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?      

My first blog.

Hello every one, this is my first blog post. Hope to share with you a lot of good ideas.