Teaching Giving

WHERE AM I GIVING? A GLOBAL ADVENTURE EXPLORING HOW TO USE YOUR GIFTS AND TALENTS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The following pages provide the official discussion questions and reflection guide for Where Am I Giving? A Global Adventure Exploring How to Use Your Gifts and Talents to Make a Difference by Kelsey Timmerman. The discussion questions and reflection guide were developed by J.R. Jamison from the Giving Rules provided in each section.

If you’re an educator and plan to use Where Am I Giving? in the classroom, or you’re a student exploring your own giving story, the supporting discussion questions and reflection guide will help you map out your own adventure to giving.

If you have questions about using the Giving curriculum, contact J.R. Jamison at jr@facingproject.com.

PART I: WHY GIVE WHEN…

Read More >
 
Add a comment

Liberal Arts Graduates teaching Cameroonian farmers how to farm?

An Op-Ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times by the former country director of Cameroon brings into question the usefulness of sending recent college graduates overseas to help people that probably don’t need any of their help.

Robert Strauss writes:

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt…

Read More >
 
Add a comment

Good People: A visit to the wall

Drop a quarter into a turnstile and you can cross from the U.S. into Mexico. Easy. The reverse journey is much more difficult, especially for immigrants searching for a better life.

On this episode of Good People, Jay and I chat with my friend Scott Truex, who has spent his career learning and teaching about sustainability and community development. Scott talks about his recent experience visiting the Mexican border and the infamous wall.

Listen below or on iTunes or Stitcher.

Read More >
 
Add a comment

Dear friend who doesn’t like to get political

Dear friend who doesn’t like to “get political,”

Farm bill. Food stamps. Farm subsidies. Food safety. Poisoned.

Eating is a political act.

Car emissions. Smog warning. Ozone action. Factory exhaust. Suffocation.

Breathing is a political act.

No music. Test teaching. Politician’s curriculum. Slashed budgets. Dumbed.

Education is a political act.

High premium. Expensive meds. Uninsured bankruptcy. Untreated. Preexisting until you unexist.

Health is a political act.

Farm runoff. Waste treatment. Lead water. Depleted aquifers. Parched.

Drinking is a political act.

Bears Ears. Natural parks. Algal blooms. Dying reefs. Homeless.

Recreation is a political act.

Trade laws. Labor rights. Underpaid. Overtime. Destitute.

Working is a political act.

Neighborhood watch. Stand your ground. Speed limits. Slow . . . at risk children at play.

Safety is a political act.

Unemployment. Social security. Disability. Promised entitlements. Uncertainty.

The future is a political act.

Museums. Public works. Heart appreciation. Examined…

Read More >
 
2 comments

Will Mobile Phones Prevent the Next Rana Plaza Disaster


(Arifa, a single mother of three children, and a garment worker I met while traveling in Bangladesh)

One moment Reshma Begum was sewing. The next she was falling from her station on the second floor into the basement of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh.

She lost consciousness. She awoke to cries of help that gradually silenced. Her clothes were shredded, everything was dark, and her hair was stuck in the rubble. She ripped her hair free and scavenged the dark crevices on her hands and knees finding four crackers, a small bottle of water, and the occasional puddle to quench her thirst. She probed her surroundings with a pipe for pockets of air.

This was her life. This…

Read More >
 
6 comments

On the faculty at Ermapalooza! Registration opens tomorrow!

When humor goes, there goes civilization. –Erma Bombeck

I’m excited to announce that I’m on the faculty at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop (April 10-12). I’ve been to the conference twice as an attendee, and it is definitely one of my favorite conferences. The conference made me better as a writer, led to some major assignments, a book blurb from Senator Sherrod Brown, and, the best part, I made some real life friends, who are hilarious. That’s the great thing about a humor conference, the people who attend it are typically pretty darn funny.

I’m teaching one section…

Writing Nonfiction: Connecting People Through Stories
Kelsey Timmerman

Writers of creative nonfiction explore truths through verifiable facts, shaping the narrative using the same tools as writers of…

Read More >
 
2 comments

Where Am I Speaking in November?

 

Want me to visit your high school, university, or group? Let’s make it happen. 

Falls really zip by for me. November wraps up a busy few months of speaking at high schools, universities, culinary schools, and libraries.

Here’s where I’ll be speaking in November:

11/7: Lock Haven University / International Education Week: 7PM at Price Hall (free and open to the public)

11/8 5:30 PM – South Bend, Indiana: Facing Project event: Voices of Teenage Girls

11/9 7:30 Michigan City Public Library – Writing Out Loud (free and open to the public)

11/11 Private High School

11/11 Purdue N. Central Westville, Indiana

11/16 Writers Center of Indiana: 2013 Gathering of Writers / Teaching a nonfiction workshop at 12:45

Truth, Justice, and the Creative Nonfiction Way
Works of creative nonfiction…

Read More >
 
3 comments

Lesson from my stupid big bro: It takes courage to change

Dr. Timmerman

Kyle, either posing like a “scientist” or planning to takeover the world.

My brother, Kyle, always led my earliest adventures into imaginary realms. We fought trolls with wooden swords, goblins with clumps of dirt scooped from the field surrounding our club house.  (Once I was the goblin and Kyle made a throw that could’ve been on SportsCenter’s Not Top 10 as it connected with my face.)

He was the best big brother an annoying little brother looking to prove himself could have.  He never whooped me. Not once. I tried like hell to fight him and he would figuratively and sometimes literally hold out a brotherly stiff arm atop my head as I swung…

Read More >
 
8 comments

July Appearances: California for chocolate and wine, Indiana for writing friends and libraries

Summer is a time of rest, bike rides, backyard pools, and teaching my 4-year-old daughter to rider her bike without training wheels (on Father’s Day! I won Father’s day!).  But I love summer events.  They tend to be more intimate and laid back.

Here are my July Appearances

July 20 – Paso Robels, CA: Project Hope & Fairness Fundraiser at Pear Valley Vineyards. Wine and chocolate? Yes please! I traveled with Tom Neuhaus of Project Hope and Fairness in Ivory Coast while researching WHERE AM I EATING? Happy to help them raise money to improve the lives of cocoa farmers in West Africa.

July 22 – Columbus, IN: Batholomew County Library.  Love visting libraries and happy they are having me back to talk about EATING after I spoke there about…

Read More >
 
1 comment

Part I: Meeting a slave to chocolate in Ivory Coast (video)

I met a slave when I visited a cocoa farm in Ivory Coast researching WHERE AM I EATING.

His name is Solo.

Shortly after we first met, a villager began recording Solo teaching me how to harvest cocoa.  (As a writer, it’s rare that I capture such poignant moments on video.)  I began to ask Solo about his life, where he was from, what he gets paid, when certain disturbing facts came to light:

1) He called his boss “master”

2) He had worked 4 months and hadn’t been paid

3) He told me that the donkeys are treated better than he is because at least they get fed when they don’t work

4) He asked to leave and wasn’t allowed to

5) Solo is a…

Read More >
 
8 comments