Tracing Tea Education Outreach – USA
If the words I write today are a little less than elegant, my sincere apologies. I have just spent an hour constructing perfect prose only for the laptop to be attacked by the cat. Single-handedly and in a matter of seconds she has deleted everything.
Anyway, let’s re-start today’s topic: Education. Tracing Tea generates a seemingly infinite amount of material in the form of photos, footage, maps, research, interviews and articles. One of the greatest challenges to date has been finding ways to process all this information so that it can be put to good use in education as well as for entertainment purposes. Back in August last year we were fortunate enough to be given an introduction of the Krause Center of Innovation (KCI), so I thought I’d tell you a bit about our collaboration.
KCI was established in California a decade ago with the aim of improving the quality of education by encouraging innovation in teaching methods. Much of what they do focuses on training teachers to integrate technology into their lessons, making classes more engaging for students and also ensuring that they are equipped with the skills required to participate fully in the workforce of tomorrow. KCI also works to connect teachers and their classes so that they can share ideas and expertise, bringing benefit to all.
Two of KCI’s leading teachers, Tom Sayer and Gayle Britt, have been using photos, footage, audio material and blogs generated by Tracing Tea as part of their multi-media approach to teaching History and Social Studies (a broad humanities course taught in US schools). Tom’s 7th grade class has produced mini documentaries and other visual projects, participated in video conferencing with Tracing Tea in the field, sent and received video greetings with a school in Lahore, Pakistan and are looking forward to communicating by email and letter with new friends along the Tracing Tea route. We have already been able to affect introductions with schools in India, Pakistan and Central Asia and increasing the scope of this part of the project is a priority for Tracing Tea along the rest of the route. It enables us to share some of the amazing cultural encounters we experience and also to strengthen the relationships we have the opportunity to form with our global neighbours and their communities.
Last week Tracing Tea attended KCI’s 10th birthday celebrations, meeting visionary founders Bill and Gay Krause as well as hundreds of others who support the foundation’s work and are passionate about education. We were able to present a flag and letter from Kyrgyz Minister Mamashov congratulating KCI and Tracing Tea on our efforts to build bridges between communities through education. The evening concluded with a presentation of a giant cheque to help support KCI’s ongoing work and all of the guests went home excited carrying Tracing Tea goodie bags. We hope that they’ll enjoy the tea and remember the event for many months to come.
