Guest Post #1: The END IT MOVEMENT--Ending Modern Day Slavery (EA/UNCW Think-Care-Act Project Partnership)

Introduction:

Dr. Elizabeth O. Crawford and I met at the 2014 National Conference for Social Studies.  I presented a session, Change the World: Local and Global Think-Care-Act Projects, and Dr. Crawford, an education professor at University of North Carolina (Wilmington), attended my session.  From our meeting arose our EA/UNCW Think-Care-Act Project Partnership. 

Through the 2014-15 school year, my current and former sixth and seventh grade students at The Episcopal Academy “taught” Dr. Crawford’s senior pre-service education majors how to think about personal qualities and talents, identify passions for social change, and act to change the world for the better.  Through Skype and shared project plans, my students and those of Dr. Crawford have inspired and encouraged each other to make a difference.  We are delighted and proud to share the TCAP work of our students, and we will present jointly at NCSS in November 2015.


For Dr. Crawford’s students, the culminating piece of the Think-Care-Act Projects was to write a guest blog post about their projects.  Below, and for the next few blog postings, you will read guest blogs from future teachers, with links for further research and teaching suggestions.  This one, by Casie Boyle and Danielle Binkauskas, discusses ending modern-day slavery.  Important reading that we hope will lead to thinking, caring, and acting!
—Sue Cannon

Guest Post by Casie Boyle and Danielle Binkauskas,
University of North Carolina Wilmington:

End It Movement: Think-Care-Act Project

Our Story

We are teammates, friends, and now freedom fighters. Casie Boyle and Danielle Binkauskas joined together to fight modern day slavery. Danielle became passionate about this issue from a presentation in high school. She went to a Christian High School, and her junior year she had a guest speaker one day in Chapel. The speaker was a young woman from a developing country. The woman came to talk to the school about sex trafficking and the global issues of slavery. She spoke from her heart and moved the entire auditorium. She shared her testimony with us. She told us about how she was taken and sold. She was rescued and freed. Not a day goes by when Danielle does not think about this woman’s testimony and how so many people are unaware of such a global issue. Casie and Danielle both became re-aware of the issue on February 27, 2015, the day dedicated to the movement each year, when both of their social media pages were blowing up with pictures of friends with red Xs on their hands. 

The Movement

The END IT MOVEMENT began during the Passion Conference in 2013 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia (SurfKY, 2013).  In 2013, a movement was born with a mission to shine a light on slavery and speak for those who have no voice. The END IT MOVEMENT is a partnership of many different organizations that have come together to shine a light and end slavery (END IT, 2015). It is estimated that 27,000,000 people are enslaved all around the world (END IT, 2015). To give that statistic a disturbing image, if 27 million people enslaved held one another’s hands they would circle the entire earth one time (END IT, 2015). It is estimated of that 27 million, 60,100 people are in slavery in the United States (END IT, 2015). Could you ever imagine buying a person like you would an animal? Well, some purebred dogs can be thousands of dollars, but the average cost of a human being is $90.00 (END IT, 2015). 

The END IT MOVEMENT is in place to do four things: bring awareness, prevention, rescue and restoration (END IT, 2015). The mission of the movement is to create an unstoppable force to end slavery. Through partnering with the movement you become a Freedom Fighter and once you know you have to do something. This statement is saying that once you become aware of the issue at hand, you can’t back away from your responsibility, you must spread the word. The mission helps educate people, from villagers to law enforcement, on how to prevent any more abductions (END IT, 2015). The mission works to rescue those that have been taken and then to support the individual through recovery to try and get back to the most normal life possible (END IT, 2015).

It is said that slavery is “the second largest global organized crime, generating 150.2 billion dollars per year. That’s more than the combined revenue of Amazon, Google, and Ebay every year” (END IT, 2015). Through the END IT MOVEMENT, the three types of slavery trying to be stopped are: bonded labor, forced labor, and human trafficking (END IT, 2015). Nothing can be stopped without awareness. The only solution to this issue is to shine a light and end slavery. Speak up for those who can’t speak. Being a freedom fighter is more than raising money. It’s about spreading the word that men, women, and children all around the world are crying out for you to hear. “In the last two minutes four children have been sold into slavery--that’s 120 an hour” (End It Movement, 2013). Spreading awareness is free-- let’s make sure people know that there is a huge global issue happening right before our eyes.

Teach About It

It is hard to speak about this topic, nonetheless teach about it. We have decided this topic is not appropriate for elementary or middle. This is strictly a high school topic. There are some great videos that are attached at the bottom of this blog along with our TCAP Prezi. We have discovered through research that this movement can be incorporated with Fair Trade and other human rights lessons to younger children. It is all about the presentation of the material and the content. There are great children’s books for teaching about the rights that we all have. But, as stated before, the END IT MOVEMENT is for older students.

What We Did

We began our TCAP with a vision, a picture, black and white, bright red X. We began by researching what our plan of action would be. On the End It Movement website, you can start your own team. We began our own team by each of us donating money. Next, we posted pictures to social media wearing the red X on our hands. With these pictures, we hoped to spread awareness of the issue and to share our team website with our friends and family. We also posted a message to the UNCW Swim & Dive team, hoping that our teammates in the water we become part of a bigger team, a team of Freedom Fighters.

--by Casie Boyle & Danielle Binkauskas, 2015

RESOURCES: 

www.antislavery.org

www.slaverynomore.org

www.enditmovement.com

Prezi: http://prezi.com/eyw5tqcplclg/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

• For more about how to do Think-Care-Act Projects with students: Read Sue Cannon's blog http://thinkcareact.blogspot.com/2014/11/change-world-local-global-think-care.html

CITATIONS: 

• END IT: Shine a Light on Slavery. (2015). Retrieved April 8, 2015, from https://secure.enditmovement.com/learn
• Movement Started to Fight Modern Day Slavery. (2013, January 8). Retrieved May 7, 2015, from http://surfky.com/index.php/communities/51-top-news-for-all-sites/24817-movement-started-to-fight-modern-day-slavery

Courageous Teachers = Empowered Students

“Courageous social studies teachers across the country are wading into these difficult, sensitive topics in ways that have the potential to move young people from discouragement to empowerment, from complacency to awareness.”
—Dr. Beth C. Rubin

Teaching Social Justice Issues is a Crime?

When a friend posted on Facebook a link to an article indicating there is legislation pending in West Virginia that would make teaching social problems a crime, I thought it was a cruel joke from The Onion.  No such luck.  Emailing my cousins in West Virginia revealed several more such articles, indicating the proposal was ongoing and real.  What would be a crime?  Anything a critically thinking, motivated teacher does to empower students to become engaged, empowered, critically thinking citizens.

According to the article from Common Dreams, “Before students may participate in secondary level courses involving the study of social problems, global economics, foreign affairs, the United Nations, world government, socialism or communism, pupils shall first have completed basic instruction in geography, United States history, United States government and the government of the State of West Virginia, local governments in West Virginia, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutions of the United States and the State of West Virginia.”  Misdemeanors were listed as penalties.

According to an article in the West Virginia Gazette, legislation may not be imminent.  “Delegate Michel Moffatt, R-Putnam, said the intent of the bill is for West Virginia students to learn about the nation’s founding documents and history, but he said the language ‘needs to be worked out.’ ”

However, the situation in our social studies and history classrooms is dire.  We teachers have the opportunity every day to help our students think, care, and ultimately act to change a world filled with injustice and inequality.  Do we have the courage to do our civic duty?  Taking the time to connect our required curricula with the issues of the day is our responsibility as teachers. 

The payoff for our courage as teachers is the difference between apathetic and discouraged students and engaged, empowered citizens. 

A Typology of Civic Identity

This conclusion is supported in the research of Beth C. Rubin who has spent a decade researching how students become (or don’t become) civically engaged.  Her article in Social Education, linked below, details her qualitative research at a variety of schools: ranging from those in high poverty settings to affluent settings and schools with highly diverse populations to those with little racial or ethnic diversity.

Dr. Rubin includes summaries of classroom activities undertaken by six teachers who tackled tough issues with their students.  The spontaneous to highly-planned classes included such activities as comparing current events such as the shooting of Mike Brown and ensuing protests with the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in one classroom.  In another classroom, inspired by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s series “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” students created a mural depicting the differences in life expectancy, net worth, and incarceration rates likely for a white and a black baby in the United States today.

Active: Aware/Empowered vs. Passive: Complacent/Discouraged

What is Dr. Rubin’s conclusion?  It is one West Virginia legislators and all teachers would do well to read.  She writes, “I noticed that in classrooms in which students directly engaged in activities and discussions about both the ideals and the shortcomings of this country, about their rights as citizens and successful struggles for social change, students who felt disjuncture also tended to express empowerment, a belief in the ability to contribute to meaningful change.”  This result was true in affluent and economically depressed schools.

Moreover, when students in high poverty settings do not have such opportunities in their classrooms to learn about the country’s founding documents and connect them to their rights and responsibilities as citizens, they “expressed deep discouragement, a belief that no change was possible.”

Teachers in schools with affluence and less diversity also have a great responsibility to include social justice issues in their lesson planning, says Rubin.  When such students “did not participate in lessons about inequality and social justice, it was common for them to voice complacency, a sense that all was well in the United States and no change was necessary.”  In contrast, her research shows, when privileged students tackled issues of inequality and injustice with their teachers, they “expressed an awareness of injustice and a desire to work for change.”

Our students often come running into the classroom eager to talk about difficult issues, and we need to make time to honor their passion.  On the other hand, sometimes we are the ones who need to pull off the Band-Aid of complacency and bring an issue to our students.  We can do this teaching in age-appropriate ways, and I have offered many suggestions for such teaching in past blog posts.

Other resources for bringing issues into the classroom are linked below.  Teaching Tolerance, ZinnEd Project, Rethinking Schools, and my own website, Teach for Peace, are among my top go-to sites for material to use when tackling tough issues.  Whether it’s by using picture books, news sources, or YouTube videos, or undertaking debate, journal writing, or document comparison, we teachers can and must help our students connect issues of injustice and inequality to their lives.  Our courageous teaching can lead to their courageous actions as informed, empowered local and global citizens. 

-Susan Gelber Cannon

LINKS:

• Common Dreams article on pending West Virginia legislation 
• West Virginia Gazette article on pending legislation
• Beth C. Rubin: Article in Social Education, A Time for Social Studies: Talking with Young People about Ferguson and Staten Island
• Nicholas Kristof: Article in New York Times, When Whites Just Don’t Get It
• Teaching Tolerance
• ZinnEd Project
• Rethinking Schools
• Teach for Peace