Teaching International Relations Program

Dear Katie,

Thank you for participating in TIRP outreach! This folder is for your four session reports. This is a public forum and we encourage your professors and teachers to review your journal entries for feedback. Make sure your report of classroom activity is appropriate for public viewing.

Remember:
1. Each entry must be submitted within a week or before the next session, whichever comes first.
2. Entries need to be at least 500 words. It is your responsibility to save a copy of your report.
3. Your reports should focus on the content of the TIRP session. Spend no more than one paragraph discussing logistics. Include the key IR concepts and specific student responses.
4. Select "Post Reply" not "New Topic" when submitting each entry. This will ensure that all your
reports are posted in a way that will be easy for CALIS staff, professors and teachers to read.


A CALIS staff member will review your entry each week and leave a posted message approving it toward your extra credit. Thank you for your participation in TIRP!
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Report 1 -- APPROVED -- 10/14/2009 -- Scarlett
Thank you for your feedback, have a great next session!

Report 2 -- APPROVED -- 10/22/2009 -- Scarlett
I'm glad to hear it went well and that the special was effective!

Report 3 -- APPROVED -- 10/28/2009 -- Scarlett
Thank you for your feedback, we will look into adding the activity to our database! In order to do this, we will need all of the information from your session, including any worksheets with answers that were passed out to the classes. Thank you again!

Report 4 -- APPROVED -- 11/13/2009 -- Scarlett
It is wonderful that your teacher enjoyed the last session so much that he wanted to apply it to his class after you all left! Thank you for your involvement in TIRP and I hope to see you back in the spring!

The overarching topic for our four sessions is based off of Obama’s speech that explains the new agenda during his first term as president, a speech called “New Beginnings.” Within “New Beginnings” he discusses seven topics that are in the forefront of national and global issues today. The idea is that extremism, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and development are the most significant and pressing issues to focus most of the nations efforts towards. Within our lessons, we are specifically going to discuss nuclear weapons (deterrence vs. disarmament), democracy (how to adjust US foreign policy toward a failing democracy), and development (should national interest be first to helping foreign development). We also added information about how the United States should distribute foreign aid. Overall, we wanted to stress to the students the importance of foreign policy.
For our first lesson we talked about democracy, specifically a failing one, using the role-play simulation “Human Rights and Foreign Policy: Nation of Shenzi.” The point of this exercise was to discover the linkage between a supposed corrupt government with an accused terrorist-like revolting population and how to determine what foreign policy would help alleviate the problems they were having. The point of this activity was for the students to determine whether policies should protect the sovereignty of Shenzi or intervene on the basis of human rights protection. Later, by the end of the lesson, students were able to identity/guess countries in the world today that face this exact problem.
We first introduced ourselves and then moved on to discuss a few vocabulary words that the students might not understand. We defined democracy as “government ruled by the people for the people” and one of the students made the comment of how there are different types of democracy, like the United States is a representative democracy. Another word defined was multilateral which is “the participation of actors in a certain issue” in the context used. We also defined Gross Domestic Product per Capita as “total income of a country per person” and lastly a humanitarian as “a person who seeks to promote human welfare.” We needed to define these words in order for students to really understand what was happening in the simulation (i.e. Shenzi has a low GDP per Capita, a seemingly failed democratic system, different actors in the world and varying types of aid that could be offered).
After discussing the vocabulary and having the students provide some examples they could draw from the vocabulary words, we passed out a handout that objectively described the situation going on in Shenzi. We then broke up the class into 3 groups and discussed the issues at root. Since it is a class of under 15 people, it was really easy to facilitate discussion with all the students in my group. My group looked at the data given and tried to draw parallels to why there was discourse between the government and the opposition. The students were able to connect the numerical facts given on the bottom half of the sheet and draw to the problems the country was having. While waiting for other groups to finish, we connected the problems of Shenzi to real world situations; they found the association between the governments in Africa and Latin America having conflicts with their populace.
Next we broke the entire class up into two groups, one the revolting population and the other the Shenzi government. Myself, Melanie and Kate were the United States and we have them make pleas to the US for aid, and it ended up developing into a debate-like setting between the two groups. There were pleas for mainly military aid and some economic aid from the government, though they didn’t want the economic aid to be specified for anything from the US. On the other side, the accused population wanted more economic aid to help with the resistance, and furthermore, was asking the United States to consider the legitimacy of the government before accepting their plea also. Their debate between each other and renegotiating lasted for about 10 or 15 minutes before we rapped up the simulation by having the whole class come together and review a sheet of US foreign policy options as the United States. There was general consensus to threaten Shenzi by cutting aid and using incentives to prohibit human right abuses. In our last few minutes, we reflected as a group about the apparent difficulties for nations to determine who needs foreign aid and how much, and also the controversy that could come with foreign policy.

For the second session we focused on the issue of farm subsidies, the activity was entitled “American Market Place: Get Rid of U.S. Farm Subsidies.” This issue falls under the development section of President Obama’s “New Beginnings” speech, which is our overarching theme for our TIRP project. We focused on whether it was right that U.S. foreign policy favors national interests over foreign development. Specifically, the effect from subsidies being given to large United States agribusinesses to help lower their costs of production, and thus lower the price that they are able to sell their products for; the students learned that ultimately, these subsidies hurt foreign competitors who do not receive the help needed to compete in the world market.
We first started off with vocabulary that the students may not have understood in our lesson. First we thought it was important to define subsidies. We did this as “money taken from tax payers and given to companies, by the government, to help with their businesses.” We asked students if they knew what kind of companies receive subsidies in the world. With some help they realized that it’s the farm (crops, dairy, meat, etc.) and textile industries that receive a large percentage of government subsidies. Next we defined free trade as “international trade left to run it’s natural course without tariffs or other restrictions.” We also defined protectionism and tariffs. We simplified the former as “a country acting in its self-interest to preserve it’s country’s domestic industries from foreign competitors,” and the latter as “a tax added on to imports.” We briefly discussed how the definitions were connected and very important vocabulary to hold on to for their future studies.
After discussing the vocabulary, the two leaders and I broke up the class into three small groups to read over the case study. In my groups we rotated reading and stopped to discuss anything that was unclear. Before coming back together as a large group, I asked the students I had to identify the main reasons why the author wanted to eliminate government subsidies. They found in line 45 of the case study the answer… which was it would help eliminate global poverty, illegal immigration and budget deficits. I thought it would be good to keep those three themes in mind before we presented a shot excerpt from a PBS show on government subsidies.
We showed the class a PBS special called “A Growing Hunger” which focused on the cotton industry in West Africa and the global consequences of competing against U.S. subsidy receiving businesses. This special directly correlated to the case reading that we had previously done. It provided a visual for the students to further understand the consequences of government subsidies against foreign markets.
After watching the special we drew the four worlds map on the board and helped the students understand it. We wrote the sectors on the board and asked the students how they basically all relate. For example, for the Economic world we asked the students how they got their money… they responded with banks, for political world they said government, for societal world they said media, and for cultural world they said families. After we related the four worlds so they could understand how they all affect each other. Having understood this, we moved onto relating the subsidies problem to the four worlds. They yelled out answers that followed what was written on the guide for the four worlds, so we were under the impression that they understood. Then we asked them to go even further and discuss how they all affected each other. They were able to draw on all the connections, like government gives US farmers subsidies, yet that gives U.S. tax payers higher taxes, and that the media gives us the information to know about these problems and influence the government.
We then ended the lessen asking the students what they thought of government subsidies. Some thought that they should be eliminated, some thought they should stay and others thought they should just be gradually decreased, to still help American farmers but also allow foreign competition a better chance in the global market.

For our third activity, entitled “Nuclear Issues: Deterrence vs. Disarmament,” we did exactly what the title says… discussed the nuclear issues occurring in the world. This theme falls under our overarching theme for our TIRP lessons, President Obama’s “New Beginnings” speech. It was an activity formulated by team member Kate Hubbell, and one that I think should be added to the CALIS Activity Database because it was a highly successful and the students seemed to like it. We asked the students to ultimately think about how US foreign policy changed towards nuclear proliferation and which side they agreed with.
First, the words we defined for our lesson were nuclear proliferation, nuclear deterrence, nuclear disarmament and hegemony. We defined nuclear proliferation as “the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations which are not recognized as Nuclear Weapon States.” We defined nuclear deterrence as “a strategy by which governments threaten an immense retaliation if attacked, such that aggressors are deterred if they do not wish to suffer great damage as a result of an aggressive action.” We defined nuclear disarmament as “both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated.” Lastly, we defined hegemony as “the dominant in political/social power.” These were words that the students would encounter.
We began by asking the students two preparation questions. We asked them if they believe that the vast majority of people would agree with this statement: “No one wants a nuclear war.” They responded with yes. Then we asked why would people agree with such a statement? The students answered with various questions like “for protection” and “because other people have nuclear weapons too.” After a short discussion we then asked “If this is so, why are there arguments over nuclear weapons? Why not eliminate them if no one wants nuclear war?” This question seemed to stump the students after we had asked the first question. They said that there are arguments over nuclear weapons because unstable countries have them, and they said they’re not getting eliminated for security reasons.
After we showed them a five-minute clip of “The Day After” which shows the immediate effects of a nuclear attack. This video was shown to Regan during the Cold War, and he immediately met with Russian leaders to help relieve nuclear tensions between US and Russia. We then passed out worksheets that had eight statements and the students had to decide whether is exemplified disarmament and deterrence. They could figure out most of the statements but a few gave them problems. We decided, as a class, that actions speak louder than words could be disarmament and deterrence, and we had students give reasons for why they thought it was both of these. The other part of the worksheet had parts of president’s speeches and the students had to determine who said it (from the word bank) and which policy it was promoting. They did well at determining the policy, and some could figure out whom the presidents were on their own. With our help, everyone seemed to complete the worksheet and earned a better perspective of the difference between disarmament and deterrence. Next, we read, as a class, a news article about North Korea dismantling their weapons. This showed students more about foreign policy involving disarmament. At this point the students had a lot to contribute to the discussion about the article. They recognized why North Korea refuses to disarm and why the United States is encouraging they do.
This lesson was very successful and, by the end of hour, the students were well acquainted with the issues of nuclear weapons.

For our last lesson we taught about foreign aid, and chose a lesson that is aligned with President Obama’s “New Beginning’s” speech. We began our lesson by bringing donuts and discussing with the students about any lingering college questions they had. This went better then the first time we asked them, I think because they felt more comfortable around us by the forth week.
We told the students that they are dealing with developing nations that are in need of foreign assistance to stimulate their economies. We also told them that countries with already developed countries were responsible for donating funds and resources to the countries in need. The ultimate responsibility of the students was to decide how much each country was allowed.
We defined the words socialist, capitalist, and non-aligned states. We first asked students to try to define the words, and they were able to get in the ballpark for each world. We further defined the words as follows: we defined socialists as an economic system based on state ownership of capital. We defined capitalism as an economic system based on private ownership. We defined non-aligned states basically states that were not allies.
Next, we passed out copies of “US Foreign Aid, 2004” and allowed the students to dissect the facts. We asked the students who, from the sheet, they could tell received the most and the least about of US funding. The students noticed the Western Europe received the most amount of funding and deduced it was because they are mostly very developed countries. Furthermore, they noticed that the Middle East and North Africa received the most because they’re a place of consistent conflict, are developing nations, and ran unstable governments.
We then separated the class into small groups and had them represent countries 1-4. They then read the handout Dilemmas and Decisions, which described their countries and how much aid they needed. The catch was that each countries needs exceeded the total amount that was set aside to loan out. We then had the students tell us how much money they wanted and for what reasons. After they each told us their amount of aid requested, they noticed that some countries literally took all the money that was allocated for aid for everyone. It was then up to them to debate on behalf of their countries for the amount of aid that they needed. Students brought up good points… like competitive exporters with the US might not receive as much as a country that needs the money to stimulate their weak economy. They really showcased what they had learned over the past four weeks in their arguments.
After, we all came together as a class and decided on final amount for each country. Using an objective view they were able to decide on final amounts. The teacher really liked this activity and told us that he wanted to continue it next lesson because it really encompassed what he was trying to teach his students in his AP Government class!