Fulbright Update:
Teacher, kids have fun in elementary school session
Don’t tell, but I cheated on my fifth graders at Orizont Lyceum last week with kids from a different fifth grade class. (I've been a regular guest speaker at Orizont this academic year).

This time, I visited Vasile Alecsandri Lyceum in Chisinau at the request of my colleague Nadine Gogu from the Independent Journalism Center.

I was told beforehand that the kids would only know a little English, so I came prepared with slides in Romanian, and expected to speak mostly Romanian myself. My colleague and I were pleasantly surprised by the amount and level of English spoken by the kids. In fact, when I started our discussion speaking in Romanian, they quickly protested, instead craving a lesson delivered in English.

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

We talked about hate speech. The discussion was interesting and sophisticated. All the students hands shot up when I asked if they had seen hate speech on Instagram, on Snapchat, on Telegram (a Russian site), and on several others. I tasked the students with deciding if items on a list I provided constituted hate speech (e.g., “Moldova shouldn’t  join the EU,” or, “Boys are smarter at math and science than girls.”)

My colleague Nadine finished off the discussion by asking what the students knew about online trolls. She then distributed excellent, colorful media literacy books made for kids, along with t-shirts to the most active participants.

The kids were bright, respectful, and smart.

As I mentioned to a friend, these guest speaker gigs in elementary school classrooms are a lot like being a grandpa. You swoop in, have some fun with the kids for an hour or two, then take off, leaving the heavy lifting to the parents, or in this case, to the teacher.

At any rate, I appreciate every opportunity to connect with kids.