Peace Day was organized by Miss Sadia Shaukat in Township Campus, University of Education on 17, Dec, 2009. B.Ed students under the guidance of Miss Sadia celebrated this day with full enthusiasm, devotion and love for Pakistan.Miss Sadia described Peace is not just an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, and a disposition for benevolence, confidence (courage) and justice.

Almost 200 students at graduate and post graduate level participated in this event, Registrar of University of Education(Dr Saeed Akhtar) was the chief guest of this event, although Director (Anwar –ur-Rehman) and Principal ( Waqur-ur-nisa) of Science and Technology were also invited in this event.

B.Ed students performed skits about the current situation of terrorism and suicide bombing in Pakistan and they reflected their roles and responsibilities in this critical situation of Pakistan. They put light on the Muslims’ roles and their obligations for the sovereignty of Islam in Pakistan. “A Muslim only fights when forced to, and after exhausting all peaceful means of reconciliation. If any opportunity of peace arises, then Islam makes it compulsory for the Muslims to take it. A Muslim is also required to extinguish the flame of war whenever and wherever he can. The Qur’an says:‘But if they incline to peace, you also incline to it, and (put your) trust in Allah. Verily, He is the All-Hearer, the All-Knower.’(Surat-al-Anfal (8), ayah 61).

B.Ed students read poems and sang songs for peace in Pakistan and more emphasis was given to awake the Pakistani nation (citizens) in this serious situation and how they can overcome this disastrous situation by holding hands together.

Moreover, students explained the meanings of Peace, brotherhood, unity, harmony, tolerance. Peace is the presence of justice in society, and it means to live happily. The history of Peace was also described by students. How we can make Pakistan peaceful, different speeches were delivered on this topic.

In peace the sons bury their fathers but in war the fathers bury their sons…. Pakistanis have been burying their young children, their friends and most of all their brave sons who gave their lives in order to save others. These brave soldiers, police officers and security guards are sacrificing their lives for our better future. They say “if there is a trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

At last, registrar Dr Saeed Akhtar concluded the session with the encouraging remarks for Miss Sadia Shaukat’ efforts for organizing this event and he highlighted the importance of peace in our country. He addressed to students, we need to develop harmony and unity in ourselves and should be ready to give every sacrifice for the prosperity and survival of Pakistan. Director and Principal also expressed their views regarding the promotion of peace in our country by unity. Event was ended with the certification ceremony among students on their brilliant performance.

During the Institute, the delegates shared their accomplishments and served as Ambassadors for Pakistan. They were  honored members of the Plymouth State University community. At the completion of the Institute, the delegates received Certificates of Professional Development and recognition as Master Trainers. They also became alumni of Plymouth State University, with lifelong access to all alumni resources. Now that they have returned to Pakistan, they will begin implementing Master Action Plans (MAPS) in country-wide professional development initiatives, sharing their expertise with colleagues, communities and students.

A very special thanks to the Project’s 120 alumni who provide continuing inspiration due to their remarkable work in Pakistan as agents of change.

For more information regarding the Pakistani Project and the Pakistani Educational Leadership Institute, please visit the website.

An Environmental awareness campaign was again organized in Township campus (university of Education) on 11, August 2009, by Miss Sadia Shaukat (peli 2008). She guided her students about raising the environmental campaign through pamphlets, charts and posters to other students. Students made posters on save environment and save greenery. They also made notices on the theme of conservation energy, like switch off lights after the class; students pasted these messages on the doors of classrooms. The ultimate purpose behind this campaign was to aware the new comer students about the importance of clean environment and sustainable development of the campus. They exerted their efforts for making the campus clean and beautiful through impactful environmentally responsible behavior messages .

by Bea Lewis

Plymouth State University has welcomed its sixth delegation of Pakistani educational leaders for an intensive professional development institute with the goal of making them agents of change in their home country.

The Pakistani Educational Leadership Institute helps participants learn about American innovations in education so they can be adapted and applied in Pakistan. This year’s Institute is host to 20 Pakistani educators, 11 women and nine men, who were selected to participate based on their leadership capabilities, according to Blakeman Allen, director of the Institute.

The participants represent a cross section of educators from university-level professors to those teaching in tribal schools.

Before and after the institute, project activities in Pakistan are coordinated and facilitated by in-country partner Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA).

Institute alumni act in an advisory capacity to the project and assist in institute design and development, explained Blakeman, who said the institute now has 100 alumni in Pakistan. This year’s institute runs from July 4 through Aug. 1.

The United States Department of State and institutional stakeholders in the United States and Pakistan provide additional collaboration.

The goal of the institute is to engage Pakistani educators and administrators by developing and honing the leadership skills necessary to direct educational initiatives and effect change in their home country.

According to statistics compiled by ITA, the institute alumni who act as master trainers in Pakistan have trained over 100,000 colleagues.

One gentleman, who teaches at a government-run high school, is on his first visit to the U.S. and said he was surprised by how friendly people were and how many resources they have and are willing to share.

“I don’t feel we are in a foreign country that is a surprise to me,” he said.

He said he was especially taken by the fact that American motorists stop when they see a pedestrian on the crosswalk. Crossing the road in Pakistan when traffic is moving is a life-risking pursuit, he said.

He said he was also excited about being able to stay in touch via e-mail with the teachers he’s met during his stay at PSU.

Naseem said she too was surprised that the American people are “so loving and caring.”

“I don’t feel homesickness in America,” she said.

She said while she respects the cross-cultural differences between herself and Americans, she said she sees more similarities than differences between the two nations.

In her home country female enrollment in schools substantially outpaces that of men, she said.

During her stay at PSU, she said she was impressed by the art education component of the program and was excited about bringing some of those experiences of singing and dancing to help engage students in a subject.

“I believe the U.S. and Pakistan can become more together friends,” she said, joining her hands together.

Talat, a professor at the Federal College of Education in Islamabad, said the trip to PSU was a homecoming of sorts, as he was educated at the University of Pittsburgh.

“It was like coming home after 20 years,” he said.

Talat said the alumni of the program bring their learning back to their home country and put it to good use.

“What I want to do is to develop a better and effective collaboration and follow-up of the activities back home,” he commented. While the local program is short in duration at just three weeks, it is intense and centers on three core areas literacy, conflict management and science, he explained.

He said the Pakistani people are “very keen on learning new approaches to education.”

Sima, who comes from the county’s frontier region in a tribal area, said where she works the literacy rate is very low, especially among women. She is excited about being exposed to the latest learning and methodologies in that area and feels confident that once she returns to Pakistan she will be able to apply that knowledge to help make a difference.

Munir, who offers technical support to teachers in Pakistan, said the trip is a golden opportunity for him to help develop his own teaching skills. He said he too was surprised by how frequently people smile and are friendly and pleasant.

He said he was especially interested in learning conflict resolution techniques, as the government is expected to require it as part of the national curriculum in the coming years.

Amra said this visit marked her first trip to the U.S., but because she comes from a city she feels she has been in touch with Americans via tourism and the media. What surprised her most are what good listeners both the professors and people from the community have been.

She said conflict resolution was a new topic for her and she was expecting a lot from a scheduled three-and-a-half day session about it.

Kausar, who teaches special education teachers in Pakistan, said she too was impressed with the one-day seminar on using arts in education.

“It is a powerful tool for all children to be able to express themselves,” she said.

Shahida, who comes from a very rural area in Pakistan and teaches science and is also a computer instructor, said she has 60 students in her classroom at home.

She said resources such as globes or even maps to teach social studies are scarce and that it is difficult to engage children with only textbooks to work with.

“I’m really very excited that when we go back we will have activities that will be able to motivate students,” she said.

This year, one of our participants donated an amazing dress that was once worn by her daughter. We have displayed it in the PELI office.

My daughter fell in love with the dress and thought it would be fun to model it.

Thank you to Ms. S (PELI 2009) for this beautiful and thoughtful addition to our Pakistani display. We really appreciate the kind gesture and it will always remind us of the PELI 2009 delegation.

I hope you have all made it home- or to your destinations- safely. Campus seems very quiet without you here! I just wanted to take a minute to say that it was a pleasure to meet and work with you all this past month. Hearing your stories was inspiring- and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend so much time with you all. Please be sure to post updates here on the blog so that all of your friends in Plymouth can know what you are up to.

We at PSU will look forward to hearing from you- and keeping in touch with you all.

Fondly,
Michelle

Children spend almost one third of their time in schools during their childhood. Therefore, schools are meant to be institutions which provide a safe, caring and orderly environment for students through school discipline. Schools use a variety of disciplinary techniques, among which corporal punishment is used to improve student’s behaviour. Research conducted in Pakistani schools reveals that corporal punishment is a common and accepted form of discipline in schools. Teachers use corporal punishment because it results in immediate compliance. Most parents permit and support the use of corporal punishment in schools because it is deeply rooted in the child rearing and disciplining practices of Pakistani culture. Teachers use different forms of corporal punishment depending on the situation. A study in Sindh found that teachers regularly slap and beat students, twist their ears, hit them with the ruler, make them contort their bodies into ‘murgas’ and make them stand in the scorching sun for a long time. Research has shown that the behaviour-modifying effects of corporal punishment do not last. Rather than effecting a positive change in children’s behaviour, corporal punishment puts them at risk of immediate or long-lasting physical and psychological trauma. Furthermore, the prevalence of corporal punishment in schools has also been cited as one of the major reasons for students dropping out of school. Most importantly, corporal punishment sends the message to children that the use of physical aggression is an appropriate method to resolve differences and conflicts.

For developing a progressive and peaceful society, corporal punishment must be prohibited by law and caretakers of children, both parents and teachers must be educated in positive disciplining methods. The core message must be that “no violence against children is justifiable; all violence against children is preventable” (Report of the UN Secretary General on Violence against children 2006).

Initiatives:

The two of us (Cassandra and Ummelaila) were selected from the Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development to attend a month’s training programme at the Plymouth State University- New Hampshire PSU-NH, USA in collaboration with the Idara-e-Taleem o Agahi (ITA) on Promoting Environmental Stewardship and Active Citizenship, where one of the tasks was to develop a master action plan on any issue related to our society to promote active citizenship on return to our context.

To further this initiative, we developed our master action plans at the PSU-NH under the guidance and support of Ms Kim Rawson and Ms Blake considering this issue to be pertinent to our society. The action plan was developed, keeping in mind the realities of our schools where children are becoming victims of corporal punishment daily, we decided to address the issue of reducing corporal punishment as a first step to eliminate corporal punishment from the schools of Karachi.

Implementation Phase

The aim of our action plan was to facilitate teachers understanding and application about child-friendly classrooms and to impart the culture of positive disciplining practices through the implementation of a no corporal punishment policy in schools. To achieve this aim, we conducted the following activities: conducted a one week training programme, development and implementation of the policy at the school level.

Training Phase

To address this issue, we conducted a one week training programme at AKU-IED for 10 (2 from the private sector and 8 from the public) teachers from both the government and private sector schools. The aim of this training was to eliminate corporal punishment from the schools of Karachi by educating teachers with the knowledge and skills to use positive discipline methods so as to educate children to realise their full potentials as well and the development of a no corporal punishment policy for their respective schools.

To achieve this aim, a training programme was held from the 20th of January 2009 to 25th of January 2009 from 9 am to 3 pm. The first five days focused on developing participants understanding on the concepts of corporal punishment, child rights and child development, build their capacity to use positive disciplinary strategies and develop a no corporal punishment policy in order to create child-friendly schools. To further the successful implementation of the no corporal punishment policy, on the 25th of January 2009, we invited Mr Baloch Memon (District Officer- Training and Academic) and his assistant Ms Rehana Naz and principals/head teachers of the participating schools to attend a session where the participants presented their learning and future strategies on implementing their individual No Corporal Punishment policy for their schools. This session proved to be beneficial as most of the principals and the DO showed keen interest and support in the implementation of the no corporal punishment policy as they realized the importance of the eliminating this issue from our schools.

The Facilitators conducting a session for the DO and Principals

A few teachers presenting their action plans at the presentation

Mr. Baloch Memon (DO- Training and Academic with assistant Ms Rehana Naz attentively listening to the presentations)

Policy development at the school level

On returning to their schools, each of the trained teachers with the support of their principals and letter from the DO Training and Academic and the facilitators (Laila and myself) started implementing their action plans for the successful implementation of the “No Corporal Punishment” policy.

The trained teachers began by setting up a working committee which comprised of the head teacher/ principal, 5 teachers and 5 students representing each grade level of their respective schools. The first task was to educate this committee with the concepts of corporal punishment and positive disciplinary strategies. Once familiar with the concepts, they together reviewed and modified the policy developed at IED according to the needs of their school, making it more contextual and needs based. Later, this working committee conducted workshops for their school teachers, students, administration staff, support staff and parents. It has been seen that mostly children are administered corporal punishments by the gatekeeper or support staff etc. Therefore, a workshop was conducted individually for each of these groups so that they could be aware of the effects of the punishments they use on children and at the same time acquaint them with the positive disciplinary strategies. After which the developed policy was further developed and made ready to be implemented in the schools. Some schools have displayed this outside the principals’ office and in each class, while some have only displayed it outside the head teachers’ office so that all are aware of this policy. The purpose of displaying this policy is not only to hang it on the board but also so that the parents and children can freely register their complaints using the different mechanism such as a complaint register and drop box without any fear of the teachers and other authorities.

While in some schools, where the reluctance of the school’s board made it challenging for the trained teacher to implement the policy, the teacher along with a small working committee began the implementation at the classroom level. In this situation, the positive disciplining strategies were shared with the teachers and those teacher’s who consider this issue important to address are using the positive disciplining strategies in their classrooms and have developed a policy for their classroom in collaboration with their students and have come up with monitoring mechanism to eliminate the use of corporal punishment from their classrooms. This attitude of the teacher and students has promoted a child-friendly environment where the teacher-student and student-student relationship has been strengthened. One of the teachers reported; I experience less inappropriate behaviour in my classroom as my students are accountable for their actions. I don’t need to shout or hit them anymore”. Another reported, “My students have become more disciplined in the classroom”.

Challenges

Due to some unavoidable circumstances, the study was delayed. One of the reasons for the delay was that after the training most of the schools were engaged in the examination due to the change in school year in the province of Sindh. Thus, we decided to work with the teachers on a one to one basis to assist them to further train the teachers of their schools and conduct parent sessions as we feel it is important to work as a team to deal with this issue. Therefore, during the months of February, March and April, we supported the teachers to implement the no corporal punishment policy in their schools rather than assisting them in the classroom.

Secondly, the whole process requires at least one whole year to implement as it was time consuming keeping in mind the other office related responsibilities that hinders the implementation of the action plan.

Thirdly, corporal punishment being such a sensitive issue, was not willing accepted by most of the teachers. Some teachers and staff especially the male teachers claimed that they don’t need such training or policy as they don’t use any kind of punishments in their classroom and other mentioned that in the past everyone was disciplined by giving punishments and improved so now why is this being made such a big issue. The use of corporal punishment has always brought about a positive change and children only listen when punished. Thus, we decided to work with individual teachers willing to use positive disciplinary strategies, hoping that they will change once they see the outcomes of this practice.

Successes

The implementation phase of the study resulted to a number of successes.

Firstly, The District Officer- Training and Academic himself promised to support us in this regard and would like to use our strategy to implement it in other schools of Karachi. What could we want more than this!

Secondly, the teachers learned and practiced the positive discipline strategies to provide students a fear free learning environment. Previously they were not aware of these strategies.

Thirdly, the government school administration learned different ways such as report day, assembly gathering, by word of mouth to involve parents in the activities of the school. In most government schools, parent involvement is not a common practice in most government schools, thus through our activity on conducting a training session for parents, not all but a few parents attended the session.

Fourthly, the implementation of the school based no corporal punishment policy to eliminate corporal punishment from their schools. Some of the schools have developed a whole school policy, while others have decided to begin by initiating it at the classroom level. This is also a great achievement.

Way Forward

Reflecting on the achievements of this small scale study provided by the PSU and ITA, we hope not to stop this work here but to further the initiatives by providing timely support to the teachers in their schools for the successful implementation of the policy. We do realize that 4 months are not sufficient to bring about change, thus, to sustain the work we need to continue this work in order to eliminate this issue from our society.

She currently serves as the Special Investigator for Crimes Against Women at the Plymouth State University Police Department. Her role at the university is to investigate crimes that involve members of the campus community with a specific concentration on crimes against women, sexual assault, hazing, harassment, rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence.

Investigator Frank is a member of the Grafton County Juvenile Diversion Board, and adjunct faculty at Plymouth State University and the NH Police Standards & Training Academy. She is the Co-Chair of the New Hampshire Violence Against Women Campus Consortium and an executive board member of the New Hampshire Violence Prevention Team, Plymouth Area Sexual Assault Resource Team and a liaison to the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General for Project Safe Childhood.

Susan W. Scheinman BS, BSN, RN : A nurse working at Speare for over 5 yrs. Prior to Speare 10 yrs experience with Spinal Cord and Brain injured patients at a Rehabilitation Hospital. At Speare working as an RN in the Occupational and Employee Health Department. I live locally and married with 3 children ages 14, 12, 11. Special interests concerning Food Allergies and Autism.

For 110 years, Speare Memorial Hospital has been a cornerstone of community health and wellness, serving residents and visitors to central New Hampshire since 1899. Healthcare has changed a lot over time, but high quality, compassionate care delivered by a cadre of skilled and dedicated doctors and nurses, remains at the heart of Speare Memorial Hospital’s mission.

Our most recent renovation and expansion was designed with you in mind:centralizing services, expanding health and wellness programming and increasing patient privacy-and upgrading to accommodate and respond to advances in medicine and technology. The result is a 21st century, state-of-the-art facility that stands ready to be your resource center for health and wellness across the spectrum of life.