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People On The Move - Kevin LeMastra
03/04/2010 - By Chad A. Safran
TEACHER OF GLOBAL ISSUES
Kevin LaMastra has been an award-winning teacher in the Linden Public School system for 16 years. During his time teaching seventh- and eighth-grade French, as well as English as a Second Language (ESL), he has moved beyond text books to develop his students’ language skills.
“For a lot of French teachers, French culture is teaching the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre,” says Kevin, who has lived in Holmdel for the past 10 years. “I wanted to do something more to help the students get a little deeper understanding of history and social justice.”
After reading a story about a sugar cane worker in Martinique of similar age to themselves, Kevin’s students wanted to know if there were still kids who lived the same way today - without many basic necessities such as running water. And Kevin wanted his students to learn about migrant workers as well. Some research led him to the Dominican Republic, where Haitian immigrants were crossing the border to find work. He found some contacts in the Dominican Republic and, with the students, created a project to deliver school and medical supplies to the country. Kevin eventually found a volunteer education program that was in a batey (an impoverished community where sugar workers live) before delivering the donations on his own.
But the project was not just limited to the donations. With the help from an NJEA Hipp Grant, Kevin went further. He took his students to the United Nations, where they participated in global citizenship training activities. One student even presented on the floor of the United Nations during a student human rights conference. Kevin also began a summer reading project in which the students read books from the Dominican Republic and on sugar cane cutting. He blogged with his students about the books and shared his experiences while he was spending time in the Caribbean.
“It provided a lot of opportunities for the students,” says Kevin. “I brought in a group called Global Kids and they are very good about making global issues and human rights interesting to students.”
However, what started out as a classroom project has evolved into something bigger. Kevin is also a professional development coach for his school system. He used these experiences to develop a whole curriculum to educate other teachers around the theme of extreme poverty and all the global development issues associated with it. In 2007, this eventually led Kevin to become the founder of Friends Beyond Borders, a non-profit project created to provide educational experiences that will improve the understanding of extreme poverty around the world.
For the past three summers, Kevin has led educators of all levels, including several university teacher-educators, from around the United States on a week-long “social justice tour,” providing them the opportunity to immerse themselves in the reality of living in a developing world country. Each evening on the tour the teachers meet to discuss the day’s events and share ideas, and in turn when they return home they can incorporate or improve global education initiatives in their schools.
“For the teachers who travel with me, it’s like we are in the Peace Corps,” says Kevin. “We’re in the fields with migrant workers, community activists. We’re with people who live on $2 a day. We take the teachers to free trade zones where the workers make 60 cents per hour sewing clothes. They come away with a better understanding of the different issues. It never would have happened without the interest from the students.”
The fourth delegation of Friends Beyond Borders “Teachers’ Social Justice Tour” to the Dominican Republic will take place this August 8-16. The trip is open to teachers as well as community members with an interest in human rights issues. Additionally, for the second year, there will be a “Youth Leadership and Global Education” tour taking place in July. This is a trip designed to mix social site visits with adventure excursions and hands on service learning, with the idea of inspiring youth participants to become agents of change. For more information, you can visit the project website: www.friendsbeyondborders.net.
STATS
FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
Negril, New York City
FAVORITE MUSIC
Eclectic...old school reggae, punk and hip-hop
FAVORITE MOVIE
Sugar Cane Alley
PET PEEVES
Waste and greed
THREE PEOPLE YOU’D LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH
John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Howard Zinn
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