What SolutionsU did for me: Student reflection
I am a Government major at Smith College, about to depart for a year at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was lucky enough to intern for Solutions Journalism Network this summer, to support the launch of SolutionsU. Prior to my three months working, I thought I had a strong grasp of the way journalism functioned within my discipline. It existed, almost entirely, to inform me of the large scale problems that faced me, and other young people. Reading the news in the context of my courses, one professor told me, was supposed to make me tougher. I accepted this.
As part of the preparations for SolutionsU, I was assigned to create a collection on a topic of my choice — a curated set of articles to be featured on the site. I selected human trafficking. I grew up in Nepal, with parents doing research, and have ever since been attached to studying and working to end the sort of egregious human rights violations I heard about firsthand. The most notable aspect of creating my collection was not the way reading about responses to social issues changed my thinking. It was the diversity of publications I encountered. Here I was, or imagined myself to be, a prepared and decently well-read student of Government, and I was finding real world solutions to the work of brutal human traffickers in The Christian Science Monitor — a publication I had never before read, or even heard of. It was this experience that opened my eyes to the power of SolutionsU — not just a platform that encourages students to examine and respond to solutions — but a platform that shows them where to look, how to look, to look in places that they might never have had access to before.
Focusing on my small revelation about diverse sources of information is not to ignore the effect that reading solutions based journalism had on me as a student. I was aware of the philosophy, understood the principles, experienced no-huge “aha” moment. What occurred instead was a subtle shift, like a train switching tracks. News no longer serves to “toughen” me, it serves to inform me, to show me what people are actually doing, to learn from the way they are responding to the issues in their communities. It is this that I believe the news was originally intended to do.
I have no doubt that school will remain a constant in my life, and SolutionsU will come with me where I go.
Are you an educator who wants your students to learn about how people around the world are working to solve society’s toughest challenges? Visit SolutionsU for collections of stories with discussion questions, assignments, syllabi and teaching modules.
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