Rock Your World

Hello! I am Tricia Baldes, an 8th grade ELA teacher in Westchester County, NY, and I’m also part of the Rock Your World educational team. One of the first things I think I would do before starting reading Refugee with a class or small group would be to poll them somehow to see what, if any, background knowledge students have about the three historical time periods in the novel. After assessing this, I could envision putting together groups and using a Jigsaw Strategy (as explained here: https://www.inquisitive.com/blog/2019/03/27/visible-thinking/#Jigsaw-St…) to put students at the center of an inquiry about an assigned time period. Aside from establishing some background knowledge, I’d also want to hook students and build some excitement about reading the book. One thought I had was using one or more of the films from Unicef’s “Unfairy Tales” series. The Rock Your World team used the film Malak and the Boat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UMjSZaMY2Y - as the center for the Project Home Curriculum, so this might be a good place to start. I might frame this by asking students to consider these questions: What does this film suggest about the experience of a child refugee? What does this film make you wonder about the experience of a child refugee?So, that’s my initial thinking. As I prep to reread this book, I anticipate that I might have additional ideas once I start!

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What strikes me most in the first six chapters is how while Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are each experiencing different specific circumstances, the similarities in their stories overpower those differences. In these opening chapters, they are all exposed to horrors and experience trauma. We learn about a progression of things that have happened in each of their lives that builds, finally, to the inciting incidents that ultimately force their families to flee their homes. I also saw their connections to family and importance that family plays in each of their lives. I anticipate that my students will be shocked to learn about the particular circumstances and events that Joseph, Isabel, and Mahmoud face. I imagine them having many questions after reading these initial chapters. Here are some ideas about engaging students as they start the book. Most of these are ongoing strategies or ‘ways of reading’ that can continue throughout the text. Where appropriate, I’ve added some specifics as they relate to these six chapters:Asking students to read with a focus of identifying the similarities in the three stories. Find the places where they intersect / mirror each other.Read with a lens of human rights - look for places where human rights are respected and / or violated.Read with a lens of identifying perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and upstanders in the novel.Reading with a lens of identifying themes. This could be done by asking students to find and identify themes as they read, or I might provide specific themes for them to think about as they appear in the text. For example, in this section, I might ask students to think about power, fear, human nature, human dignity, memory, identity, trauma, and/or home. Setting up a reading notebook where students can keep an ongoing list of thoughts and questions to be used in discussion groups.Tracking the journeys and experiences of the three characters on a map - perhaps with a timeline?Tracking details -- sensory and/or otherwise -- that stand out from each section. This could perhaps be one detail or image from each character, or one they have in common. For example, the images of broken glass appear in each character’s narrative in these opening chapters. There are so many possibilities! Some do overlap and can be combined to be one learning experience. It might be interesting to provide kids with some choice, too, about what lens they want to read with if provided with options.Some of these lenses would require instruction depending on my students and the time of year. We do social issue book clubs, and during that time, my students would be familiar with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and terms like perpetrators, victims, bystanders, upstanders, human rights, and human dignity. If my students have appropriate background knowledge, I imagine my teaching points will center around modeling the kinds of thinking that I want to see kids doing.

You're spot on about how family plays such a significant part in each character's life. In fact when they are forced to flee their homes, the most important thing to each character is the well being of their family members. I love your suggestion to have students zoom in on the similarities of each character's journey/experience. A Venn Diagram might be a great way to navigate such similarities. I'm also thinking about your suggestions regarding the lenses of reading: human rights, violations of those rights, themes, etc. One way that students might be able to internalize what they glean through each lens is to keep a journal that addresses each character throughout the reading of the book. I imagine that each character's journey will at some point move to the forefront of the reader's mind as the book moves forward. This certainly happened to me at points. Addressing a letter or journal entry to a specific character and sharing my take-a-ways from their experience might be a side-angled gateway into deeper comprehension. Perhaps these letters could be assigned per reading chunks and students might even rotate their letters to each character. I have also had success with motif and theme identification with post-what-you-notice boards. A section of the classroom can be designated for post it observations about objects (such as the broken glass that you noticed, Tricia) colors, phrases, etc. Students can post what they notice before or after discussions, during silent reading time, and/or as an exit ticket. In keeping with yesterday's discussion, and how I just knew I would think of something after the fact-haha, I would definitely post articles 13, 14 and 15 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights boldly in the room. It would serve as a visual compass and reminder to think about the characters' journeys in terms of how these rights in particular are being upheld--when discussions take place with these articles as an anchor, nuanced understandings about root causes of migration are unavoidable, and the opportunity to build empathy is increased.

I think what I most appreciate about the conclusion of this book is that while Gratz conveyed a vibrant sense of hope and connection, he also didn't sugarcoat what happened to Josef, nor did he tie a bow with Mahmoud's little sister. Having taught high school in a border state for many years, the issues of migrants and refugees seemed to be ever present in the news, but rarely discussed in school beyond a historical deep dive here and there. That's what made the creation of Project Home on Rock Your World so exciting. Receiving funding for the explorations of issues and actions regarding refugees from the Newman's Own Foundation was a beautiful validation of the vision we had to model how to dig deep into the causes, journeys, challenges and triumphs that are integral to the stories of so many, if not most human beings who leave their home countries. As a teacher, I appreciate the flexibility of the 6 segments. Students can dive in, teachers can utilize the modeled explorations as a script or they can simply use it as a springboard. Coupling the reading of refugee with Project Home, or even keeping them as separate explorations is possible. I love the idea of using the book as inspiration to learn more. And, as is our tradition at Rock Your World, we believe in empowering youth with the ability to take meaningful action. Exploration 6 culls tons of resources and a narrative about how one might move forward. I'm grateful that we are able to add such an effective method of study to this evergreen topic. Be sure to explore Project Home which is very much in the style of our discussion here: https://www.rock-your-world.org/project-home --please share your educator and student discoveries with us as you explore and be sure to encourage your students to share their creative activism efforts with other kids and the world at www.rock-your-rights.org.