Happy 90th Birthday to Summerhill

Thursday I ran a morning at Tower Hamlets town hall with four local primary schools. Their school councillors and support teachers came to learn about restorative justice and children's courts through the life and work of the Polish Jewish hero Janus Korczak and his democratic orphanage, and Summerhill School and its democratic meetings. They saw a video clip of the CBBC drama, showing a meeting case about a boy accused of stealing £20 and then they held a role play meeting about a child using someones bike without permission. The morning ended with everyone singing happy birthday to Summerhill, in celebration of its 90th birthday, and the children sharing Fairtrade chocolate.

http://www.eastendtalking.org.uk/

News from Tower Hamlets

Last week was Local Democracy Week, a busy one for people engaged in working with young people on active global citizenship. I organised an event at Tower Hamlets Town Hall which was over-booked. We had 14 primary schools and 72 school councillors. As part of Black History Week they researched Barack Obama as an active citizen through 10 extracts from his speeches that reference his life and family background. The children created short presentations of what they found. They then interviewed Gimbala, from the American Embassy about his work and about Barack Obama. It ended with the Mayor of Tower Hamlets giving a speech and welcoming the children to his parlour.

I also helped Tower Hamlets Secondary Schools create their first Charter... as part of an event organised by the Young Mayor's of Tower Hamlets! That was last Friday.

And today I gave a short presentation of my work with a local primary school using the history and archives of the fantastic community center, Kingsley Hall...