Young Caucasus Women Begin Blogging

I was invited to be a mentor in the Young Caucasus Women Project, which is just getting underway this week. Basically, high school girls from Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia are here in the US as exchange students. The project aims to get them started blogging, as a way of practicing written English, thinking about a variety of topics, and exercising their voices. Each Sunday, one of the mentor bloggers posts on the YCW blog about a particular topic (I'm not blogging for a few more weeks). Over the next few days, each of the girls responds to the post with her own post on the same topic. The mentors then leave comments in response to their posts.

Anyway, this week's topic is "Who in the world would you really like to send an email/letter? And why?"

Two of the girls have posted their responses already.

Ramzi would write to her (hypothetical) granddaughter in order to find out who she is and what the future is like:

It would be interesting for me, to learn about changes about what is happening in the world. I wonder if there will be chickens then. It is very possible, that some time there won’t be any real chickens left and all the chickens will be made in laboratories. And the bird flu will be prevented a little, when the chickens carry this illness. Will there be ice-creams? Oh, that is very important to me: chicken and ice-creamJ.

Sesili would like to write to world leaders about children around the world who do not have food, water, homes, and medicine:

If you look in their eyes you can see the person who wants to live and have a better future. who need love and support.This people are trying not to lose the hope that they have, so why don’t we help there dreams become true and there hopes get stronger.

I encourage you to visit the site and read and comment on the girls' posts!

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I'm trying to think to whom I would write. Maybe to my students, when they are grown up, my hopes for them? But really, I just want them to write to me and tell me how they are doing! Maybe to US leaders, to let them know that if we are really, truly committed to educating all kids, we have to show that by marshalling all our resources to address poverty, health care needs, and to provide state-of-the-art schools with highly-educated teachers in all communities. Maybe to bright young people at top universities, to encourage them to go into teaching and to give them a realistic view of the profession.

What about you? Who would you write to?