Urgent+Threat+Fund

Paul Benson Teaching American History Grant, Project Director Jamestown Public Schools 197 Martin Road Jamestown, NY 14701

May 18, 2009

Dr. Larry Brilliant Skoll Foundation 250 University Avenue, Suite 200 Palo Alto, CA 94301

Dear Dr. Brilliant:

Congratulations on the Presidency of the Skoll Foundation’s “Urgent Threat Fund”. Excellent choice on their part. A number of years ago you helped me develop a proposal to nominate Ram Dass for the Templeton Prize. You correctly predicted that he was not conservative enough for Templeton and he didn’t get the grant. But it was a worthwhile exercise and a good service project. But I write because after listening to your interview on NPR, I wanted to respond to you with some ideas.

When you stated that one of the most important aspects of your initiative was changing the public’s will and perception of the five Urgent Threats, I saw a way to make an impact. One of the best ways to do this is to get into the schools and start working with youth who will grow into activists. Below is a series of components for doing so that should be of interest. It’s something we’ve been doing for years with American history and uses a model that can be transferred to the Urgent Threats.

For the last six years we have been running Teaching American History Grants (TAH for educators here along the southern tier of New York). The program is dedicated to providing history content and wide ranging professional development to elementary and secondary teachers across nine counties in 69 districts. I started the job in January of 2003 on our first grant and have assisted in securing two additional TAH grants with my partner Rock Walters. (My prior background was in philanthropic development and am ABD in Anthropology UIUC.)

We concentrate on reaching teachers through **//[|summer seminars]//** with some of the nation’s top history scholars; a **//[|fall conference]//** dedicated to pedagogy and technology, **//spring inservices//** on specific topics, this year Darfur; **//[|teacher projects];//** and a powerful web presence: [|www.tdhah.com], [|http://www.wstcss.org], and http://tdhahwiki.wikispaces.com.

Our teachers in turn bring what they learn back to their students. The program has evolved in ways I could never have predicted. We have developed teacher/student projects raising funds to build schools in Liberia; an internationally acclaimed summer student institute on genocide and Darfur []; curriculum guides on the Nuremberg trials and prosecutor Robert H. Jackson [], and numerous high tech and civic minded projects [].

Our plan has be refunded by the U.S. Department of Education two times because of powerful positive evaluations and because it works. We have had the privilege of instituting programs that have changed classrooms, curriculum and schools. I envision a similar plan for the Urgent Threats initiative.

Everyone has a memory of an outstanding teacher who left some remarkable impression on us. Mine was my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Liesing. She instilled integrity, curiosity, morality and good fun. When students connect with the best educators they are affected for the rest of their lives. The premise here is to recruit teachers for a variety of pedagogical experiences that will allow them to bring high powered lessons and activities into the classroom. The model we’ve developed could equally work to help you promote and implement advocacy of the Urgent Threat Funds’ objectives. Envision a multitiered initiative for educators along these lines:

Of course I have a real interest in being a part of your program, but understand if that is not possible. I’m a behind the scenes operator. I’ve been involved in local service work for years: merging schools districts, building new schools, 11 years in scouting, raising money for libraries and the local foundations, active politically (our house was political enough that my son is majoring in Poly Sci). I traveled to Nicaragua with my daughter Cassidy to volunteer at the Chacocente Project [] and continue to work for them. Chacocente is dedicated to moving people out of the Managua dump and into new lives in agricultural communities. When doing my doctorial work I also completed two years in the Museum Studies Program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Krannert Art Museum. My dissertation concentrated on ideological exchange that extracted wealth to support Chautauqua Institution.
 * Work from the premise that ideas require personal buy-in to traverse from being media abstractions to becoming personal beliefs. Creating an educational environment where personal investment takes place produces educators that work from a sense of stewardship instead of just professional obligation.
 * The best teachers impact generations of students. They are drawn to programs that better their abilities and add to their skill set. They then use the new skills in the classroom. Students, who are highly impacted and who invest themselves in the material, will go onto a life primed for activism.
 * Work from the assumption that students are digital natives comfortable with media based technologies for communication and cultural interaction. Teaching methods must employ these technologies to reach and successfully communicate with these quickly evolving young people.
 * Create an immersive summer seminar that brings educators together to learn from Urgent Threat area specialists. Provide substantial training in the facts, solutions, lesson plans, classroom activities, resources and pragmatic activism to bring into the classroom and practice with their students. Appeal to educators in science, math, ELA, social studies and library media. Emphasize data in the morning and activism in the afternoons.
 * Promote creative activism through a national platform (Urgent Threat Society) like National History Day [] and the Center for Civic Education [|http://www.civiced.org].
 * Propose Urgent Threat events that promote activism: an annual competition where competitors demonstrate solution based projects they have either completed or proposed in one of the five Urgent Threat topic areas. Winner gets a scholarship or cash prize. See Green Effect by National Geographic [|http://greeneffect.nationalgeographic.com].
 * Employ a searchable data base driven website with links to: primary source documents and to specialists in the five threats along with video and audio links, university departments and think tanks focusing on the topics, media, activist lesson plans and classroom activities, international blog, speaker bureau, competitions and conferences, projects, repository, ‘how-to’ manuals for local projects, a bank of articles, papers and reviews of the topic data, et cetera.
 * Create a virtual space for interactive museums dedicated to the five topics. Second Life (SL) has been transforming itself into an education friendly environment having realized that socialization is not the most profitable future for the company. There are thousands of educators and multiple universities and companies in SL right now building new educational environments in the arts, humanities and sciences. Creating a resource rich campus in SL dedicated to the five Threats will create a global 24/7 presence open to everyone with an internet connection: speakers, resources, interactive museums, simulations, activism sessions and groups, literature and video. [], Educators@lists.secondlife.com
 * Create a speaker bureau for educators to tap for web based and in-person talks on the topics. Have them available for streaming across venues like Elluminate [] or Ustream [|http://www.ustream.tv] or in Second Life or the equivalent virtual world where teachers can convene.
 * Extend the speakers bureau to send emissaries (scholarship and competition winners) to the major annual elementary and secondary professional development teachers conferences: National Science Teachers Association, National Council for the Social Studies, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of English, and International Society for Technology Educations, et cetera.
 * Establish a bank of teaching kits for the five topics based in critical thinking skills heavy on media interpretation and decoding. Have materials ready and incubating to teach in the five Threats in the five subject areas: Science, English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Library Studies. Train teachers and their students in how to critically read and communicate across various media content: web, news, video, film, nationally and internationally.
 * Employ a host of Web 2 technologies to establish a community of educators who can share resources and communicate between classrooms.

Students connect with the best educators in ways that affect them for the rest of their lives. I’ve had the privilege of bringing together some of the best teachers and scholars for programs that have changed classrooms, curriculum and schools. The model we’ve developed over the years of teacher professional development, summer seminars, conferences and web connectivity could equally work to help you promote and implement advocacy of the Urgent Threat Funds’ objectives. Start it slow, maybe a region of the country per year. Expand it to other countries as the kinks get worked out.

I’ve attached a resume; please let me know your thoughts.

Sincerely, Paul Benson