My Dog-leg journey

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

-John Lennon

When planning out my future learning space for a project for university, I envisaged a space where teachers and students could safely collaborate on topics for Girls' education.

Sperling and Winthrop's (2016) Girls' Education was a most informative read, exploring the complexities of Girls' Education.

* Clearly, there is direction for central governments to support Education for ALL. When a country's funds are siphoned away from education, economies spiral downward, and inversely a country's economy spirals upward when education is supported.

* Clearly there is need for trained teachers with continued professional development. Modern teaching practices which focus on student centred and collaborative learning boost and broaden students' learning, practically preparing them for their personal lives and employment in the 21st century.

* Clearly there is need for communities to work collaboratively with students, teachers and organisations which seek to uphold student education. When communities support students in education, programs find success in rebuilding lives and communities.

For all three; governments, teachers, and communities, mindsets are the crux of these problems, yet hold the solutions to change. This pivotal space presents the greatest challenge, and therefore is the main focus to be forged for my Girls' Education project. The spaces created within this site (PLN) to purposefully highlight critical thinking toward liminal thought, and group collaboration toward social cohesion, hope to be valuable in the aim of changed mindsets.

Yet from the reading of Girls' Education and the stories of women and girls, it slowly became significantly clear to me how crucial and powerful the example of women's lives can be. The empowerment of women relies on changed role concepts; in governments, teachers, and communities. Yet, most crucially, empowerment of women relies on egalitarian role concepts within girls and boys of the future.

I have created a page for collecting stories about girls and women's success stories. While all of the discoveries on this journey have interested me, the significance of role models of young girls and women have interested me the most. Purposefully, they hope to reach girls and boys, and teachers too. The project gives me the opportunity to continue collecting inspiring stories, hoping to continue to break role patterns within my own mind and in others.

After reading many, sadly common, stories of child marriage and the subordination and abuse this regularly entails, this video is a refreshing powerful true story to bring hope and a way forward.