Teaching International Relations Program

Dear Pinghon,

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 -- 10/29/2009 -- Scarlett
Thank you for your feedback, I'm glad to hear that everything went well. Please post your reports at latest by midnight the day before you go out. This gives me time to read it and possibly give you some helpful feedback, which is one of the points of writing these reports. I will approve Sessions 1 and 2 this time, but if you turn it in again the morning before you next session, I will mark you late. Also, turning in your reports early gives you time to really focus on what you're writing and causes you to make less careless errors.


Report 2 -- APPROVED -- 10/29/2009 -- Scarlett
I'm sorry to hear that there was a ring brochure that distracted the class, but I'm sure their attention span will be better for the next session! Again, try to turn this in earlier so that careless typing errors aren't made and I can comment before you go out for the next session.


Report 3 -- APPROVED -- 11/09/2009 -- Scarlett
I am glad to hear that this session was a lot more successful for your team. Thank you for turning this in on time!


Report 4 -- APPROVED -- 11/18/2009 -- Scarlett
Thank you for your participation in TIRP!

#1
Since we are teaching about human rights and ethics in this session, we want the students to be able to understand the basic things about human rights and ethics. We think that the most important thing to get the students started with the human rights and ethics is to use a simple and yet informative game – Human Rights Squares. This is a game decided to let the students think of their daily aspects of lives and be able to connect them with the different concepts of human rights. The objective of this game is to assess students’ level of knowledge and understanding the concept of human rights; the recognize human rights are a global concern; and to related human rights issues to students’ own lives. We distribute the human rights square handouts to each of the students and let them walk around the classroom and talk to each other and try to fill out the squares as many as possible. After they seemed to fill out a best as they could, we pick out a few squares to discuss to the entire class. We picked “a human right,” “most serious human rights violation,” and “rights violation that personally concerns you.” Most of the students’ responds were from the constitution, such as the freedom of speech, and freedom of press. But they were still able to draw on some of their own personal live experiences. One student said that it is very important to have the right to protest and free press. And I also think these are essential in a free society because these will enhance and promote a better social structural.
The other thing we did in during the first session was a case study “A Victim Treats His mugger Right.” We choose this story because this deal with the ethical dilemma faced by the mugger and this story can trigger many thoughtful discussions among the students. We divided the students into three groups and then each of us led a discussion group. We talked about the implications of the story such as the age of the “young teenager.” This sprung some discussion within the students in which they really questioned about how old was the kid because they think that if the mugger were very experienced (been living on his own for many years), he might not accept the invitation by the social worker. And if the mugger was only around 13 or 14, shouldn’t he be staying with his parents. And this ties in with the coming discussion section, leading to a bigger picture of the issue. The question we discussed was sort of the continuation of the above one, who is responsible for helping the teenager? I used the four worlds to begin the discussion and tried to gather their thoughts. Although the discussion in this part was not very active, some students did give some thoughtful comments about the mugger. They said that the mugger, whatever the age he was, should take care of himself, and should not be stealing stuff.
Overall, maybe the students in this session were not familiar with our system thus they were less active. But I think this session was great in general.

#2
The second session went successfully, although some students were distracted by the senior ring Boucher which made us harder to get their attention to out topic. This time we also prepared two activities for the students. The first one was the NPR article, “Daniel Pink discusses American IT jobs being sent overseas,” which connects outsourcing and ethics and the other one was “Death By Transfer,” which also connects ethics and business practices. Outsourcing was a heat topic a couple years ago but not so much nowadays. The idea of outsourcing is still an important ethical concept for them to understand. To understand what’s good and what damage it will bring to the society. In this session, we try to bring their ideas of human rights and ethic a step forward. Not only in terms of their daily lives but also see ethic in a different way. Our activities were to present them ethical dilemma in a more realistic way. These activities required the students to see business and ethical dilemma and get them to think about what is ethical or unethical. We began the session by introducing the NPR case. And we separated the students into three groups and each of us led a discussion group. Some students responded that outsourcing will take away the jobs from the U.S. which is not fair for the citizen of the country. Also one student brought up the idea that these companies who take advantage of outsourcing can make more money. Then maybe allow the company to rehire some more local people. These responses were quite in-depth and I think they generally understand the pros and cons of outsourcing.
The second activity was the “Death By Transfer.” This is a scenario and role play activity. In an imaginary town, the industry couldn’t compete in the globalizing world for cheap labor costs. Thus undergoing economic depression. This time we separated them into five groups. The student will represent one of the five categories of members of the town. And each of the group has to make different decisions base on their collective values. Some of the student responses were intrigue. The group who represented one of the employee to be laid off. They decided they wanted to remind in that town and keep looking for job opportunities. Because they realized that the moving costs could be high and by moving to another town does not guarantee the chance of finding a new job. For the group who represented the member of the firms administrative staff. They said the best option for the situation is to move the entire family to a new environment. But maybe not as far as Taiwan. Since with the experience and education level, it is not a big problem for them to get a new job in another town. Their comments were split into half. Some of them will remain stay because of moving costs. And the other half would like to take on a different venue, moving to other places for a better opportunity.
Next week, we plan to study the case of China’s one child policy. A very controversial case about abortion on an eight month fetus.

#3
Third session went alone much smoother than last one. Students were much engaged in the discussion. In this session, we used “Trying to Reach Oz – A woman’s Abortion Under China’s One-Child Policy and Her Plight to Immigrate to Australia,” nad the Three Functions of Government. This session we decided to talk about a highly controversial case about China’s one child policy because such policy has a lot of controversies in the international society. This could really help the student to think about the ethical dilemma; were they Australia doing the right thing to deport the poor Chinese woman who wished to have her second baby; should the Chinese government be so strict following its policy even the fetus was already eight months old. We picked this case because first, such case was rarely heard in the international society, killing an eight months old fetus? This would never occur in the U.S or other developed countries. Second, this highly debatable case will draw the attentions from the students. This case really gets the students attention and they were engage in the discussion/debate. That made us very glad because they participate more enthusiastically compared to the past weeks.
In order to let the students understand the dynamic of the one child policy in China, we introduce the three functions of government very first. This activity will teach the students what government suppose to do and how it help the citizen surviving in a society. This prepared the students the idea of what to expect from government and it closely linked to the one child policy case. The students are quite involved in this discussion. They give us lots examples of government organizations. For instant, they mention about CIA and FBI. They said that these were important agencies to protect the daily lives of people. Also, in a smaller group discussion, we tried to lead the students’ thinking more about how one child policy is good or bad for China. Some students said that one child policy should never be in place because it takes away the basic human right. And looking specifically in this case, some students argued that Chinese government should give special permission to Zhu and not give an eight month abortion because it violated human right again. And some students said that the Australia government should not deport the Ms Zhu because Australia government knew that China will not allow the birth of second child and still, Australian government give not mercy to the poor woman. Some of them used the three functions of government charter we introduced earlier to identify the underlying reasons for China to implement such policy. They said because China is already overpopulated, if government doesn’t do something to restrain the population growth, she will encounter the problem of resources distribution.
Overall, we were very happy the students finally get to participate more and talked about the issues we brought up. I think this time the topic choice really caught the attentions from them. And we were felt very happy about that.

#4
The last session went on quite well. We did a stimulation of Nation of Shenzi to round up everything that we have taught in the past weeks. And also use the Egypt and Cuba profile to extend their knowledge about ethics. Our objective for this session was to let the student to understand the choices between ethics and human rights and what has to be given up in order to gain something back. This is a case study about an imaginary place called Shenzi, which the US provides aids to and has diplomatic and trade relations. And students have to identify the situation in this place and then apply what kind of strategy the US would take under the devastating circumstances in Shenzi where human rights are violated, ruled by small numbers of rich elites, and majority of the citizens are poor and uneducated. The profile also provided some economic and human data about this nation. But first, we introduced some terms such as carrots, sticks and sermons. These terms that imply the types of policies that the US would implement. After that, we gave the students about ten minutes to read through the profile and then we give them some time to pick what kind of strategies they would use on the nation of Shenzi. While they were reading the case, we walked around the help to solve their questions. Interestingly, most students really knew what they wanted to do with Shenzi and with firm conviction. Their questions for us were mostly about how to identify their policy as a carrot, stick, or sermon. Each of the students gets a chance to identify their own preferences to use on Shenzi. We put carrots, sticks and sermons on the board and to count which type of policy they mostly prefer. We then also asked each student to explain why they made such decision. Some students were pursuing a punishment approach to Shenzi. Their policies were mostly based on threaten or reduce aid and opportunities. However, none of the students in the class apply all “stick” policies towards Shenzi. In this sense, I think they really understand the ethical dilemma and be able to apply their thinking into a stimulation case. They know that they couldn’t apply all stick policies because that may cause irreversible effect for the people in that country. After collecting the numbers of carrots, sticks, and sermon, we discovered that the most favor type of policy is carrot. Most of them would not impose threatening policies to Shenzi because they think these policies would be too harsh and would lead to a much worse effects. After we wrapped up the stimulation about Shenzi then we divided the class into two groups. One represented the Egypt the other being Cuba. This case study was to let the students acknowledge the real life situation of what the types of policies did US apply to these two countries. Again, we let them read through the case in a couple of minutes and get them talking about their country respectively. They realized that there is no perfect policy toward every country in the world. And if one country really hated the other, it could take extreme measurements against the other. But I guess the height of this session came at the end when we distribute cup cakes and brownies and opened to their college questions.
Overall, this class is great and the students are eager to learn.