The TCS community learned various refugee experiences on Sat., Sept. 24 during the sixth grade-planned “The Refugee Experience: Service, Learning and Connection. “
More than 100 people showed up and participated in the Service Learning day activities designed to bring awareness to the refugee experience. The activities included:
Simulations
To help everyone better understand what it’s like to be a refugee, the students designed two different simulations. In the first, you had to build a boat and then see if it floated in a nearby kiddie pool. The second simulation was pretty emotional for a lot of visitors. Everyone was blindfolded and then had to find their family members after a “disaster.” You knew a person was a member of your family when you found them and initiated a secret family handshake.
Hope Boxes
The students collected enough supplies to build more than 130 Hope Boxes, shoe boxes filled with toiletries, school supplies and toys, to send to Operation Refugee Child, a nonprofit in California that will send the boxes to children in refugee camps who need supplies like toothbrushes, sunscreen and pencils.
A Place of Refuge Projects
In the gallery walk, sixth grade projects – games, picture books, graphic novels, short films – to highlight the refugee experience were on display.
Sensory & Bias Stations
Visitors learned about biases, both physical and emotional. By tasting jelly beans, smelling extracts, and finding their blind spot, people were reminded the messages they receive from one sensory perspective can fool them. Similarly, each of us has a biased world view, because we tend to rely on our personal perspective rather than learning a lot about the perspectives of people who are different than us. Visitor explored their bias with online tests that can be found at tinyurl.com/tests-of-bias.
In addition to raising awareness, the sixth graders also raised money! By selling baked goods, they were able to raise $313 for International Rescue Committee (IRC) to buy kitchen items for their Resettlement Shop, a place where refugees can go to find clothing and household items to help them start rebuilding their lives here.
Refuge Coffee was also on site to sell coffee and raise money to help train refugees for jobs in the United States.
During the six-week project-based learning unit, the sixth graders studied push and pull factors (reasons why a person or family would choose to leave their home), areas of the world where there exists a large number of refugees; learned how the brain’s misperceptions can affect our biases and sense of the world; and discussed the differences between a refugee, an illegal immigrant, and asylum seekers.
Even though they’ve completed this unit, they sixth graders plan to continue raising awareness for refugees and committing time to serve the refugee community in Clarkston.
