Culture Study and the Strength of Community
The pandemic has created a challenge for teachers worldwide. Some schools returned in-person quickly, possibly because restrictions in their area allowed and some because they were able to afford resources and space that helped facilitate safer returns. Other classes have learned remotely, either for the entirety of the last year or for some portion of it, like mine.
Bringing the outside world into the classroom has been difficult, especially when we search for genuine and engaging ways to teach children. Reading aloud and sharing informational videos are still beneficial ways to teach via Zoom or in-person. But in a time when personal connections have been difficult to maintain due to physical distance and mental stress, I’ve found that the strength and contributions of our school community have become pillars of our learning over the last year.
Our third grade study focuses primarily on the topic of culture. What is culture? What cultures are represented in our school and city? How do these cultures connect to different parts of the world? These questions are tackled in the first half of the year, after which we shift into subtopics related to culture. How do cultures change? How do people from different cultures move and interact? What is immigration? Why are immigration stories, and other stories about history important?
In a typical school year, our culture study sends us around the neighborhoods of New York City to examine who and what is present around us. In the past, we’ve used the topic of food as a thread to connect the many concepts of culture; holidays, clothing, religion, tradition, family values, language etc.
Last year, with half of our students learning remotely and half learning in a hybrid (4 day) program, field visits to our area weren’t possible. We instead worked to bring culture into our virtual learning space as best we could.
Family and Staff Culture Interviews
Earlier last year in the Fall of 2020, families and staff members were encouraged to sign up for culture interviews. These were 25 minute Zoom meetings during which a family would introduce themselves and talk about their culture, whichever parts they chose to highlight. Some families talked about their heritage. Where did their ancestors live and what did they do? Other families highlighted their current traditions and beliefs. How did you spend your weekends together? What are your holiday traditions and what does ‘family’ mean to you? Community, at this point, included our classroom students and their families.
Colleagues and Friends
As our study continued through the winter, I remembered a story from a colleague that had also worked on this unit two years prior. Sivanne Lieber, founder of The Joyous Parent, worked with me at Compass Charter School when I first began teaching there. Years before, we had taken our students to the park where Sivanne shared parts of her Israeli culture, brewed and drank tea with our students and told an amazing story of her family’s history. Sivanne didn’t live in Brooklyn anymore, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect for our students to hear a real-life story of immigration from a Compass community member. “Community,” now, grew larger and the opportunity to ask for help from our greater school community was too much to resist.
Greater School Community Volunteers
Following this interview, we expanded our classroom community to include members of our entire school and local neighborhood. I posted a request for volunteers to share their stories of migration. In a time so full of worry, grief and uncertainty, would community members have the time and energy to contribute? If my experience in inquiry-based learning has taught me anything, I knew with confidence that the request to assist students in authentic learning would resonate with community members looking for a way to contribute. Thankfully, I was right. In a few days, we had over a dozen members of our school community who were happy to share their stories with our class.
Integrating Writing and Community
While looking through our plan for our integrated study on culture and immigration, my grade team members were also discussing text genres for our literacy units, and genres that seemed more challenging for our students to grasp. The difference between realistic fiction, nonfiction and narrative nonfiction was something we were hoping to tackle. We decided to integrate a writing unit focused on narrative nonfiction with our immigration study, and planned a project that would require students to interview a member of the community about their immigration story and write their story as a narrative nonfiction text.
Over the next two months, students in the third grade worked to interview volunteers about their immigration story. Using a template we created together, students prompted their volunteers to share information about their life at home, their reason for moving, their journey, arrival and how they acclimated to their new home. All the while, students took notes and recorded their interviews for future use.
As a whole class, we began the writing process together, discussing how we could draft these real life stories as tales to be shared in a storybook. Students labeled their pages based on their volunteer’s story, and slowly worked through their notes and interviews to write the immigration story in sequence.
To revise our stories, we encouraged students to use their free class time to research the countries featured in their stories, and to add any details about these countries that may make their stories come alive. What was the weather like? What’s the name of the airport in that city? What do the buildings look like? What was happening in history during that time that you can share? Piece by piece, our students and volunteers’ stories became more and more real.
When finally publishing their stories, our students reflected on their interviews and worked to create illustrations that matched their volunteer’s image. Some even used old photographs, shared by our volunteers, to make their narrative nonfiction texts true to life.
Expand Your Reach
The moral of the story is this… Our global community took a hit in the last two years. Physical and emotional distance has caused many of us to feel isolated and assume that our ‘circle’ has gotten smaller than before. As we’ve struggled to put the pieces together, one thing has become clear over and over again in my work focusing on learning within the larger community. Those with the desire to help greatly outnumber any request you may have. There are always experts ready to share their knowledge. There are families waiting to send photographs and ticket stubs from their past. There are pet store clerks happy to Zoom with your students to share a live feed of a snake feeding, and countless members of our broader community ready to pitch in if you’re willing to ask. Your teaching community is larger, wider and denser than you realize, and the bonds between you are likely stronger than ever before. Reach out. Ask for help. Share your stories.