{"id":1048,"date":"2009-01-14T08:06:38","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T15:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2013-07-31T11:24:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:24:07","slug":"history-professor-brings-to-life-the-experiences-of-children-in-war-torn-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"History Professor Brings to Life the Experiences of Children in War-Torn Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"paces
Cynthia Paces, with the city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last summer, Cynthia Paces<\/strong>, associate professor of history, co-taught a course that was offered as part of an on-campus summer symposium for academically gifted students from Fisher Middle School. The class, Children and War, examined the difficulties faced by children living in war-torn areas such as Bosnia, Darfur, the Congo, and India.<\/p>\n

To bring these children\u2019s experiences to life, Paces had the students read Zlata\u2019s Diary, which was written by a teenage girl living in Sarajevo while the city was under siege during the Yugoslav war in the 1990s. The students also made films and wrote extensively about their research. Trips to the Kidsbridge Museum (on TCNJ\u2019s campus) and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia were also a part of the class\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s easy to surmise that the lessons Paces taught made an impression on the middle-schoolers, it is clearly evident that those students made an impression on Paces. \u201cThey were very caring about the plight of children in other places, and their desire to really understand other parts of the world has been really inspiring,\u201d Paces explained.<\/p>\n

The success of the program prompted Paces and her symposium co-teacher, Suzanne Gallagher from Fisher Middle School, to continue their partnership into the fall. Last semester, students in Paces\u2019 freshman seminar class, What Happened to Yugoslavia?, worked with Gallagher\u2019s students. The two groups met throughout the semester and discussed Zlata\u2019s Diary. They also planned and hosted fundraisers, the proceeds from which were used to purchase school supplies for children living in a Bosnian orphanage. The orphanage attempts to help Bosnian children improve their English skills; therefore, Paces\u2019 students and those from Fisher also sent their biographies, written in English, to the orphans as a way to help them practice their language skills. Paces\u2019 student assistant, Laura Janssen \u201910, who had volunteered at the orphanage in the past, brought the supplies there in December.<\/p>\n

\"paces
The children show the toothbrushes and toothpaste they received from Laura Janssen \u201910 during one of her previous volunteer trips to the orphanage in Bosnia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a final project for the class, Paces\u2019 students created an exhibit about the issues of tolerance and the children of war in Bosnia. It will eventually be housed in the Kidsbridge Museum, Paces said.<\/p>\n

The collaboration Paces witnessed between her freshman seminar students and the students from Fisher has encouraged her to find new ways in which she can teach her classes to reach out and touch other parts of the world, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] has been exciting to know that [my students] want to take what they are learning\u2026and actually say, \u2018Okay let\u2019s reach out and make a difference,\u2019\u201d Paces said.<\/p>\n

Paces, whose area of specialization is modern Central Europe, has traveled to Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia. She said those trips have shown her what it means to go beyond the classroom, and she encourages her students to do the same, explaining that it is better to learn through experience than through a textbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had a drive to make what I teach meaningful outside of the classroom,\u201d Paces said, adding, \u201cI think what this project helped me do [was] to show that even if you\u2019re taking a history course, you can actually do something concrete in the world today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve always had a drive to make what I teach meaningful outside of the classroom,\u201d says Cynthia Paces, associate professor of history. Find out how students in her What Happened to Yugoslavia? course helped make a difference in the lives of Bosnian orphans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":1050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-february-2009","category-in-focus","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}