Teachers Power Up in Greenwich

Teachers from three London Citizens Schools in Greenwich came together last week to plan how they can integrate their "active citizenship" work and support each other in making change happen. Rahima Choudhury from John Roan, Erin Culley from Thomas Tallis and Emily Stephens from Black Heath Blue Coats are all active members of our Greenwich alliance and got to know each other through their Citizen Schools work. Supported by Greenwich organiser, Sebastien Chapleau and Schools Organiser, Jamie Audsley, plans were developed to integrate curriculum projects and to enable students from the three schools to come together to develop better relationships. Possible areas for future action involving all three schools include:street safety; school transport and improving the local environement. Watch this space for change in Greenwich!

Migration Conundrum: new Website Coming Soon!

It's confirmed - the Migration Conundrum will have a brand new sparkling website up and running within the month.

I met on Friday with Elliot Fox who is co-ordinating our online efforts to confirm arrangements for constructing a useful site to get the message out about the Migration Conundrum and what it's trying to do, in the run up to our official launch during Refugee Week 2010 in June.

Big thanks to Elliot for taking this work on. We'll also be advertising for a developer post soon to take the site into the educational stratosphere! Watch this space for more!

Barking Abbey Team Gets Super-Strategic!

With the support of four Citizenship teachers, the team at Barking Abbey now meet regularly on Mondays after school and have selected their key issue and idea to focus on: street safety and getting a more visible police presence on the streets.

Students and staff have established their core strategy to make this happen - by mapping community safety hotspots, reaching out and connecting to community allies, building their power together by researching which areas are most in need of a presence, developing their arguments and negotiating with the police to make it happen.



Students are busy creating surveys to begin this process next week.  They're a great team and are excited about building their power by reaching out to other year groups, parents and wider into the community.

Migration Dream Team Get Down to Business!

The Migration Conundrum - a toolkit for teachers to facilitate compelling learning about the controversial issue of migration, and then to take action around it - is moving forward and will be launched in June during Refugee Week, thanks to the work of our specialist 'Migration Conundrum Dream Team'.

A core group of teachers, migrants, consultants, students and London Citizens staff, the dream team have now got strategic, establishing a plan to get EVERY SCHOOL IN THE UK freely accessing the learning the Migration Conundrum Offers, working with Local Education Authorities other targeted power players.

March is the month of creativity - every member of the team is creating real life case studies and many are producing compelling learning activities to extend and enrich students learning.   If you want to contribute either a case study or learning activity, please contact Carina Crawford-Rolt: Carina.Crawford-Rolt@cof.org.uk