Implementation of “Sharing is caring: Let your migration story be heard” (SoI-GR-587)
Background information
Author: Stavrakaki Vasiliki
School/Organization: Kindergarten of Livadia
Introduction
Immigration is a social issue, quite topical these days. In recent years the number of immigrants has increased dramatically in our country. Children may have seen and heard about immigrants, mainly from the mass media that very often mention this issue. An occasion to discuss this in class was given to us by the eTwinning project we are working on at our school, in collaboration with other European schools: “Once upon a time…we traveled to the world”. In this project, we “travel” and get to know different parts of the world through fairy tales. On April 2, World Children’s Book Day, we read the book “The Librarian of Basra” in our class and through it we were given the opportunity to travel to Basra, a city in Iraq. Talking about Iraq and discovering it, we could not fail to refer to the immigration issue and the people who are forced to leave their homeland and by sea to look for a new homeland and a new hope.
Due to the young age of the children (4-6 years old), we wanted to approach this “sensitive” issue to raise awareness among children about immigrants, the consequences that war can have and to emphasize that all people should have equal opportunities, even if they are not in their country. The original learning script has been applied to older children, but we took some ideas from this original script, as well as from other applications of this and adapted them to the age and cognitive abilities of our own students, creating our own teaching scenario.
DISTRIBUTION
As said above, the occasion to discuss in class about immigrants was “our trip” to Iraq. We saw beautiful, but also ugly images from Iraq. Images for which the children felt admiration but also images that saddened them. We discussed what Iraq was like in the past, but also how these distressing images came about. After we pointed out the consequences of the war once again, a suitcase came to our class and the children were asked to state what they thought when they saw this. Children associated the suitcase with pleasant trips and beautiful feelings (holidays, meeting relatives, traveling to foreign countries). Then, they showed an image of the immigrant boat (https://historiana.eu/learning-activity/media-images-and-immigration) and asked them to describe the image. The children said what they thought and expressed the feelings caused by the photo with the immigrants. Immediately after, the video titled «What does it mean to be a refugee?» was presented and children express their feelings again. We discussed what led these people to leave their homeland and perhaps their family and how they might feel about the difficulties they face. (suitcase, travel)
Αwareness-raising and empathy-building activities
In order to introduce the children to the next activity, they watched the short video Share your migration story and guessed what a migrant might put in his suitcase and take with him. We visited the explore migration stories collection (https://www.europeana.eu/en/migration/explore-migration-stories-from-events-in-these-cities) and saw various migrant artifacts. The children chose one of them (a doll with red hair), described it and made assumptions about its history (who it might have belonged to, where it might have been found, etc.). After the children’s affairs, we have read the history of this object. We then asked the children to come to the place of the refugees and draw us if they had to go to another country, which object they would take with them and why (red-headed dolly, drawings, drawings 2).
In the end, the children made posters about refugees and their right to a better life, writing words and messages to raise awareness among adults as well. The posters were placed at the entrance of our school and convey the children’s message. Also, a video call was held with the kindergarten that exists in the Controlled Temporary Accommodation Structure for Refugees, located in Schistos Attica, where they spoke with children who have come from other countries to stay in Greece. The children even interacted online with these children, asked them questions about their country of origin and how they are doing in Greece and exchanged wishes and songs.
Outcomes
By implementing this learning scenario in my classroom, I wanted to make my students aware of a current social issue, cultivating their empathy and putting a small stone in their understanding of what it means to be a refugee. It was a topic that, although it created distressing feelings for the children initially, helped them to create a correct initial perception of immigration at the end, free of prejudices. At the end of the teaching scenario, the children were happy to communicate with immigrant children. It was a topic that the more we worked on it, the more the children became interested in it. Our society is now multicultural and it is good to discuss such topics in the classroom and make children aware of them. As a teacher it was my first contact with Europeana and I think it gives a lot of possibilities and a lot of ideas to the teachers who use it, so that by applying them in the classroom they will attract the interest of the children and make the lesson more interesting. You need to take the time to read other teachers’ work and explore its resources, but you gain a lot of knowledge and improve your teaching, so I think it’s worth the effort and time. It was a pleasant experience, which I would like to repeat.
Link to the learning scenario implemented: Sharing is caring: Let your migration story be heard (EN-CUR-616) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)
Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the National Library of Israel.
.