Overall Reflection

I wanted to say that it was such a pleasure to work for the Balfour program and to work with Amy Aiyegbusi as my partner. We were very collaborative and open to new ideas (from each other and from the kids during the program). The kids were just amazing, bright and well-behaved. I am amazed how creative they were with their t-shirt projects and the pictures. It has been such a wonderful experience both for me and Amy and I believe that those kids will continue their educational journey successfully!

Productive Scholars!!!

 

One thing you don't expect is how passionate the scholars can be once they're very into their individual projects. We have 5 group projects and 2 individual projects. Dan, Rachel, and I really wanted to leave it up to the students as far as what to do. We asked them to tell a story that goes beyond the stereotypes that sometimes follow refugees, particularly those from Syria. These students took it and ran with it!

 

We have 3 physical projects- an essay, skit, and portrait- and 4 digital projects- a spoken word, book, poetry, and a picture essay. Each project is a testament to each student's hard work this past week.  

Reflection 4 Day 4

Wow. What a day. Our students--every single one of them--came up with an introspective way to represent their story of migration on their T-shirt and in relation to the props they used in their picture of themselves in their T-shirts. The energy in the room today was electric--the kids were excited to finally be creating their digital representations of their shirts, one of their Balfour educators from another program came into the classroom for a while so that they could model and explain their shirts to him, and we even had about 10 minutes of time at the beginning and end of class so that they could finish what they have called "their" game of Guess Who--where they draw out a card with 3 facts about someone in the room and try to guess who the person is. They LOVE that game:) This week has been wonderful for both Derya and I, and we hope that at the end of their journey tomorrow they will take away the love and understanding they have shown for each other into all facets of their lives forever. They are great kids and deserve the best always.

Day 3 Balfour Galactic Reflection

Day 3 Balfour Galactic

Today we decided to start with a parking lot where students could ask any questions they'd like if they were still unsure about anything related to or about inequalities on the pink sticky notes. Then I briefly introduced the Tanzania library project with them and told them to ask any additional questions on the orange sticky notes (we will Skype with the Peace Corps member on Thursday and she will answer the questions and more), we ended by starting and continuing to work on our global inequality local maps. Students used various art forms to express these such as magazines, words, symbols and more to show their communities and inequalities present there. We felt like it was a great session and were especially impressed with their questions and ways they expressed their communities. Today, (Thursday) we plan to Skype with former Peace Corp member, Ellen Jorgenson, explore how music art forms are educational with Julie, and continuing to work on their maps. 

Reflection 3: Day 3

Today was another great day. We started out the day letting the students interview us again, and they learned that while both Derya and I have seen negative things in the countries we have traveled, our positive experiences far outweigh any challenges we have encountered. Each time they ask us a question, someone in the class volunteers their own story about movement, whether pertaining to physical or ideological, and we all are getting to know and appreciate our unique and diverse backgrounds. We introduced two visual artists who specialize in migratory photography, showing them collections and explaining how each artists' work overlaps with the other. After that discussion, the students completed their T-shirt designs--all of their creativity is amazing! They have really taken to our group's theme of migration and have represented themselves well through their shirt designs. During the artwork period, we played more world music, and some of the students contributed their own favorites in that category as well. Tomorrow is the digital component of our artwork project, and they are already thinking about how best to represent themselves through photography and how to comprise that into a classroom representation of their work. The only challenge we faced today was the shortened time we had with them, but we all adjusted our schedules for the time we did have and honestly did not think about it too much. We completed our lesson plan for the day, each student completed their shirt, so all in all was another wonderful day with our group of Balfours:)

Day 3 Reflections

I learned early in my teaching career that you have to be seaweed: rooted, but flexible. So when we got our students later than expected, we just rolled with it! We started with some prompts:

• What would happen if we allowed prejudice and stereotypes to govern us?
• What would happen if we actively counteracted our biases and preconceived ideas?

What a great conversation! These kids are at a level where they are self-aware of the prejudices that they have and that they experience, and readily apply those to a context larger than their own experience.

We used this discussion to lead into a video that talks about how we as humans are really connected, and that the differences we feel are fairly insignificant. This is not to say that inequalities aren't there, but that we actually need to talk even MORE about issues of race, culture, gender, class, etc. to combat these toxic narratives. The video shows a Kurdish woman refugee who goes on a DNA Journey and finds her ancestry is quite mixed with groups she feels animosity toward. She also connects with a distant relative, who is also from a very unexpected ancestral group.

Before jumping to work on our final project, we took some time to step into the mindset of a Syrian refugee. We asked the students to write an "I Am" poem from the perspective of this refugee. This helped them really identify with who's stories they were trying to tell, and built on yesterday's 4 Corners activity dealing with how someone identifies versus how the world sees them, and eventually how they would like everyone else to see who they really are.

Reflections Day 1 & 2
Day 1-The students seemed to enjoy the activities we had planned for them. It was like a rollercoaster of events which included a fun get to know you beach ball activity, then unique facilitator introductions using instagram profiles where students formed predictions of us based on our images, then students surprised with their reactions in response to the inequality treat activity, followed by completing a K-W-L on their knowledge of inequality and what they would like to learn. We had an overview of inequality and then the students did a museum walk to observe different students view of various forms of inequality. This was a great foundational day to get the background knowledge noted and see what they wanted to get out of the session.

On day 2 it was great to open up with debriefing the museum walk a little more by having each group look more in-depth at various inequality fact sheets-we had them read each unique fact sheet in their group and highlight the interesting or shocking information, we added new information to the KWL chart, watched a news clip highlighting apartheid and inequality in education within South Africa, then Hogan led an overview of maps and their usage and what we can learn from them. This activity transferred to them creating their own maps of their communities in which they were to start thinking of how to map out their own communities and the inequality within. Julie informed the students that to upload their celfies (selfies) to the Balfour Instagram with their own unique caption to represent themselves.

Day 2 concerns were regarding time, so Julie suggested shortening or cutting activities to have more time to go more in-depth in conversations regarding topics. I mentioned making sure that we keep activities varied (some teacher-led and some student cooperative and led) to keep the energy and engagement up. We solidified our Day 3 plans/agenda and talked about copies/supplies needed.

Overall, the students engaging in critical discussions and opening their minds up to global and local inequalities that they hadn't thought about and their effects.