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The I Can’t Funeral Amanda ended her first day of school with an “I Can’t Funeral.” “This is a stolen treasure that has worked wonders for my class.  During my years of college I had to bring in a classroom method that I wanted to use in my class.  While browsing the Internet I came upon a true jewel,” she said. The I Can’t Funeral started with every student thinking of one thing they either did not feel successful in last year, or that often made them think, “I can’t do that.”  They each wrote their “I Can’t” on an index card.  Then, while playing very sad music, they placed the card in a “funeral box” and said their farewells to their “I Can’ts.”  They buried the “I Can’t” funeral box in Amanda’s car trunk. Amanda informed her students they were burying the words “I Can’t,” and wouldn’t be seeing them again.  They would dig up the funeral box at the end of the school year and celebrate how they had conquered their “I Can’ts.” Amanda said, “The students really enjoyed this, and I assured them each thing they couldn’t do or felt unsure about would be mastered during the school year.  It was an awesome day.” In January Amanda sent a note saying, “My students often ask when we are going to resurrect our ‘I Can’ts!’ . . . I often hear students saying they just conquered their ‘I can’t’ and we high five.” 

El Sistema’s aim is to address a depressingly universal problem: how to remove children from poverty’s snares, like drugs, crime, gangs and desperation. The method, imagined by El Sistema’s founder, the economist and trained musician José Antonio Abreu, was classical music. Orchestras and music training centers around the country were established to occupy young people with music study and to instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth.

Four times a year, 80 children from a remote village in the Pamir mountains set off on a school run that would make most parents blanch, scaling 1000ft-high cliffs and fording swollen rivers to get to class.

"There is only one way to get to the village, and you have to climb up in the mountains," said Su Qin, the head teacher at Taxkorgan Town boarding school, where the children study. "The village is completely cut off. The roads only take you further away," she added.

The most dangerous part of the route is a path, which narrows to just a few inches wide, that has been cut into a cliff face some 1,000ft above the valley beneath. Without safety harnesses, the teachers gingerly shepherd their charges along.

The emphasis on empathy here and in schools nationwide is the latest front in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence.

In Seattle, seven public elementary schools are using a Canadian-based program, Roots of Empathy, in which a mother and her baby go into the classroom to explore questions like “What makes you cry?”

some schools are focusing more on empathy, with lessons about the Holocaust, role-playing and a “values jingle” sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

Ms. Fanilievna added that Kyrgyzstan’s schools are planning to include peace and tolerance education in response to the recent strife. The first month of school will be dedicated to Peace and Reconciliation, and UNICEF has cooperated with The Ministry of Education to finalize the peace-building lessons which will be integrated in the regular curriculum.

As the head teacher speaks, several female principals from other Osh schools come to the distribution point at Lomonosov to pick up their School-in-a-Box kits – bundles of basic education supplies designed for up to 80 students in an emergency setting – which were delivered by UNICEF to some 277 schools in Osh and Jalal Abad provinces.

“All the rest of my life depends on my education, and you find your best friends at school,” she said. “Schools also have a great peace-building potential as they are uniting students from different backgrounds.“For instance, at Lomonosov School we have 14 ethnicities,” Nazbiyke added. “We communicate and stay friends. Our hope is that this, in turn, will influence our parents and the community.”Nazbiyke knows that her parents are aware of the major role schools play in bringing peace back to the communities. The vital effect of school starting, of teachers and students coming together, resounds through Osh. It is bringing a sense of normalcy to a province that desperately needs it.

Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.

half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.

The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.

School brings hope“I like to draw, sing and play with my friends. I am so happy today,” said Yolanda, who lost both her home and her old school in the quake. Yolanda’s teacher, Onickel Paul, told me that the opening of the tent school had helped bring children and parents hope that things would get better in Haiti.

Despite only a handful of schools being open in the Haitian capital and outlying areas, everyone is working to support the Ministry of Education in its efforts to resume classes on 31 March. To achieve this goal, tents will be set up for immediate use as classrooms, and teachers will be identified and trained. An accelerated learning programme will be also be put in place to ensure that students do not fall behind.

A teacher is in the universal education category, which is one of the eight main components of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the world hopes to achieve by the year 2015.

A teacher is in the universal education category, which is one of the eight main components of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the world hopes to achieve by the year 2015.

A teacher is in the universal education category, which is one of the eight main components of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the world hopes to achieve by the year 2015.

Addressing the nation to mark the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 that makes elementary education an entitlement for children in the age group of 6-14 years, Dr. Singh said the States should join in this national effort with full resolve and determination. “Our government, in partnership with the State governments will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act. “Today, our government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving all our children the right to education.

“I call upon all our teachers across the country to become partners in this effort. It is also incumbent upon all of us to work together to improve the working conditions of our teachers and enable them to teach with dignity, giving full expression to their talent and creativity.'' He said parents and guardians, too, had a critical role to play having been assigned school management responsibilities under the Act. The needs of every disadvantaged section of our society, particularly girls, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities must be of particular focus as the Act is implemented.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said the biggest challenge to the implementation of the Act would be lack of infrastructure and teachers. Bringing children from the disadvantaged sections into the net would also be challenging, he said.

Gender “Gender” refers to the social differences and relations between men and women which are learned, vary widely among societies and cultures, and change over time. The term “gender” does not replace the term “sex”, which refers exclusively to biological differences between men and women. For example, statistical data are broken down by sex. The term “gender” is used to analyse the roles, responsibilities, constraints, opportunities and needs of women and men in all areas and in any given social context. Gender roles are learned behaviours in a given society, community or other social group. They condition which activities, tasks and responsibilities are perceived as male and female. Gender roles are affected by age, class, race, ethnicity and religion, and by the geographical, economic and political environment. Changes in gender roles often occur in response to changing economic, natural or political circumstances, including development efforts or structural adjustment, or other nationally or internationally based forces. The gender roles within a given social context may be flexible or rigid, similar or different, and complementary or conflicting. Both women and men are involved in reproductive, productive and community management activities and play roles within social and political groups. Their involvement in each activity reflects the gender division of labour in a particular place at a particular time. The gender division of labour must be reflected in gender analysis.

goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity

the status of women has advanced in some important respects in the past decade but that progress has been uneven, inequalities between women and men have persisted and major obstacles remain, with serious consequences for the well-being of all people

Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace

Ms. McBride, who recently returned from three weeks in Haiti, said the children she spoke with who had moved from school tents into semi-permanent structures seemed “really happy to be back at school”. “One interesting thing about this,” Mr. Vasquez added, “is the fact that, believe it or not, children were afraid of going back to schools that were made out of bricks or reinforced concrete because they associate collapse with a certain type of construction.”

“That was also part of our initial design concerns when we were thinking about the semi-permanent schools,” Mr. Vasquez continued, “If you are able to pick on how children perceive space and how do they perceive the disaster, if you’re paying attention as an architect, you should be able to integrate their concerns into your design process.”

“On the surface of it the children seem very happy at school, learning, playing with their friends, interacting with their teachers, but one particular mother [I spoke with] told me that her children weren’t actually doing so well,” Ms. McBride said. “Her youngest daughter, who was about five,” Ms. McBride continued, “didn’t sleep well at night, they didn’t like to be separated from her for too long, and she, as a parent, didn’t like to be separated from her children.”

Mexican officials are teaching school children how to dive for cover if they come under fire from gangs fighting over the Pacific beach city of Acapulco as drug violence reaches deeper into everyday life. At a drill in an Acapulco primary school this week, instructors used toy guns that simulated the sound of real gunfire. "Get down, let's go!" shouted an instructor as children threw themselves on the ground in classrooms and the playground and then crawled toward safety, burying their heads in their hands.

Most schools in Acapulco have not yet received the training and some civic leaders prefer to play down the violence.

Rumbek — A one-month teacher training course organized by Save the Children in Rumbek, the capital of Lakes state in South Sudan, has been skipped by some of the teachers due to attend. At the start of the workshop on Wednesday at Riak-Dor primary school, only 45 of the 60 teachers expected to attend arrived for the first day of the training. The teachers are drawn from Rumbek East and Rumbek Central counties. Rumbek East county education director Abel Kook Thong threatened to withhold the February salaries of teachers who have not attended the training as a punishment. He said he was seeking permission to do so from the director general of Lakes state's education ministry.

He said the aim of the workshop is to "equip teachers with knowledge and skills" adding that the absent teachers are refusing to participate in efforts to fight against ignorance in the community. Kook encouraged the teachers attending the training saying teachers will play an important role in bringing development of South Sudan as a new nation.

In June South Sudan is expected to become independent after an overwhelming vote for secession in a referendum in January.

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana teachers could play a key role in suicide prevention under a bill that supporters say would help prevent tragedies. The push is part of a national movement to enlist teachers and school personnel to help recognize behavioral changes and other signs that could suggest suicidal tendencies. At least four states require teachers and school personnel to be trained in warning signs, and Indiana is one of several others considering legislation that would increase opportunities for such training.

As the tsunami hit her school in Sendai, kindergarten teacher Junko Kamada stood in the window of a second story hall to block the children from seeing the destruction caused by the 1.5-meter wave. Amid dirt-caked chairs, soiled books and damaged equipment, Kamada, 60, is preparing to bring the students back to the school, about a mile inland from the coast. The children will also need counseling to deal with the trauma they have experienced, psychologists say.

Schools resumed two days ago in northeastern Japan, the epicenter of the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake. Classes --some held in homes and makeshift spaces -- are providing a safe place for children to reunite with friends and a semblance of familiarity amid the nation’s worst disaster since World War II.

While adolescents attuned to the reality of death may act out their trauma, younger ones find it harder to articulate their distress, she said. People who suffer psychological ailments such as depression in childhood are 10 to 20 times more likely than others to experience those problems in adulthood, according to a 2010 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine. Affected individuals tend to leave school earlier and earn about 20 percent less over their lifetime, the authors found.

With millions of children out of school and one-fifth of teachers playing truant, Pakistan faces an "education emergency" that costs the economic equivalent of its flood disaster every year, a new campaign has warned.

One in 10 of the world's out-of-school children live in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that last year spent just 2% of GDP on education.

The number of children absent from primary school – seven million – is roughly equivalent to the population of its second largest city, Lahore.Half of the population is illiterate and progress is painfully slow – at present rates the government will not deliver universal education in Balochistan, the largest province, until 2100.

The number of pupils skipping lessons in England's state schools climbed to a record high last autumn, statistics show.An analysis of figures published by the Department for Education reveals that an estimated 64,000 children played truant on a typical day over the autumn term last year, compared to almost 57,200 in the same period of 2006.