Amman School Grows Tomorrow’s Activists

Educators Michael Gohde and Molly Van Cleave dreamed up this novel project over three years ago as a means to exercise all the skills in an 8th grader’s backpack. Amman’s American Community School is a melting pot of culture, religion, income and family make-up. It started as a way to test the kids’ ability to “explain something with evidence”, said Gohde. So began Graduation by Demonstration, or GBD, a project that lives a full school year. It’s a simple recipe: consider your world, pick a global injustice, write an essay and deliver its content in a compelling speech to your peers.Tall order for a 13 year old, but why stop there?  The teachers upped the stakes. Develop a plan to solve that problem. Evolving further, it soon became: do the plan. Incite support. Take measurable action. This school motivates children to assume local social and environmental responsibility.  It incites a “leave the place better than you found it” approach. (Source: http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/06/amman-school-grows-tomorrows-activists/)