"Learning through our Differences" project- part two

This post tackles some basic information about my side project, including its goals, my ongoing research, some favorite resources and an example of one very successful tolerance education program I participated in years ago.

Here's a quick list of my goals and objectives for the project:

1. To help make schools safer spaces for both students and teachers through dialogue and mutual understanding
2. To break down communication barriers, such as negative stereotypes, through hands-on activities that encourage critical examination of those barriers
3. To challenge students to be more self-reflective as well as empathetic, tolerant and understanding towards others
4. To develop a workshop curriculum, tailored specifically for a Bulgarian high school context, that can be further adapted for other contexts within the EU and the world
5. To help organize a network of facilitators prepared to carry out these workshops in schools across the country

A large part of my work so far has been researching the best methods and activities from professional organizations committed to tolerance education. There are tons of similar programs out there. Corporate diversity training, for example, often uses the same activities I've been researching to create more open and inclusive work environments. When I was in college I remember doing some of these activities for a seminar class in a Living-Learning Community Program. There are plenty of online resources available for teachers who want to incorporate tolerance and multicultural understanding into the classroom.

Some of my favorite websites:

- Multicultural Education Pavilion from EdChange (Paul C. Gorski)
- Diversity Learning Wiki from University of Wisconsin Whitewater (they also have a list of published resources here)
- Teaching Tolerance at the Southern Poverty Law Center

The only problem I've had with these is that most of their activities are very US-centric. So using them will involve some serious editing and adaptation for Bulgarian high school students to benefit from.

I gave a presentation last week to a group of high school principals, teachers, English Teaching Assistants and Fulbright staff on the project and I showed a segment of this documentary from Dutch television called "Over de Streep." This was the first time that Challenge Day, a San Francisco-based youth program, came to Europe and you can read more about it here. I actually attended Challenge Day when I was 13 at my middle school in Seattle. This program is particularly effective, and it's been around since 1987. I hope that what I can bring to Bulgarian schools with this project will also provoke discussion, awareness and understanding of differences in a similar way.

"Learning through our Differences" project- part one

I wanted to dedicate a couple of posts to this project I've been working on for the past year. When I accepted my Fulbright grant in 2010, I had the intention of working on a side project in addition to my teaching responsibilities. Apart from my volunteer work here in Sofia, I am now putting together grant proposals and meeting with local partner organizations and individuals to make this project a reality by the beginning of next school year.

"Learning through our Differences" is meant to address various problems with intolerance, bullying, name-calling and other issues in Bulgarian schools which I don't think are being discussed very often. In the past two years I have witnessed and heard about all sorts of incidents like these, from homophobic insults and racial slurs to actual violence or isolation from social groups. Like teenagers everywhere, Bulgarian high school students are susceptible to negative peer pressure and low levels of self-esteem. This leads to social anxiety, which can cause major behavioral problems (including self-destructive ones) in the long and short-term. I firmly believe that a sense of safety within the school community, backed up by a strong network of supportive adults and peers, is fundamental to assuring the emotional, physical and intellectual development of our students.

With that in mind, I am using existing models of tolerance, diversity awareness and community-building activities to adapt within the context of Bulgarian high schools for a series of one-day workshops with both students and educators as participants. I am lucky to have several contacts with years of experience in human rights education who have been kind enough to share their knowledge and also listen to me as I tried to formulate my ideas into a coherent plan. (THANK YOU!!!)

Stay tuned for more updates on the project, as well as example activities I plan to incorporate into the curriculum (still in the works, to be translated into Bulgarian for the final phase of the project). If you want to know more, or have a friend who might be willing to collaborate in either the planning or implementation of the workshops, please contact me at sophillarosa@gmail.com.

Honey, please!

Bulgarian honey is a big business for the small, family-run honey producers across the country. It's also extremely delicious, healthy and 100% organic and pesticide-free. Honey is a natural sweetener, antibiotic and immunity booster. The best places to buy honey are from the local producers in outdoor markets (there is at least one of these in every Bulgarian town). When I lived in Pleven I used to buy honey from the Iliev family beekeepers, and enjoyed learning about the health benefits of honey from one of the owners. I even brought home some samples of different types of honey to share with family and friends over the holidays.

Here in Sofia there are lots of markets where you can buy honey, and plenty of shops selling it along with other honey-related products (natural soaps, wax candles, tinctures, etc.). You can find pretty decent honey at the grocery store, but this removes the added experience of meeting the producer. A more interactive option just arrived this week: the "Week of Honey" exhibition. I happened to be passing by the Central Baths on my way home from work when I noticed the white tents and different vendors selling all kinds of honey products. There were lots of different types on offer: linden, lavender and herbal bouquet varieties to name but a few. I bought my honey this time from beekeepers in Razgrad, in the northeastern part of the country. I had the option of buying the clarified version or the raw, unfiltered kind that looks solid and milky rather than syrupy. I decided to go with the advice of the vendor and bought the crystallized raw one, and it is certainly yummy! The "Week of Honey" is also happening in 9 other places around Bulgaria, through this Saturday.

Sofia's "Week of Honey" Exhibition at the Central Baths (photo credits).

Orthodox Easter in Bulgaria

Bulgarians are getting ready to celebrate Easter this Sunday. While much of the Western world follows the Gregorian calendar, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (along with most Orthodox Christian churches) goes by the Julian calendar to determine the date of Easter. However, Bulgarians do celebrate Christmas on December 25th as many Roman Catholic and Protestant followers do, unlike followers of the Russian Orthodox faith who celebrate it two weeks later on January 7th. The date of Christmas never changes; Easter changes every year. Last year Orthodox Easter fell on the same date as Catholic Easter, but this year it's happening one week later- hence the lateness of this post!

Yesterday Kiril and I painted Easter eggs, an important tradition which reportedly dates back to the time of Christ's death and resurrection. You're not allowed to dye eggs on Good Friday (or "Crucifixion Friday" in Bulgarian), so most people do this on either the Thursday or Saturday preceding Easter Sunday. The first egg is always red, which symbolizes health, and is left as an offering for the house. Many families keep this red egg stored somewhere for the whole year, until it is replaced by the next year's egg. Sounds a little smelly to me. One of my students told me that there is an additional tradition where you crack open the old egg and if it's still intact, this is an omen of good luck for the household.

We painted 8 eggs, a random number but that's because I forgot that I already had two in my fridge when we went out to buy half a dozen eggs yesterday. For some of them we mixed colors together and tried to use something called "crystal powder" that makes the eggs looks like there are little crystals all over them. I don't think we followed the directions very well for those ones, but the rest turned out great. On Sunday we get to play a game with them, which is another Bulgarian tradition.

The game goes something like this: each player holds an egg and knocks it against the other player's egg twice- first on the pointy end and then on the rounder end. The player whose egg survives this test is the winner, although I'm not sure what the prize is. If we were in the States, it would probably be a chocolate bunny or maybe a marshmallow shaped like a chick. But sadly, those are not really traditional here. 

"Spring Fatigue"

I've been feeling a little under the weather the last several days, and incredibly tired. Normally, I love sleeping in on the weekend (usually after staying up really late watching movies, though) but lately I can't seem to muster the energy I normally have, even with ten hours of sleep. Apparently this tiredness might be attributed to something called "spring fatigue" (in Bulgarian, пролетна умора) and is totally normal and very common at this time of year. But I've also developed a cough that sounds a little suspicious, which I shrugged off as a minor annoyance, but my boyfriend suggested that I start taking some vitamins and immunity-boosters just in case. 

By the way, this is Kiril. He's pretty wonderful. And the reason I'm pumping my system full of vitamin C, echinacea and various syrups (including propolis and ivy leaves). Although I was skeptical about the bee stuff, I have to say that after only two days I am feeling much better. It's nice to have someone taking care of you when you're sick!

We had a little argument the other day about American medicine vs. Bulgarian medicine. I had been taking some generic over-the-counter cough syrup that wasn't working, and he said that of course the Bulgarian kind would be better, because they only sell products here that actually work. I'm still not sure this is true, but I have definitely noticed an improvement over my Walgreens brand Dayquil substitute. In general, health care and medicines are far cheaper here than they would be in the States, which is sad to think about because I know there are lots of people back home who avoid going to the doctor to avoid the financial burden. In Bulgaria, although the quality of most public hospitals leaves much to be desired, at least you can get basic care for very little money. There are lots of differences between medical care here and in the U.S, which are too many to put into one post. I'm just happy that the more "natural remedies" seem to be working, at least for now.

Daycare Center in Kazanluk

The last couple of weeks have been very busy- I passed the first stage of the Foreign Service Officer Test, which as you may remember, I also passed last year, but I didn't get to the final stage. I spent a lot more time this round on the essay questions. We'll see if my essays were good enough to pass the next step sometime in May.

Last weekend I made a short trip to Kazanluk, a small town located in the middle of the country at the base of the Balkan mountain range. Kazanluk is most famous for its rose festival every spring, but it's also home to a daycare center for children with disabilities supported by The Cedar Foundation, a non-governmental organization where I have been volunteering for the last several months. Cedar, based here in Sofia, aims to close Bulgaria's institutions for the disabled. These outdated institutions are largely underfunded, overcrowded and lacking basic resources to provide essential care for their residents. Organizations like The Cedar Foundation are working hard to transfer these residents into family-style group homes where they can receive more individual attention and, hopefully, become fully integrated into Bulgarian society. Cedar has already achieved remarkable success in this process through the closure of one such institution near Kyustendil.

The daycare center in Kazanluk is different because most of the children who go there live at home with their families. I was visiting with a friend who works in Cedar's Sofia office to observe the daycare facilities, meet the staff and children there. It was a wonderful experience. All of the staff have such positive energy and are constantly developing new activities for the children's therapy and education. After visiting a similar facility in the UK (on a staff training trip sponsored by Cedar), the daycare staff created a new sensory room where the children can have a more interactive therapy experience. The room has an "under the sea" theme and includes materials for children to touch, hear and see. Although I am not very knowledgeable about early childhood education or physiotherapy, I was impressed with this room.

I'm really happy that I was able to see the facility in Kazanluk because it puts my volunteer work into perspective: seeing the positive results of the foundation's efforts has motivated me even more to continue working with them.