Taking Flight: Success Through a Study of Ourselves

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 80

What a wonderful opportunity for students to learm about who they are, where they come from, and the possibilities open to them. The article that launched the entire project was the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. So many of my students are from families who migrated to this country, and they can tell stories about human rights violations and other atrocities. This document reveals to them that someone does care about their welfare, whether the leader of their former countries did or not. As a culminating activity, we created our own UN. Each student drew a flag that best represented his/her families history. Then, they shared what that flag means to the family and what it now means to live in the US.  As a text, we read Voices and Values, a reading/writing book that focuses on stories about overcoming challenges. The stories are true and teach lessons about integrity, honesty, truth, perseverance, etc. The writing activity involved research with family members, articles about various cultures, and information about the importance of studying family history. The students were excited to share what they were learning about their families, and they were many. One grandpa learned how to make moonshie in the hills of KY, and still does. Other families, from Haiti, have family members who are Voodoo priests and priestesses. Still other learned about the harrowing sacrifices family members made to get their children to this country, or in serving the country during times of war. The student's research became a 5-paragraph essay about family history, family traditions, and cultural celebrations. The essays then became tri-board presentations that were shared with the class. They were fascinated by the stories that their classmates told, often bonding over the stories that they shared. 

     This was such a great project for my 9th graders that I plan to continue it annually. Ninth grade is such a year of growth and discovery, and this is a great project for them. In this first year, I did the project during the second quarter. Moving forward, I will move the project to the 4th quarter, as a culminating project for the year.