Think Globally, Act Locally and Civic Involvement Online

In the spring I spend time on storytelling and folk tales with my students. I am the librarian at a large, rural elementary school. I see 1000 students a week. With each class I read a book, tell a story or do a mini-lesson. I use storytelling to make connections to other aspects of their curriculum, to history, to culture, etc. I try to get children to see that we are all storytellers and we communicate through story. Another subject that I hit on this time of year is the environment. Last week I was telling the story Slop! A Welsh Folktale (this links to a picture book version, but best example I could find online) The story is a about how one couple does not realize how their waste is affecting others. After telling a story, I ask my students to "look for the truth in the story." Slop! lends itself easily to discussion on how our actions may affect others in ways we don't understand. Due to technological and economic forces our world has become much smaller, the stresses that we put on the environment can have ramifications in parts of the world that we hadn't even imagined. ( this was a discussion with 5th graders)

These discussion have made me think about civic involvement and the Internet. In an earlier post Cynthia talked about youth as overwhelmed e-citizens. I responded saying that I agreed that too much information can be stressful to young people and that I believe that hands on participation in civic activities had a greater personal affect on young people; being able to see the change they affect in their own community. I few years back I headed up a project to build a new school/neighborhood playground. As part of the project I received a grant to create a native plant garden and outdoor classroom. Each child in the school participated in planting the garden. Older classes made beautiful glass tile stepping stones. Many of these inner-city kids had never gardened before. Because of their involvement in the project, they took pride in and helped to maintain the garden. The positive affects on the students and the neighborhood were numerous. This I consider a great example of civic involvement. But in talking about global affects with my 5th graders this year, and from the readings and the other blog posts about civic involvement, I realize that the Internet can play a big part in the idea "think globally, act locally."

Access to information on the Internet allows my students to better understand how their actions impact others in the world. They develop skills in what Jenkins terms 'negotiation' - Why might native peoples in South America be angry with American fast food industries? This goes hand-in-hand with the sense of empathy that Pink talks about. My students may access online organizations to gather information. They may not (or may) become an active participant in an online civic group, but the information they gather can affect how they view their actions with regards to a larger community. They may access the stories of people living in other parts of the world that will enlighten them to how we are interconnected.

In my experience in grass roots movements, which varies from one-time volunteer to director, the first steps in getting anything accomplished is raising awareness and then a shift in consciousness - 'Yes, we do have a problem here. Let's do something about it.' In this small community i currently call home, where many have made their fortune on oil and pesticide logos replace band names on t-shirts, getting kids to see a larger environmental picture and have awareness of how their actions can affect others can be aided by the Internet. Otherwise they can become isolated in the status quo of small town living. The idea of "think globally, act locally" becomes much easier to understand for youth when they are able to hook into sites that show how their actions can have global consequences.