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00:00:03

[Will Rixon]

So welcome Nicoletta, thank you for coming.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Thank you for having me and for the opportunity to speak about an issue that I care a lot.

[Will Rixon]

Good, as do we all, I think. So you're a certified English teacher with 20 years of experience. Tell us about your first job.

What was your first teaching job?

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

My first teaching job was actually a geography teacher because I have a double major, geography and English. Those are my favourite subjects. Okay. So, uh, I started as a geography teacher and then I switched to English.

It just covers, um, many more subjects that I'm interested in. Uh, it's somewhat easier and somewhat more difficult than geography. So, but people here are more interested in English than geography, meaning my students. So I think I'm staying with English.

[Will Rixon]

With English.

Okay. So you got a PhD. What was your PhD on?

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

PhD was on rural development. My PhD is actually in geography.

00:01:04

[Will Rixon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Because as I said, first I was focused on— my major was geography and rural development, how communities find a way to develop sustainably, in a sustainable way.

[Will Rixon]

Okay, wonderful. What an interesting topic. Not as interesting as English though.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Next time. Next time. Next webinar.

[Will Rixon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Well, have a wonderful talk, Nicoletta, and I'll see you in about 15 minutes.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Okay. Well, let me try and share my screen.

Let me know if you can see it and if it's full screen and all that.

First of all, can you see my screen? Yes. Thank God. One thing done. Hello everybody.

It's amazing to see people from all over the world, places I don't know even though I know geography a lot. So hello everybody. Nice to have you all here. I talk today about a subject I care a lot. But first of all, I have a confession to tell you.

00:02:19

Like, I sometimes think myself, oh, I wish I were a maths teacher. Why a maths teacher? Because I would only teach maths. I would only— oh, a second. Something went away.

Okay. I would only teach maths. I didn't— I wouldn't have to teach English and sustainability or global citizenship or local history and culture. Um, because, uh, while looking for how I'm teaching this global citizenship, I found out that you are supposed to teach all these things. Like, um, there are 3 main areas in global citizenship that you have to focus on.

Cognitive learning, basically develop critical thinking of your students. Social-emotional learning, developing a sense of empathy and solidarity, and behavior learning, acting responsibly and effectively solve major challenges. Easy peasy, you know, at least the second one for me was a challenge. How I'm supposed to teach about empathy and solidarity?

00:03:34

So looking at these texts, reading comprehension texts about refugees and their problems, the difficult journeys they go through, I ask myself the question, does this help develop global citizenship? What do students focus on when working on this type of reading comprehension text? Can you give me an answer shortly in the chat box? Shortly, like in 20, 30 seconds. I don't— Will doesn't give you more time.

Do you think that it develops global citizenship, this kind of reading comprehension text? And what do students focus on when working on this type of reading comprehension text?

Yeah, I see some answers coming. Yeah, there's mostly scanning, some facts.

00:04:29

Okay, I see people getting to my answer actually, that no, students don't develop global citizenship on this type of reading comprehension text, though the reading does tackle the refugee problem, because students mainly focus on identifying identifying the main idea, finding specific information, understanding statistics and data, and vocabulary. So I looked at some research, and what does it say is that in order to get to the point of people showing tolerance and empathy, you should use these 4 types of activities, which are perspective-taking, contact-based learning, collaborative problem solving, and reflection activities. Now, we won't go through all of this. We don't have the time, but we'll focus mostly on perspective taking, which I found out that helps my students a lot.

00:05:27

First of all, of course, when you want to teach the world about world issues and empathy and tolerance, you have to start with knowing your students. So this is step 1. Get to know your students. Do great activities, speaking activities like this one you can see on the screen. You might say, oh, but how do I get to know my teachers, my students, if I ask them about what languages they speak?

For example, for me, if they say they speak Italian or Spanish, I find, kind of find out that probably they live in Spain and Italy. Maybe they were immigrants and they came back to Romania for various reasons. So it's an important background information I found out about my students. Students. Second step will be build your classroom community.

Again, you can't teach global tolerance and empathy if your students don't get along. They don't talk. They're not tolerant to each other. This is a great activity I do recommend for you to use. It was suggested to me by teacher Tatiana Kondratuk from Ukraine.

00:06:35

It's an activity students do in groups of 3, 4, and they have to build their dream house. They negotiate rooms, the common rooms, their rooms, and they have fun. You can see in the picture that they really enjoyed it, but it's a very important thing to use mixed level students and no best friends because otherwise it's just a vocabulary activity, is not a community building activity. You have to put them to talk to each other, even with people that may not get along very well. And then step 3 will be challenge your normal, because we are so used to doing things our own way.

We think the way we do it is normal or the correct one. For example, I'll give my students an example. I had a Colombian friend. He went to study in UK for several months to study English, and he had a landlord. And he was telling me, oh, my landlord, she's crazy.

She makes me do all these things. I said, what? Taking my shoes off when I get in the house. I'm like, okay. So I realized that in hot countries, I mean, hot regions of Colombia where he was from, they have tiles on the floor.

00:07:43

So when they get in the house, they don't take their shoes off. While in Europe we do, and in Japan it's offensive if you don't do it. So I do a follow-up thing with my students, activity, and I ask them to find 3 more customs. Different than ours, the way we do it in Romania. The purpose of activity is really getting to the point that our way is not the only way of doing things.

Then, sorry, I went too fast there. Challenge your traditions. When you hear tradition, you generally think, oh, it's a good thing, it's nice. Some of them are not, and they're just there because they've been there for a long time, but they're not necessarily nice. And I start with a listening activity about the 5 Monkeys story on blind compliance.

You have— you can find it on YouTube. I don't have the time to show it to you here. We do a listening activity and we talk on the subject. And then I go to the activity on our tradition. One of the traditions is in Rugișașa village, which is a village in Romania.

00:08:50

They actually do that. On New Year's Eve, they have a battle. They fight people on the top of the hill with the people in the village over who organizes the events, the parties next year. And I mean a battle with bats. And today police actually has to inter— have to intervene so they don't get really hurt.

So we discussed their opinion on it. And then as an activity, I give them to do a translation exercise. And create a multimodal article in English from the point of view of a foreign newspaper. Yeah, how the foreigners will look at such a tradition, which is strange to say the least.

And then of course challenge yourself. You have to get to know your subject. You have to walk through the activities because sometimes the subjects are very sensitive and That can be very emotional, so monitor your reactions. If you can't go through it, probably your students won't. And ask yourself the difficult questions because if you don't, if you don't, then they will.

00:10:00

For example, a question like that, do you like immigrants? I learned not to answer directly. I reframed the question and I asked back, do you like Messi? You know, messies and immigrants. So I use the opportunity to talk to them about doublethink and cognitive dissonance.

You can create your own activities depending on your cultural background and the creativity of your students.

And then another step will be, of course— I'm sorry. How I get to increase empathy in my class, I make global personal. I make it local. For example, in 2022, when the Ukrainian war started, a lot of refugees came to my country and many people were very welcoming. But in time, still people, some people started complaining that, oh my God, the government spends too much money on refugees and so on and so forth.

00:10:57

So I was thinking how I can change my students' perspective without being political because that's not my purpose in the class. So in the book I was teaching, there was a story about the tempest, and it was ending with, at least we are all safe, and that's the most important thing. So I came up with the idea for them to write a story on a Ukrainian family. I divided them in groups, and I told them, time is February 2020, you're an Ukrainian family, bombs started falling on your city. What do you do?

What does the family do? They have to choose a title and The story had to end with the words, at least we are all safe, and that's the most important thing. I didn't put any other requirements for them. At the end, they had to read the story to the class.

00:11:46

And then we did reflection activities, was impressed, shocked me on the other people's stories. So as a question to myself, I asked myself, Did they learn anything about tolerance and empathy through this activity? I think they did because some of the stories ended up with my students having their families come to Albania for safety as refugees. So at least some of my students realized that for refugees, the most important thing is the safety of the family and not the country they're in. And as a homework, I usually give them to write a diary entry as a refugee child arriving at a new school.

We have refugees from Ukraine, children. And while they come back in the class, they have to do a pair share activity and discuss the feelings they might have.

00:12:31

Sorry, I need to get some water.

Then I looked at this activity. Okay, I did an activity. They showed some tolerance. Is it enough? Actually, I found out that in order for my students to develop empathy, you have to go further.

You have to go into layers. You have to make them really think and go through the emotions at a deeper level, basically to use immersion activities like using books, films, media, trips to places that they have some significance. So on the topic of foreigners and immigrants and refugees, I used a video from the movie, short movie from Riz Ahmed, The Long Goodbye. I recommend it to you all. It's quite an impactful movie about nationality and so on and so forth.

00:13:40

But I started the activity with a bit of a psychological trap for my students. I ask them, oh, have you ever participated in preparing a social event for your family, like a wedding or a birthday or something like that? What do the women do? What do the men do? How do they get along?

What's the atmosphere? And they start chatting and we have a bit of a chat and then I play the movie. The movie starts like that, preparing for a social event, but it gets very dark very fast. Because there are riots on the streets and basically the family gets killed while the police looks away. And as I know that, how can I say, how do I know that it has an impact?

Their reaction. My student, one of my students went, but this is not reality. No, this is not happens in reality. I said, no, not in, this is a movie. But I take them to reality.

00:14:35

I take them to newspaper articles like the Bali Mara riots. By BBC. There were riots that, uh, resulted from, um, accusation of sexual assault, and, uh, there were people who got hurt, uh, houses were burnt. And we discussed the level of police there comparing to the situation in the video. And I take the time to talk about propaganda, riots, pogroms, and all this, uh, information.

I actually do activities on it, uh, one activity I use for the propaganda. I'll put it in a Padlet link that you're going to find it at the end of my presentation. And then I also talk about— use the books like Refugees by Alan Gratz. We do speaking activities there. Like, I ask them how it is, for example, an activity.

00:15:30

Imagine you're moving to a different country for whatever reason. Europe, Romania is not safe anymore. You have to move. What are the challenges? And I like, I give them this, so countries which are far away, like Thailand or Philippines, which are very different from us.

And they come to class and we discuss about it and what their issues might be.

Also, I use the backpack, which was suggested by Teacher Hardy, which is high impact. They ask the backpack activity, they have to imagine that they have 10 minutes to leave the house and they have to pack in 10 minutes. The parents can time them. And then they take a picture of what they put in the backpack and they bring it to class and we discuss about it, why they took all this picture, because actually Mahmoud, one of the characters in the refugees, gets their house, gets his house bombed and he has to leave.

00:16:42

On the topic of— I lost the time. I don't know how much time I have. On the topic of victims of communism, I use, for example, personal stories. I found that it's very impactful. I use my pathetic banana story and I tell you what it is.

You know, communism was pretty bad for my country, but there are people who kind of have regrets that there's no more communism and they get mixed information about it. So I tell them, I start a conversation like that. Do you remember when you ate the first time your oranges, your first bananas? How many, how often do you eat them? And they generally say no.

But I do remember I was 12 years old. It was 1990. And I went upstairs to my neighbors to play and they told me they have great news. They were just ate some bananas and they showed me the skin of the bananas. They saved the skin of the bananas and they put it on a plate in the middle of the living room table and it was like a trophy and they gave it to me to actually smell it.

00:17:33

And I remember I was excited. Oh my God, it smells very nice. And I went upstairs, downstairs to my mom to tell her, oh my God, I smell some bananas. Of course, she got angry and went all over the city to find me some bananas to eat. But that's how they find out what it meant communism for a child, not having food, not having the fruits and staying in line.

Sorry, I'm supposed to finish.

[Will Rixon]

I'm sorry, Nicoletta, I need to, I need to stop you there. I think I'm so sorry.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Okay, just as a reflection, remember empathy is not enough. You need to teach your students to take action, donate, volunteer, find solutions to problem.

Don't give up. They're difficult subjects, difficult students, but remember the power of one. This is a Padlet link. You find 2 activities there, plus positive message for everybody, for my students. Maybe you can put your own so we can share.

00:18:35

And remember that empathy is not just about teaching global citizenship, it actually saves lives. You can check Nathan Newby's story, who basically stopped the bomb by just talking to him. And thank you very much for the opportunity. Sorry if I took a bit more time, Will.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

And I hope everybody enjoyed the talk, and I hope there are still teachers there that are Maybe more courageous than me, more creative, and we can share some activities on Padlet on empathy.

[Will Rixon]

Thank you so much, Nicoletta, very much appreciated. Thank you for the talk.

[Nicoleta Maria Erchedi]

Thank you.