Transcript

ELLIS

Welcome to Session 6, the last part of this course. And what a journey you’ve been on! You’ve delved into what peace means to you and others, explored the layers of peace and lots of activities and approaches that help learning for peace.

This session is about you. It’s a chance to reflect on your role as a peace educator and where you are heading.

You might want to reflect on what excited or scared you from this course? What aspect of peace do you want to focus on? What are you confident about? What do you still want to learn more about? What support do you need?

Lots of these questions don’t have one answer, you’ll probably need to keep returning to them. And as peace educators we need to keep educating ourselves about peace, as well as trying to create the conditions for learning about it.

You’ll look at these questions in a few ways. One is through the peace competences you’ve been looking at along the way. Which ones would you prioritise and why? Which ones do you think the world – and the people you work with, would get the most from?

You will also think about resources that will help you address your priorities.

You need to think about these questions in the context of your community. We all work in a context- perhaps you’re a schoolteacher, a home educator, a campaigner or a youth worker. Perhaps you will feel like a radical change agent in your community, or perhaps everyone is already focused on peace education. Either way, some of this might be challenging!

Another way to reflect on your peace education is to draw on the frameworks recommended by United Nations and agencies such as UNICEF and UNESCO.

Tony Jenkins from the Global Campaign for Peace Education, says peace educators often go through three stages: first epiphany, when you have the thrill of learning and sharing new ways of learning. Second you can feel overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility that peace education needs to fix the world, which can lead to anxiety. Third, as you develop your practice, you can move from separateness to interconnection, developing a cosmopolitan ethic where you are ready to take your next learning step, big or small, as a peace educator. Where are you on that journey of co-creating peace education with your learners? Where do you want to be?