I am tempted to give up everything and become THE blogger for the 2008 Iowa Caucus. Homegrown democracy, spectacle, political banter occurring in the church narthex, and the polishing of small town middle America, all for one day of attention from the national media. So, as a disclaimer, this blog will be handed over to my feeble attempt to comment on the Iowa Caucus as the event approaches.
For now, however, this blog is christened in the name of keeping anecdotal records of my summer research, because British anthropologist-surrogate-grandmother Dr. Jane Guyer demands "fortnightly"* reports on my work (once I wrote a 19-pg. paper for her detailing people flow within a Smithsonian exhibit, so she wants the human nuance). My record keeping from last summer's work on the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services and the Sudanese in Iowa was messy (though the research a blast: lute circles, Sudanese card games, field trips to the water park with the children, coffee with a governor from the 70s, PB & J sandwich making at Sudanese summer day camp). Last summer I sought to specifically examine the policy model of Iowa's refugee resettlement program (an aberration among voluntary resettlement agencies in the US, as it is not an NGO but rather nestled within Iowa's Dept. of Health and Human Services) as well as the on-sight resettlement of Sudanese in Iowa City. This work morphed into an interest in how refugee youth are integrated into public schools, with the language barrier and issues of post-traumatic stress disorder. An independent study examining how the Baltimore City Public School System coped with these issues gave me a chance to familiarize myself with literature on the subject but turned up dry in terms of Baltimore's ability to cope with the issue. For a city striving to revitalize blighted and struggling neighborhoods with refugee and immigrant populations, the BCPSS has taken few corresponding actions to meet the needs of refugee students (in BCPSS's defense, however, they're a district where some high schools have a 20% graduation rate, so development of such such specific programming is very unrealistic).
This summer I'm traveling to London to examine the public school system's programmatic attentiveness to the needs of African refugee populations. While the nation itself has come under criticism for refugee policies, the city of London has done careful work to make education of refugee students a priority--through creation of refugee specific schools, inclusion of mental health services, and an extension of language services to parents. As with last summer, my work will be learn-as-I go, but luckily I've found kind guidance from the author of Supporting Refugee Children in 21st Century Britain, Dr. Jill Ruttner. London's public schools adjourn July 19, so I have until then to complete the classroom observation portion of my work.
A separate research project will take me to Berlin and Vienna, to examine how federal funding has been used to set up teacher training programs for Holocaust Education (admittedly research to substantiate the Mandatory Genocide Education Campaign, an offshoot of Darfur student activism, which seeks to remedy the fact that only 6 states in the US require that the Holocaust or genocide be included in curricula).
And honestly, Jess, Rachie, and most recently Anna have such fantastic and fan-generating European blogs, that I grew jealous.
*I grew up thinking "fortnight" meant things it didn't. Why doesn't it mean staying up all night in a fortress/tower, keeping watch for an invasion, Roman, NATO, or neighbor kids?
