Our students live in a world that needs more attention to helping them navigate through a myriad of competencies that should be integrated into the classroom. In order to process equity, inclusion, and social justice, the first step is to help students explore their own identities and ultimately forge a deeper connection with their own sense of agency. Today, some groups are marginalized and isolated through ignorance. It is crucial that students take informed action about issues that extend beyond the classroom in order to develop empathy and work together to protect the rights of others through firsthand accounts, research, and literature.

In this video, the students combined two types of poetic devices, the found and spoken word poems, to write about the refugee crisis. Students used different books from the series entitled “Leaving My Homeland” to read about refugees from countries around the world. They built their found poems using the text related to one particular group of refugees, and then came together to record the spoken word poem together. The video in this post is just one of the powerful recordings that they made.

The ultimate objective is to awaken the students’ minds to the world outside of our, often comfortable, community and to teach students how to empathize with others to create a sense of belonging. Overall, our mission is to help students have hope for a more just and equitable future. Citizenship does not guarantee belonging, and humanity is not up for debate. Students need to build a community that recognizes the importance of purpose, acceptance, and freedom of expression. By encouraging a culture of thinking, these young learners see their ideas valued, visible, and promoted in order.