Students in Kenya and Canada Swap Stories
In this article, Canadian teacher Ron Smith builds a case for a cross-continental essay contest. This is the second article in a three-part series about the Rafiki Link program that teaches Kenyan and North American students to think, link, and act.
As part of a collaborative learning experience and writing competition, 11th grade social studies students from Bodwell High School in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, have been exchanging essays with students from Maai Mahiu Secondary School in Kenya.
Bodwell High School is an international school that delivers the British Columbia Ministry of Education curriculum to students from many different countries around the world, including China, Kazakhstan, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
The essay exchange, which has been going on for a number of years now with the Social Studies 11 class, starts with the student's essays being assembled into electronic files and transferred between the schools. To verify that similarity ratings among the essays are low, Bodwell students' work is run through Turnitin.com before they are sent to Kenya, and the Kenyan students' essays are run through the program when they're received at Bodwell High School.
Next, Bodwell students read and evaluate the Maai Mahiu essays, scoring these according to the British Columbia Social Studies 11 Essay Response Rubric, while Maai Mahiu students read and evaluate the Bodwell essays. Then each set of students selects a best essay from the other school's contributions.
The essay winners are each presented with an identical trophy to acknowledge their significant accomplishment. The winners of the Bodwell-Kenya trophy have been deemed the most effective at presenting a thesis, using evidence, providing thoroughly developed details, and delivering insightful conclusions.
An outside observer might ask whether all of this intercontinental effort is worthwhile, but the Bodwell-Kenya Essay Contest provides opportunities for cultural sharing and essay quality improvements.
Hearing About Serious Issues Firsthand
Firstly, the cultural sharing benefits of the Bodwell-Kenya Essay Contest are numerous. From the Bodwell side of things, students immediately come to appreciate that students from Kenya have many important things to say. These young people tackle big questions head on.
For example, human rights issues are argued passionately by Kenyan students who have experienced intertribal conflicts. Challenges related to environmental degradation are presented through well-described Kenyan examples. Problems related to economic development are flashed up against backgrounds of human exploitation and extreme social stratification.
Bodwell students in North Vancouver come to understand the effect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on Kenyan society and that the dependency ratios described in their e-texts are meaningful interpretations of reality, not just abstract theoretical expressions.
The Bodwell students begin to fully realize what the terms developed and developing really mean. They can sense the optimism that drives the ideas of the Maai Mahiu writers and the Kenyan students' conviction that they can effect positive change.
From the essays, Bodwell students can truly appreciate that Kenyan culture derives its strength from religious values and education, as well as from a connection to their ancestral lands. In short, the Bodwell-Kenya Essay Contest brings the Social Studies 11 human geography unit to life.
Improving Writing Skills to Promote Dialogue
Secondly, the essay contest provides an opportunity for students to improve their abilities to organize and support a point of view. These abilities must be present in the toolbox of all democratic citizens if dialogue is to replace violence.
The fact that essays are peer-reviewed within another country inspires hard-working students to raise the level of their work. Indeed, Bodwell students have learned that their Kenyan peers must also cope with the challenge of communicating in multiple languages, especially English.
The contest encourages students to become essay mechanics by reading the work of others and by recognizing when a part is correct (e.g., thesis statement, body structure, credible evidence and facts, conclusion). Using the British Columbia Social Studies 11 Essay Response Rubric also helps students understand what a high-quality essay looks like.