I’m very excited to be Zooming into Ms. Edmonds history class at this fabulous high school located within Roosevelt Educational Campus, across the street from Fordham University in the Bronx, NY. We will be investigating how writers write while preparing short pieces of Creative Nonfiction about heroes past and present.

Crossing the border to El Norte has never been more perilous. And yet asylum seekers keep coming, running, as they have been for decades.

As a lifelong educator who spent years teaching “behind the lines” in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador during the 1980s war years, I am compelled to tell the stories of those who are chasing the dream, even at the risk of landing in the crosshairs of President Trump’s strategy of deterrence by cruelty.

I propose an article or series of articles leading eventually to a book, for there are as many tales as there are people. The medium will be oral histories, interviews that can also be filmed and recorded and distributed across multiple platforms. The stakes couldn’t be higher – these stories will be told in the months before U.S. voters decide whether to eject Trump from the White House or give him another four years.

To collate the stories, I need access to a number of individuals who are willing and able to speak on the record. I seek access and time with those who

• tried to reach the US border but turned back;

• crossed legally sought asylum only to be labeled criminals and detained;

• were detained but managed to get into the US;

• were detained and subsequently deported; and

• came across many years ago, made a life in the US, birthed and brought up US citizens only to find they are now being hunted and forced to “go back where they came from.”

Throughout, emphasis will be placed on those whose children were taken, indeed, who may be searching for their young ones still.

With this project, I wish to reveal the aspirations and ordeals of real people living in the many metaphorical borderlands. In the process, I will also expose how their choices, and their journeys, have been shaped by unjust US policy decisions as regards the region going back decades.

Building on the 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report and recent Education for Tomorrow’s World work on language policy and social and emotional learning, this program will bring together experts, policymakers and practitioners from a wide range of organizations, sectors and countries to develop policy and financing solutions that can create better education outcomes and life chances for both refugees and displaced people and their host communities.

KEY QUESTIONS
Over the course of the five-day program participants will address key questions, including:

• How can learning environments help mitigate and reverse the effects of stress and trauma on students?

• What scalable and transferable teacher training approaches can help educators develop safe and inclusive classrooms?

• How can technological and policy solutions help address challenges around recognition of refugee and migrant education credentials?

• How can education assessment, research, and interventions increase life chances for refugees, displaced peoples, and their host communities?

• What can be done to ensure that multilingualism is seen as contributing positively to communities and societies?

• How can social and emotional learning help to foster a sense of connectedness, solidarity, and cohesion between migrants and host communities?

• After the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration where are the early examples of international best practice and how can they be replicated?

PROGRAM GOALS
During and immediately after the Salzburg program, participants and staff will co-create a number of strategic products to leverage the learning and recommendations from the meeting:

• Advocacy: A Salzburg Statement will be jointly drafted to respond concisely to the Key Questions and serve as a call to action to help participants personally as well as their institutions and communities.

• Online engagement: A series of online debates will be launched following the program to continue online engagement on a monthly basis around key questions raised through the program.

• Multimedia outreach: A series of webinars and podcasts will discuss and disseminate the Salzburg Statement and multiply its impact in different settings. These will provide an opportunity to engage with many more people than are present at the meeting and bring the outcomes to new audiences.

• Impact report: A report will subsequently be published summarizing the program as well as highlights from the Twitter and webinar debates that follow it.

Friday - Sunday:
As UK Director, I join the team of KidLit TV NYC to Tell the Tales — LIVE! — of all the great things coming out the KidLit World UK. We will be conducting ongoing livestreams of conference events and one-on-one interviews, focusing all the great things coming out of the KidLit World UK.

Also on Sunday:
I team up with Candy Gourlay to facilitate a hands-on demonstration of the best user-friendly creation tools — as many as can fit into a Sunday worksho — for authors and illustrators. From using Scrivener and editing your own book trailers to Instagramming, creating banners, logos, presentations and much more! This workshop will appeal to authors and illustrators alike, whether newbies or mid-listers, in the indie or traditional route.