I was a middle-school librarian in San Diego, when horrific brush-fires, forced our students to evacuate their homes. The next week we returned to a campus covered with ash, still reeking of smoke. One of my student monitors came in and started talking about her experience. She was really upset, about the fires of course, but even moreso about the items she grabbed when she left her home: her expensive jeans, her trophy and make-up. She was upset because she thought about irreplaceable things she should have taken instead such as family photos (this was before the Cloud). She was mad at herself because she thought what she took was shallow and selfish. She kept going over and over in her head about how she would do it differently and how she could help others plan ahead for another emergency.
At the time her teacher, Kate Dominique, and I were working on project/problem-based research units. We realized this experience of having students analyze what they took, was the inspiration for a new unit.
Students were really excited to put their experience into action and to help others process the fires and to plan ahead too. Together the students reflected on their own stories and then brainstormed a website based on a question...Does what you took when you evacuated represent who you really are? Students researched articles that defined the typical teen. Then they compared this to primary resources - data from surveying their friends about what they took during the evacuations. Then they asked them if they had to do it again, what items would they take instead? They created graphs of what they toon and then created another to communicate how family photos and necessary emergency supplies trumped expensive jeans, gameboys and makeup if they could do it again.
They also created a page of their own family photos of the fire coming over the ridges near local homes and designed maps showing the fires in our own community.
They all kept coming back to the appreciation they had for our first responders so they created a thank-you page for SDFD and invited the local station out to the website "launch". Even the Fire Chief came out to the school with the trucks and we had a cake to thank them.
It was an amazing student-led unit that was relevant to our students and our community. Students wanted to prove that teens care and can make a difference. They wanted to show that the typical apathetic and disgruntled teenager seen in media does not represent all teens. They wanted to design something that was a legacy priject but that could also help teens help their family to prepare for a disaster.
This student also led me to create a Community Narratives blog where I hoped students would be inspired to post their own narratives. It ended up turning into more of a service learning blog, but I still am grateful for the original inspiration.
Today, I read an amazing article about what a group of refugees had in their bag. It reminded me of our fires and our student website. It reminded me of an incredible unit on refugees and resiliency written by Penny Novak, Carrie Lynn and Courtnee Donohoe at PB Middle. Connecting the dots...what if students compared what they have in their backpack versus what they'd take in an emergency??
https://medium.com/@theIRC/what-s-in-my-bag-758d435f6e62
Although I wouldn't be comfortable asking students to dump-out their backpacks and share, I think this article could become an incredible unit about "stuff" and what our "stuff" says about our priorities and about our culture and society.
It could also be a great connection to create a time capsule for the graduating class or explore the question of "What does my 'stuff' communicate about what is most important to me?"
These ideas could also lead to a unit where students analyze an anthropological "dig" into what we discard and what that says about us.
Have a wonderful year facilitating learning experiences that lead new students with new ideas and new inquiries to make a difference in our community.
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