AEC connects Red Ribbon Week celebration with SDGs

Alternative Education Center in Odessa, TX, joined the nation's Red Ribbon Week celebration on October 28-30, 2020 with the theme, "Be Happy. Be Brave. Be Drug-Free." Aside from dressing up for the week's spirit days, AEC students and teachers competed in a poster and essay contest, connecting the Red Ribbon Week celebration with the global sustainable development goals (SDGs). Participants' posters depicted the theme of the celebration and an SDG of choice. Their essays explained how their posters related to the SDG they had chosen. The deliberate connection between the celebration and SDG was one of the school's global education initiatives to help students raise awareness not only of drug-abuse prevention but also of the UN-identified global goals.

Red Ribbon Week is the largest drug-abuse prevention campaign in the nation. With various themes focusing on drug-abuse prevention, the campaign has been celebrated annually since 1985. Youth's challenges might have changed since then, but the campaign's mission remains the same: support families and communities in nurturing the full potential of healthy, drug-free youth. This year's theme, "Be Happy. Be Brave. Be Drug-Free."  helps amplify the campaign's mission, encouraging children, families, and communities to live healthy, happy, and drug-free lives. It also serves as a reminder that we are all empowered to shape our communities through positivity, bravery, and strength.

IJWC joins International Translation Day celebration

Students at the Alternative Education Center in Odessa, TX, joined the International Translation Day celebration on September 30, 2020. Through the leadership of Ms. Sandra Inman, AEC Spanish teacher, students translated the facility's mural that states, "Believe you can" into the language of their choice. They made a poster of their translation using international languages such as Spanish, Bengali, and Filipino, reflecting the diversity of the facility's staff. After creating their posters, students wrote an essay responding to the prompt: Does knowing different languages improve our quality of education? The prompt allowed the students to voice their observations, ideas, and opinions about quality education as one of the global sustainable development goals. Some areas the students explained as benefits of knowing more than one language were work marketability, travel, and studying abroad. One student commented that Spanish is one of the foreign languages that need to be learned because, aside from the fact the many countries speak Spanish, the Latino population in the U.S. and Canada is increasing. All students believed that knowing different languages improve our quality of education; however, they said intelligence and smartness can be any language. 

Multilingualism is a core value of the United Nations. The International Translation Day has been celebrated every September 30 of the year since 2005 to commemorate the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator considered the patron saint of translators. The U.N. annually conducts a global translation contest called U.N. St. Jerome Translation Contest. The contest rewards the best translations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and German and aims to celebrate multilingualism.