School News
Human Rights & Current Events
Turning on the news lately can be challenging. There is so much change happening all at once, I find it challenging to wrap my head around the daily events, both in the US and around the world. I often find myself wondering how to teach current events with my students, particularly when I am having difficulty keeping up not only with what is happening, but how I feel about it all. When events from the outside world come up in class, there is a wide variety of student awareness and interest. Some students are passionately following politics and what is happening, and others never look at the news. I spent a couple of months trying to figure out how to appropriately teach students to be aware of what is going on without introducing my personal beliefs or politics.
The current course I am teaching is Migration and Belonging. We are focusing on the pushes and pulls that cause people to leave their homes in search of lives elsewhere. We are investigating this as an historical concept, and also examining what is happening today, predominantly as it pertains to the US.
I decided to focus on introducing the students to the International Declaration of Human Rights as a way for students to consider what all humans should have access to. Students then created advocacy art (posters, flyers, bumper stickers, and protest signs) that would promote one or more of the Declaration’s articles. In order to connect the human rights to today’s world, students read news articles to illustrate how human rights are and are not being achieved in society. They read about books being banned in Iowa, girls not being allowed to access education beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan, a Yale professor who has left for Canada because he fears the rise of fascism in the United States, Trump’s executive order about changing voting registration laws, equal pay for women, vaccinations, and more. Students shared their findings with one another. Going forward, we will continue to tie the news to our immigration studies.
I decided to focus on introducing the students to the International Declaration of Human Rights as a way for students to consider what all humans should have access to. Students then created advocacy art (posters, flyers, bumper stickers, and protest signs) that would promote one or more of the Declaration’s articles. In order to connect the human rights to today’s world, students read news articles to illustrate how human rights are and are not being achieved in society. They read about books being banned in Iowa, girls not being allowed to access education beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan, a Yale professor who has left for Canada because he fears the rise of fascism in the United States, Trump’s executive order about changing voting registration laws, equal pay for women, vaccinations, and more. Students shared their findings with one another. Going forward, we will continue to tie the news to our immigration studies.
Fayerweather Street School | 765 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 | 617-876-4746
Fayerweather is a private PreK, kindergarten, elementary and middle school. We engage each child’s intellect.