IJWC joins International Human Rights Day

International Junior Writers Club joined the 2020 International Human Rights Day by hosting an international student discussion about using any applicable class lessons to promote human rights and the global goal of reduced inequalities. The activity ran for the whole month of December 2020. Under the mentorship of Art Teacher Whitney Carter, AEC students created a human rights puzzle, used human rights designs in their ceramic project, and discussed the significance of human rights to reduce inequalities. In math, AEC students explored the application of systems of equations to the world's human rights scores. Using Padlet, AEC students discussed, together with students from Asia, ways they could help promote human rights and the global goal of reduced inequalities. Students from Jose Rizal Memorial State University High School Department, Dapitan City, Philippines, under the leadership of Principal Paterno Baguinat III and students from Philippine Science High School, Dipolog City, Philipines, under the mentorship of Special Science Teacher Araibo Elumba participated in the Padlet discussion.

Human Rights Day is observed every 10th of December each year. This year's theme is: "Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights." This year’s celebration relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring human rights are central to recovery efforts. We can reach our common global goals only if we create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion, and discrimination.

Texas, Georgia students collaborate to study world population

Students from Odessa, TX, and Atlanta, GA, collaborated with each other on a week-long project to study the world population. Culminated on November 6, 2020, the project allowed students to analyze the world population data obtained from Our World in Data website using tables, graphs, and equations. Students generated the mathematical model that best described the world population trend. Using Flipgrid, they introduced themselves and interacted with each other. Using Padlet, they discussed the implications of the world population growth and offered recommendations in terms of applicable global sustainable development goals. Some of the global goals students discussed that could be influenced by world population growth were no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, clean water/sanitation, affordable/clean energy, responsible consumption/production, and peace/justice/strong institution. The majority of the students recommended comprehensive and inclusive family planning programs. Some of them suggested government-funded methods of contraception to be available even to those whose cultural or religious beliefs contradicted contraception.

This inter-school activity between students from Texas and Georgia was made possible through the active partnership of AEC with Dr. Roxanne Comegys, a 3DE Math and Go TIP Induction advisor at Banneker High School. This was the first time that AEC tried to network with a school from another state. It gave the students the opportunity not just to collaborate with each other but also to experience the cultural diversity of America.