions, so we’re going to attempt some here and do our best to offer them during reasonable hours. We will record these webinar-like conversations, of course, should you not be able to participate. We will provide you with all the technology you’ll need to participate.
Public Conversation/Webinar: (Dates TBD) “Global Tragedies: Local and Global Solutions”
A short presentation a seasoned professional in the field, followed by a conversation. For example, I am presently discussing a date for such a webinar with my colleague, Sharon Ravitch, PhD, a professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and the Senior Advisor to the Minister of Education of Haiti. I hope Sharon will be able to join us to address the challenges and opportunities of working in Port- au-Prince following the 2010 Earthquake, along with her particular contributions in community assessment and countrywide educational capacity building. There will be plenty of time for questions and conversation.
Public Conversation/Webinar: (Dates TBD)“Humanitarianism Without Humanitarians?”
The title of this webinar examines a reading from the digital activist, Patrick Meier, PhD., a pioneer in the role of technology and emergency relief, global transparency, and mapping in crises. His blog is worth reading: I will do my best to attract Patrick to participate in this week’s session and webinar.
Public Conversation/Webinar: (Dates TBD): “Earthquakes, Floods, and Education: A Conversation with Colleagues in Pakistan and Tajikistan”
I am arranging short presentation by Teachers Without Borders colleagues: (1) Sameena Nazir, Founder of PODA (Potohar Organization of Development Assistance), an NGO devoted to the education of girls, crafts, and human rights in Pakistan, and (2) Solmaz Mohadjer, Founder of PARSQUAKE (an organization for earthquake education in the Persian-speaking community). Here, too, we’ll follow the presentations with ample time for questions and comments.
MODULES
Getting Organized | Getting Acquainted
Session 1
Getting Organized
- Once you are enrolled, you’ll receive instructions on how to access course
- Please sign up for a blog and fill out the Google Docwith the name and URL. For more information, please see our Technology and Blog Posting Requirements, as well as coursepolicies, which include specifics about intellectual property
- Please fill out the survey
Discussion #1: A Response to a Poem
Most online coursesask students to introduce themselves. Fair enough. I often take a less direct approach by asking variations of this provocative question: “What do you see outside your window, and how does this shape your view of education today?” Sometimes I ask for a personal response to an image, or a short video to represent the window metaphor.
This time, however, I want to take a different response. Please respond toa poem by Nobel Prize winner, Wisława Szymborska, entitled“Psalm.”
I have not chosen her poem to elicit a conversation about religion (as its title may connote), but rather to ask you to describe your interpretation of, and thoughts about, the poem in light of what might lie ahead in a course about education in emergencies. It’s best to let the poem percolate by sitting quietly after you read it, rather than rushing to the keyboard.
Structure:
- Please include your name in the title of your post. Ex: Fred Mednick: Borderless Conflicts
- When you read this, what does your heart or your head bring forth? Quote lines.
- Please alsocomment on at leasttwo other colleague’s posts.
Central Questions[3]
- How would you define the field of “education in emergencies”?
- Why has education been left out of standard humanitarian response until recently?
- What is an educational intervention?
- What are the international legal foundations, obstacles, and challenges that underpin education in emergencies?
- How might the growing awareness surrounding the needs of children in emergencies (establishing “normalcy,” “child protection,” and “psychosocial well-being”) affect the strategy of humanitarian response?
- What role might culture, religion, and class play in emergency education?
- Who and what are the key players, structures and institutions for education in emergencies and how do they work together?
- What are the reliable methods for evaluating the impact of education in emergencies?
Readings
- Multiple Faces of Education in Conflict-Affected and Fragile Contexts: Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Working Group on Education and Fragility
- Education Under Attack: UNESCO
- Schools as Battlegrounds: Human Rights Watch
Discussion #2: Response to Central Questions
Read the Central Questions again, then choose one thatinspires to pursue? Your choice might reflect personal experience. If, indeed, you experienced any of the issues presented personally, you mayuse that as a powerful way of contextualizing your choice. If it’s too early to open up (the issue may be too raw), please do not feel compelled to do so. You may, instead, choose to focus on what you’ve learned, what you noticed, what you believe is missing, what you would like to pursue.