Right now, this is just an idea.
It will either fade off into nothingness for lack of interest, or
if some KivaFriends
and Teacher and Other Guests to our Forum want to try to make something happen with it,
and will volunteer here to participate,
we can work together and see if we might be able to get a
Teachers' Clearinghouse actually started and invigorated.
From nearly the earliest days of the Forum, someone, every once in awhile,
has posted about the obvious and tremendous potential for a Kiva presence in the schools.
(I'll post links to the pertinent threads that are already here, below).
Many of the teachers and one-time students among us
can almost feel the excitement of it in our bones.
The learning possibilities seem almost infinite.
But, for whatever reason, maybe/maybe not for lack of organization and "a place to start,"
nothing, really, has gotten off the ground --
so far, that is.
When I went for my teaching degree, the most exciting part of the whole Masters' program
for me was, by far, its Service Learning component.
Service Learning is so much more than what we all traditionally regarded as "community service."
One of its most significant features is the creative synthesis it involves
between aspects of the Academic Curriculum and Service to Others.
You learn while you serve. You give
and you get.
Service becomes so much richer and rewarding an experience.
Learning becomes so much more fun and meaningful and enduring.
There are many other avenues we would want to brainstorm about how to assimilate Kiva into the schools
or into any other academic environment, separate and apart from Service Learning.
But -- combining Kiva with Service Learning is such an obvious "marriage made in heaven,"
that many teachers and parents would automatically opt for that particular pathway.
It was actually the lender,
Mr. Beesley Fan Clubthat brought me back to this subject that Henry and I and a number of others
never really wanted the Forum to leave.
Check out, particularly, their "I loan because,"
and you'll see why we
have to invite (and drag, if we have to)
Mr. Beesley and teachers like him
to participate and contribute their creative and successful strategies here for others to see and try.
It occurred to me that if we can get enough people, here, to volunteer to do some "legwork,"
that an obvious place for us to begin
for establishing a clearinghouse of ideas of how to use Kiva in the schools
would be with Kiva's Class and School Lenders, like Mr. Beesley and his loving protegés,
who already have begun lending and who have already invented one kind of Kiva-utilizing teaching Wheel.
The teachers or staff members involved with those lending groups
had to have come up with some ideas, already,
for them to have begun lending in the first place.
So, I think, let's start with them. Let's try to get some of them here.
Thanks to Richard with his constantly attended and updated
Kivapedia Group Lender Page the volunteer sleuths among us will at least have a place to start
when trying to find e-mail or snail-mailing addresses where we can write to invite,
to beg some of these teachers and students to join us at KivaFriends.
If we can get enough of those already experienced KivainSchool Lenders to post ideas,
then we might end up with something tangible and proven
that Kiva or KivaFriends can offer to classes or schools that have not yet discovered Kiva and
that don't know, yet, how valuable Kiva can and will be in achieving their goals.
I have plans for the day and evening, so I'll have to come back,
maybe late tonight or early this morning, to "top this off."
I guess I just felt so hopeful about it, so excited about the potential of it, I couldn't help but post this now.
But.... If nobody else or if hardly anybody else feels the same way,
I'd just ask that Joe or Diane vaporize this thread in a couple of weeks
so that any new teachers coming to the Forum wouldn't be disappointed
when/if they found a One Person Thread and an empty promise about a Teachers' Clearinghouse.
