Character Education was the focus for Near North Secondary teachers Friday as they hosted youth activist Marc Kielburger for the keynote address during a Professional Development Day at West Ferris Secondary School.
Character Education was the focus for Near North Secondary teachers Friday as they hosted youth activist Marc Kielburger for the keynote address during a Professional Development Day at West Ferris Secondary School.
Kielburger, an accomplished social advocate, leadership specialist and New York Times best-selling author, said that with his long history with teachers he hoped to help reignite a spark in teachers who may be feeling less than inspired.
“Both my parents are teachers ... all my family members are teachers, I am from a long history of teachers and the impact that teachers can have on young people is profound,” he explains.
“As you look at the data ... it shows teachers have a proportionate amount of time that they spend with young people is far more than what parents spend with young people. And so I hope not only to re-inspire the teachers who have may have been teaching for a long time, but also engage teacher who are new teachers woo are looking for ways to engage their students, but specifically talk about the great tangible skills they have to take into the classroom to engage their students about social justice issues."
Kielburger, along with brother Craig, is co-founder and chief executive director of Leaders Today and chief executive director of Free the Children (the world's largest network of children helping children through education) and recipient of an honorary doctorate of education from Nipissing University, says the main issue for the organisation is the kids they work with both at home and abroad and seeing the impact that they are having.
“The organisation is in not about us (Craig and me) it’s about the kids and about making sure they stay in the forefront and focus on what we do and the campaign and activities that we work on.”
Students with the Near North District School Board are no strangers to the Kielburger brothers’ programs as they are actively participating in the Volunteer Now Program, Leaders Today, the Youth Philanthropy Initiative and Life in Action. Marc says he especially happy to see North Bay and area students taking part as they are leading the way for other Northern Ontario students.
“It’s wonderful, especially considering we have a very strong presence in the urban areas of Canada and not so much in the less or densely populated areas,” he says.
“Seeing the caring people doing the work here in North Bay ... we work with some remarkable people … and the level of international awareness that is here in North Bay, in the Nipissing area especially has been profound.”
“The number of teachers who are engaging in international activities and teach international programming in their schools in the curriculum it’s really quite remarkable; it’s an amazing community, a dynamic community and a community that cares,” he adds complimenting Bruce Downey a teacher at Widdifield Secondary for all of his efforts.
Kielburger is a Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar who holds a law degree from Oxford University with an emphasis on human rights law, and he told the teachers that even with all of those credentials the best education he had came with his first foray into social justice. He explained that as a parliamentary page in the Canadian House of Commons that he was recruited to help with an international aid organisation by an MP.
“What type of legacy do you want to leave he asked.”
“He said leave Ottawa go to Thailand and change the world.”
And at 17 years old he agreed to go work with AIDS patients in the slums of Bangkok, but readily admits he was not ready for what he was about to encounter; child sex workers, poverty and death.
“I was immersed in poverty!”
“At 17years old I had 4 hours of medical training ... well actually 2 ½ because I spent the rest of the time throwing up due to the stench. At 17 -- I had 24 AIDS patients under my care and I was left alone ... that was my first experience with death.”
It didn’t take him very long to make a call home telling his mother he had made a mistake and that he couldn’t stay, and could she please get him on the first available flight. But it was the relationship that he developed with the shoeless street kids during his wait for a flight that would change the course of his life. He discovered that due to poverty the very street kids that he played soccer with every morning were forced into the sex trade to survive and most were HIV positive.
“I learned more from those street kids in Thailand than that from my Profs at Harvard and Oxford,” he states.
Kielburger is still passionate about the fight against AIDS stating that it is still a burning issue that needs to be addressed versus swept under the carpet.
“Just related to our organisation, the AIDS issue is causing a huge number of children to be forced into child labour, so it’s not only impacting the health, it’s not only impacting the death rates, the life expectancies it’s also impacting children’s futures not only because they don’t have parents but because they have to work. “
“And so you’ve got all these kids now in sub Saharan Africa and Asia who can’t afford to go to school because they have to support entire livelihoods and communities and families and households ... and so it’s robbing children not only of parents but also depriving them of an opportunity to receive a decent education,” he explains.
He says that everyone needs to understand that it is not just over there the issue of AIDS is everywhere from Canada to Thailand to Australia.
“Well the reality is that it could happen to anybody and the fact that we live in such a global community with such a global focus and global problems, whether it be AIDS or the depletion of the ozone layer or whatever that might be is not a Africa problem, it’s not a Asia problem, it’s not a Canada problem or a North Bay problem it’s a global problem and we need to have a global solution.”
