How i will encourage girls' education in South Sudan

 I will encourage girl’s education through giving them empowerment so that they develop intrinsic motivation and become resilience to any challenge that may contributes to their drop out from the school. I will empower them through guidance and counseling and also tell them my life story of how I was once a girl like them who grew up in a refugee camp and faced similar challenges as they are facing. But because I didn’t give up, the result is the education I attained and they could as well attain their education and become what they wish to be in future if they let the challenges they are facing motivates them to work more hard than discourage them to leave the school. I could give the guidance and counseling through having regular meeting with them as a group and also by meeting them individually depending on their various needs. I will also struggle to make sure that our girls are involve in sport activities because this could increase their interest to continue coming to school and forget some of the home problems they are facing and concentrate on their studies. By so doing, I will get to know them better and see a way that I can intervene in extreme circumstances that are beyond their control. I know that together we will succeed in supporting both the boys and girls because each of us have faced, and are still facing various challenges and we all have diverse stories to tell our students. Those stories plus guidance and counseling will empower them to continue with their education. Are you ready to join in the fight against female illiteracy in South Sudan?    

My goals when I return to South Sudan

When I return to South Sudan, I would like to promote quality education that will enable the students to make sense of their own learning and make my beloved mother land a better place to live in. That is possible by reaching out to a thousand future leaders of South Sudan through serving in the education sector at a higher institution level of learning as well as in the grass root level. I would like to be a voice for the voiceless especially the marginalized groups like girl child and women. Serving in the education sector en-campuses a lot of activities right from involving in the curriculum review, serving as a lecturer, teacher trainer, a mentor to mention but a few.

            I really learned a lot of valuable lessons from all the courses I took from Indiana University. In deed words cannot express it at all but my actions in the field will speak better. Never the less I learned that education is the key to almost all aspects of life. So in order to produce a quality work force, education should be designed to meet the needs of the society. Secondly, I learned the importance of teaching to learn not teaching to pass examination. Being a teacher, I will make sure that I work collaboratively with my students to support their learning as our professors did. This will involve the use of various teaching strategies and activities that brings the real world to the students in order to prepare them to face the real world in which they live in.  I believe that together we stand and make South Sudan a better place.

Impact of conflict

        Displacement of schools is one of the impacts of conflict on South Sudan. Many schools especially in areas that experienced intense fighting has been displaced. The teachers and students are forced to run to a safer areas while their schools has either been occupied by the military personals or destroyed. Most primary schools, secondary schools and higher institutions of learning in South Sudan has experienced this problem. The examples are institutions like Upper Nile University and Dr. John Garang University that were displaced and forced to relocate to Juba because of the December 2013 conflict.
        The displacements of schools has affected learning and the quality of education in the country in such a way that it leads to over crowding that will contributes to un-conducive learning environment, rapid spread of diseases, limit student sense of creativity and positive thinking to mention but few. It has also affects the teacher ability to plan and deliver meaningful lessons, assessment standards will be affected as well.
      As the future scholars of South Sudan, what strategies do you think will help deal with the issue of displacement of school in order to improve on the quality of education being received by learners affected by the impacts of the displacement?

What I learned from the Hull house

I learned a lot of things from the all the visit we had in Indianapolis and Chicago. Allow me to share some of the important things I learned while at the Hull house in Chicago.
The story of Laura Jane Addams taught me a lot that being a woman will not stop a person from bringing about positive changes in a country. Bringing positive changes require creative thinking, courage and collective action.  Like Addams who was a peace activist who collaborated with her colleagues and peacefully advocated for public housing and health care, fought for immigrant rights, dialogue about social changes and made remarkable history in United States, I think all of us wants to stay in a country that is stable and peaceful. So if all the fourteen of us collectively lay a good peaceful strategy on how tackle some of the challenges faced in our country, take action when we return home, Don't you think we will surely make a big change in our beloved country SouthSudan?    

The MCIES Confrence

Am so impressed by the presentation given by the IU graduate students on their session about save the children. I realized that most African countries has similar educational challenges. James Brown said that Lack of trained teacher and educational materials was a big problem facing the education sector in mali. He said there were some similarities and differences that existed between the trained and the un trained teacher. The similarity is that both of them struggled in providing the content to the students due to lack of materials. The difference is that the trained teachers were so creative in their teaching. They knew how to capture the attention of the learners right away during the introduction of the lesson by use of skills like songs that easily drew the attention and interest of the learners. When i take a look on South Sudan, these are some of the challenges facing the education sector too. What are we then going to do as scholars to reduce some of the educational challenges back home? To me i think we need to take action other than just complaining. We should start solving some of these challenge like lack of material but writing our own books in our respective disciplines. It it a hard work and time consuming but don't you think it will make a difference?

Developing South Sudan History Curriculum.

I think South Sudan should adopt a mix approach in their history curriculum. They should include the history of identity, things of progress in economic and social life, exclude cost of national identity and ethnic tribal problems. The following are reasons why.

Including history of identity will help the people identify themselves as South Sudanese as well as accept, respect and appreciate their diverse cultural heritage, study the story of their origin, freedom and political progress. The knowledge of identity will help us understand the important of unity and peaceful co- existence of all the diverse ethnic communities.
We should include things of economic and social progress because the people should know how the country has been progressing and is progressing economically and socially in both internal and external levels. The ethnic groups them selves will also learn how they can relay on each other economically and socially. This will contribute greatly to nation building.
We should exclude cost of national and ethnic tribal problems because the knowledge of these bad happenings will provoke negative feelings and spirit of revenge in people which will make no meaning to the sense to national identity but endless fighting. The curriculum should instead be design in a way that will enable the learners comprehend the impacts of conflict. What do you think will be the first step the fourteen of us will take in sharing these interesting knowledge of what approach to take  in improve the history curriculum of South Sudan when we go back home?

HOW MY EXPERIENCE AT IU IS SIMILAR AND DIFFERENT TO DR JULIAS'

On my arrival to Bloomington, i felt so happy the place was calm, there is stability and the long journey has finally come to an end.The environment was so green and clean, the rooms were well organized. I believed the people really worked real hard to organize all the fourteen rooms.

Similar to Dr Julia, the classes and culture at IU is different from those i had back home. A lot of reading are assigned to us, two chapters from a book with additional reading on-course and some in the printed copies including writing a reflection. Am really trying to work hard to complete these work but some times a find my self overloaded. However, I do enjoy the classes because the professors are friendly, knowledgable and trying to speak as slow as they could to let us understand them. they are exposing us to a lot of new knowledge and materials which are so useful.
Concerning the culture, i was surprised to see female wearing shorts which had pockets longer than the short its self. what shocked me the more is that they go and attend their lectures dressed like that.this is totally different from the way female dress in my country. our culture is different from theirs.

Different to Dr Julia's experience, I came to Bloomington alone without my children and husband.The worst thing is that a left a five year old son with a broken leg. This keeps me worried and lonely. Dr Julia had her family with her because the reasons for her coming is different from mine.
Another difference is that Dr Julia attended classes with people from different places and ages. However I attend classes with my own country mates and all are female.so we have similar challenges.

I wonder, will some of us not copy this culture of dressing? I also wonder by the time we complete our course will there be peace in South Sudan?