I finished painting a huge world map in the main hall upstairs in the Elementary/Middle School Building just before we left for Christmas. So - our first project coming back to school has been to have all the kids find where they are from on the map and mark their home by painting a dot on the map. Asking students in America "Where are you from?" seems simple enough. At an international school; however, this question is very complex, confusing, and often very emotional for the students to answer. Almost all the students in our school "claim" two or more places that they are from - and I don't mean like I would say "I grew up in Auburn and then went to grad school in Birmingham." I get answers like "Well...My mom is British, my Dad is from Canada, we've lived in several places in Africa, and now we live in Ghana and I have a Canadian and an American Passport." - or- "Well, I was born in Morocco, then we lived in Colorado for a while, and now we live in Ghana." Most of the students I teach have more than one passport - and speak two or three languages - their lives are so interesting!
That being said, I am one of the very few people in our school that has only painted one dot on our map! Of course, it's on Auburn, AL - Maybe I'll start to claim Ghana as my "home" sometime next year - we'll see!
I think that we have students from every continent, except South America - and, obviously, Antarctica!
The third grade class made a movie after painting their dots today - they were a little camera shy - but this will give you a glimpse of how diverse our school is!
Love the video
ReplyDeleteLove your class
You are such a great teacher
and Mom says inspiration
I am so glad you are using your video!! Fun!
ReplyDelete