Paul Salopek from the Out of Eden Walk joined 4th graders at the American International School of Lusaka (AISL) last Thursday for a Q & A about this journey, slow journalism and explorers. The students had just completed a unit on explorers where they compared explorers from history to modern-day. Paul’s walk has inspired me since he started in 2013 in Ethiopia.
We did a Google Meet from Myanmar (Burma) where he currently is staying, as he prepares to enter China in the new year. There were so many nuggets of information and words of wisdom from our thirty minute session with him. One key take-away for students is the understanding that explorers do not have to travel long distances to learn about other places. They can learn more about their neighborhood and city through slow walks and close observation…opening their senses.
I am very appreciative of Paul for taking the time to talk with our students. The Out of Eden Learn project and his walk remain something that I am passionate about as they have brightened my days. Follow the Out of Eden Walk and join Out of Eden Learn, if you are an educator. Photos by Tony Potts and Rob Martin.
Paul Salopek (Out of Eden Walk) and other presenters will be talking about the concept of home with a focus on Chicago. This webinar will be on May 26 at 3:00pm (Central Time – US/Canada). Sign up using thislink. This talk makes me think about one of my favorite Ted Talks by Pico Iyer, “Where is home?” If you are a long term expatriate (expat) or Third Child Kid (TCK), you will really enjoy this talk. Here is a link to the Ted Talk.
“The Out of Eden Walk is not one person’s journey. It is a unifying voyage that belongs to humanity.” – Out of Eden Walk Coalition (LINK).
Watch Paul’s newest video which gives an excellent overview of his journey and it’s many connections. If you enjoy storytelling, travel, and photography, as well as topics that focus on global connections, the environment, mass migration, climate change, and people to people connections, then you will find Paul’s journey amazing. In a time when news seems worse then ever, check out Paul’s journey and join his coalition of followers through his blog, National Geographic articles, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feed. I have enjoyed doing the Out of Eden Learn project with students in Chennai and Lusaka.
A new eco-friendly industry is taking root in Assam. With India joining a global environmental movement to restrict single-use plastics, and with Indian restaurants increasingly purging their inventories of plastic straws—the villain of disposable, plastic trash that is washing, at a rate of some eight million tons a year, into the world’s rivers and oceans—the search is on for less polluting alternatives. Enter wild bamboo: The versatile grass that grows abundantly across much of the country and is both organic and sustainable. Click HERE to read Paul Salopek’s latest story, Straw Man.
Image source: GuommyBear@23Image source: GuommyBear@23Image source: Rob MartinImage source: SourPatch9876Image source: Bumble_Bee_1420Image source: m_n_m71Image source: Swedish-IKEA12Image source: @purple_endermanImage source: A_Random_PersonImage source: NoobM@ster69Image source: SunspotLF1Image source: Rob Martin
Year two for the Out of Eden Walk at the American International School of Lusaka (Zambia) produced some nice photos. Here are some that resonated with me, along with two photos I took. For many students, walking around their neighborhood is not something they are accustomed to. These students are grade 6 students in a Middle Years Programme (MYP) in Alta Conte’s classroom. I provided support and gave students tips on how to take a good photo. I also showed them exemplars from my former students at the American International School Chennai (India). The instructions from Out of Eden Learn for this footstep (activity) are below:
As you walk in your neighborhood or local area, take photos of things that catch your attention. What do you see, feel, hear, taste, or smell? Try to look at the place and the people who live or work there with fresh eyes. Here are some ideas for different kinds of photos you can take:
Photos that capture a whole neighborhood scene, and photos that zoom in on a detail you find interesting.
Photos where you’re pointing the camera up and photos where you’re pointing the camera towards the ground.
Photos of things that are common or familiar in your neighborhood, and photos of things that might be unexpected or surprising.
“Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is inching into the seventh year of a 24,000-mile walk across the globe that is retracing the pathways of our species’ Stone Age journey out of Africa to South America. Along the way, through a steady stream of multi-media reportage, professional media workshops, classroom interactions, and one-on-one mentoring, Paul and our small team of educators are building an enduring community of fellow storytellers of all ages, who will carry on the project’s philosophy of slowing down to tell complex stories of our time by delving beneath the usual shallow headlines, and sharing the human experience with wonder and empathy.”
Support Paul’s journey through a donation. If you enjoyed Out of Eden Learn, continue to follow Paul’s walk across the world. Please see this LINK for how you can support the Out of Eden Walk.
An excerpt from the latest Out of Eden story. Click HEREto read the article and to see the photos. Paul’s story made me think about my own trip to Varanasi last spring, one of my final trips in India. I was a bit nervous about going and thought it might be overwhelming. I am so glad I went. It is such a historic city, full of life and death I would regret it if I had not gone, especially in light of the changes going on there now. Floating on the Ganges River as the sun rose was an image and feeling I will never forget. These are some of my photos that I took on that trip.
“India’s holiest city, the Jerusalem of Hinduism, was clouded in dust—in powdered brick, in powdered mortar. A worker army pummeled the walls of the Lahori Tula neighborhood with sledgehammers and crowbars, leveling its twisted maze of alleys and lopsided buildings. One of the city’s most timeworn districts lay bombed out amid heaps of rubble. At night, spectral trains of mules and horses saddled with baskets carted away ton after ton of debris.”
Out of Eden Learn, Learning Journey 2 – Connecting Our Own Lives to the Past
BRAINSTORM. Make a list of the ways in which you think our human past or history is connected to who you are and the life you are living or expect to live. You can include events, individuals or groups of people, trends, developments, places that you’ve visited or lived, and/or themes that extend over a few or many years. You do not need to turn in this list.
DIAGRAM. Now use this list to help you to draw a diagram or picture to explain how our human past or history is connected to who you are and the life you are living or expect to live. Organize your diagram in any way you want. If you like, you can use lines or arrows to show connections or influences among the different parts of your diagram. You can draw your diagram by hand and then photograph or scan it, or you can draw the diagram electronically in any application you like. Remember not to include your real name in the diagram.
“India is a culture of selfies. The men mugged for the camera. My filming only drew more. Until I started filming their feet. This act crossed some unknown boundary of delicacy. The crowd did not like their feet filmed. It made them anxious. And in this way, one by one, the onlookers drifted away.” Click on thisLINKto see photos, video and an interview by Paul Salopek for Milestone 62 in India.
With forced displacement reaching historic levels, schools all over the world are welcoming increasing numbers of refugee children. Teachers are facing new challenges in making sense of forced displacement and its complexities. With refugees and migrants regularly making headlines in the media and the internet bustling with information on the topic, explaining the situation of refugees and migrants to primary and secondary school children has become part of many educators’ daily work.
In this UNHCR Teachers’ Toolkit, you can find free-of-charge and adaptable UNHCR teaching materials on refugees, asylum, migration, and statelessness, and a section dedicated to professional development and guidance for primary and secondary school teachers on including refugee children in their classes.
“Paul Salopek’s project encourages young children and journalism students to walk around their neighborhood and be storytellers themselves instead of just having conversations on various topics on the internet.” – Roshni Chakrabarty
HERE (LINK) is a great article from India Today Education on Paul’s walk and the work of students around the world in Out of Eden Learn. I was pleased to see a recent Tweet of mine from Lusaka, Zambia showing students doing a See – Think – Wonder Visible Thinking Routine while looking at photos taken by former students from Chennai, India.
Here are a few photos from Lusaka, Zambia taken by sixth-grade students in Ms. Conte’s students. I was very pleased with the final products and enjoyed collaborating with her class and sharing exemplars from student work in Chennai, India.
Directions: Plan to take a walk in your neighborhood or local area. It may include places on your sketch map. You can walk by yourself or with a classmate, friend, or family member. As you walk in your neighborhood or local area, take photos of things that catch your attention. What do you see, feel, hear, taste, or smell? Try to look at the place and the people who live or work there with fresh eyes. Here are some ideas for different kinds of photos you can take:
Photos that capture a whole neighborhood scene, and photos that zoom in on a detail you find interesting.
Photos where you’re pointing the camera up and photos where you’re pointing the camera towards the ground.
Photos of things that are common or familiar in your neighborhood, and photos of things that might be unexpected or surprising.
Sixth-grade students in Alta Conte’s I & S class at the American International School of Lusaka do a See – Think – Wonder using exemplars from my previous school, the American International School Chennai, as they prepare to take walks and photos in their neighborhood.
Explorer Paul Salopek is a writer and journalist. He is currently walking across the world for a decade-long storytelling project called the Out of Eden Walk. Paul has earned most of America’s top print media awards, including Pulitzers for his reporting on human genetics and the civil war in Congo. Join him from Kolkata, India 5 years into his walk around the world!
There will be a LIVE Question and Answer session with Paul Salopek from Kolkata, India at 12:00pm Eastern Time (Google the time in your country) on Friday, November 16th. Here is the LINKto watch it live (you can ask questions in the sidebar) or to watch it later.
Greetings from Lusaka, Zambia! I am writing to you, on behalf of Paul Salopek, to request your support for his Out of Eden Walk journey. Paul has one week left of a Kickstarter campaign (CLICK LINK) to raise money to continue his journey through India. So, far, he has raised 95% of the $50,000 U.S. dollars he is trying to raise. For four years, you followed his journey via Out of Eden Learn and some of you were fortunate to connect with him via a Google Hangout. Please consider a donation to support his walk. Watch the video on the link and see how you can donate.
“So far, Paul has covered 700 of 1,800 miles across India. Along this stretch of the trail, Paul and his local walking partners are exploring the mounting effects of dramatic environmental change, including climate woes, rapid urbanization, growing communal tensions in the world’s largest democracy, and the tenuous endurance of South Asia’s many varied cultures.”
I am really happy that Paul was able to visit AISC in September and to talk to you. Thank you for your support. I miss you and wish you well. I’d love to hear how you are doing, so please stay in touch. Please comment and tell me how you are doing, or email me at: martin.robert.lee@gmail.com
Check out this great story by the CBC on Paul Salopek. He was interviewed while he was in Chennai last month. Listen to the audio version on the way home or to school. An excerpt:
As a long-time foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, Salopek has spent a lot of his life on the road. He says everyone he loves knows this is a part of who he is.
“It might seem crazy to some people that I could maintain family relationships, even deep friendships when I’m inching across the world for five years. But this is not a departure for me. I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Salopek told Tremonti.
He attributes his start as a global nomad to a life-changing move over the border from Southern California to a small village in Mexico.
“[It] taught me that … I may never be truly at home anywhere, I’ll feel at home everywhere to some degree, and that home is where my boots are,” he said.
It was the first rain of the season. It came with fistfuls of blown dust, and it barely wet the sand. Paul Salopek encounters the first monsoon in northern India at Milestone 58.
Photos from our last week of school: Reflecting on our learning, sharing work from our final project and our last Out of Eden Learn footstep, and saying goodbye.
Doyeon’s Out of Eden product was featured on Out of Eden Learn’s social media channels this week. Congratulations!
It has been a memorable year! Stay in touch with me! Good luck next year in 7th grade! You can reach me at my new school address in Lusaka, Zambia: rmartin@aislusaka.org
For our last activity of the school year in 6th grade Social Studies, we returned to Out of Eden Learn and to Learning Journey #1 (Documenting the Everyday). Here are the directions below and a few examples of videos made. More products will be added soon:
There are aspects of our everyday life that might be very interesting to other people but which might seem very “normal” to us. There may also be parts of our everyday lives that we usually don’t find time to notice. This is your chance to notice some new things and to share your observations with other people. Choose to focus on one of the following:
PLACE: Document everyday life in a place that you know.
PROCESS: Document how people in your community do something as part of their everyday lives. For example, you could focus on how a type of food or drink is prepared, how an object is made or repaired, or how someone goes about another kind of daily task or activity.
Milestone 55 features Paul’s interview with the first person he meets when he arrives at milestone 55 in India, near Amritsar. You can read this story on this LINK.
An excerpt:
I met my new walking partner, the Indian nature photographer Arati Kumar Rao, at the militarized India-Pakistan border, and we walked almost 15 miles along the Grand Trunk Road to Amritsar. Amritsar is the spiritual capital of the Sikhs. Arati marched without complaint through her blisters on the boiling tarmac. When I offered to carry her pack, she nearly karate-chopped me in the neck.
The Art of an Interview (photo by Rob Martin)
Paul always takes photos of his feet at every milestone (100 miles). This was a milestone moment for Mr. Martin meeting Paul. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Paul and Don Belt conferencing with Delhi-based journalists about the stories they were writing for the workshop. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Paul Salopek and me outside Karim’s Hotel and Restaurant in Old Delhi. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Paul, Don and me at Karim’s. (Photo by Prem Panicker)
Mr. Martin’s Out of Eden Walk in Old Delhi. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Mr. Martin’s Out of Eden Walk in Old Delhi. (Photo by Rob Martin)Mr. Martin’s Out of Eden Walk in Old Delhi. (Photo by Rob Martin)Mr. Martin’s Out of Eden Walk in Old Delhi. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Old Dehi (Photo by Rob Martin)
Jama Masjid Mosque (Photo by Rob Martin)
A poster for the National Geographic workshop on Slow Journalism. (Photo by Rob Martin)
Karan’s photo for our Out of Eden Learn Planetary Health club was featured today on Out of Eden’s social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. With thousands of students in OOEL, it’s quite something to have your work featured. This is the information that Karan wrote about this particular photo:
During my neighborhood walk in Chennai, India, I saw a Coconut seller. Coconut water is really refreshing and is great to drink on hot days. As the Coconut grows, some of the Coconut water stays as Coconut water, but the other half of the Coconut water turns into a white type of pulp that is called Coconut meat. 94% of Coconut water is water which means it provides a lot of water which helps dehydration. However Coconut milk is a whole other thing . Coconut milk is made by adding water to the cut coconut meat. Usually, Coconut milk contains about 50% water. A Coconut takes about 10-12 months to fully grow. Coconut water comes from young Coconuts about 6-7 months old. Coconut water is very healthy and contains many nutrients.
Ask Karan to show you his other photos. They were really nice! Congratulations.
This week wraps up our work on Out of Eden Learn, Footstep #3 (Learning from Past Generations). If you did not post your story and photos to the Out of Eden Learn platform, please do it by Sunday. Mr. Nick and I really enjoyed seeing the primary source objects you interviewed someone about for this activity. I was also delighted to hear from many of you that you had learned new things about your family history and that, for some of you, you had never heard the story or history of this object. In the process of doing this activity, we also hope you improved your interviewing, note-taking, and writing skills, as well as learned more about the the job of historians. Great work! We will have an opportunity next class to see each other’s work before starting the last unit of the school year. I think this was my favorite Out of Eden footstep project. Here are a few photos of the types of objects we saw.
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style."
- Maya Angelou
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