Printer-friendly versionOne of the simplest ways to foster compassion and understanding in our classrooms is to give students opportunities to share stories about their lives. By communicating and listening, students can break down stereotypes and see each other as real people. This can be done through curriculum-related projects such as personal narrative and poetry or as part of a daily class meeting.
I’ve found particular success using the “neighborhood map.” I typically assign this at the beginning of the school year as a get-to-know-you activity, but it can be done at any time during the school year.
I ask students to define and draw a map of their neighborhoods. Maybe it’s the street where they live, the block, a section of town or perhaps the entire town if it’s small. I ask students to highlight and identify parts of their neighborhood that have significance for them. Sometimes these places go unnoticed by most people, but may have a special connection for the student. Maybe it’s a place where they hang out with friends, the spot where they fell off a bike and broke an arm, or where they go to be alone. When their maps are finished (complete with title, color and key), they take turns presenting them to the class. Their presentations are followed by a time for respectful questions and comments.
In addition to learning about each other, creating neighborhood maps also gives me a chance to know more about my students. I found out that one of my most troublesome seventh-grade boys, who struggled in school and frequently acted out, loved exploring an urban creek by his house. He lit up when I asked him about the animals he’d seen there, which easily led to a writing assignment later. Another boy, whose social awkwardness often alienated him from his classmates, revealed that he had two neighborhoods because his parents had recently separated. This resulted in several compassionate connections from classmates, who also knew what it was like to have divorced parents.
One of my most memorable experiences came when a boy, who had been adopted from Liberia at age 9, asked if he could draw his village in Africa. He spent days crafting his map and reliving memories from his early childhood. During his presentation, he told stories of playing soccer barefoot, learning how to cook from his grandmother over an open fire, and what it was like to run free all day with no adult supervision. His classmates asked many questions and learned a lot about what it is like to grow up in another culture.
Celebrating diversity is not just about recognizing other cultures and ethnicities. It is also about acknowledging that we all have rich and complex stories with varied pasts and personal struggles. The more we know about each other’s lives, the easier it is to accept and understand.
Anderson is a middle school humanities and interdisciplinary studies teacher in Oregon.
Comments
I love your articles and your
I love your articles and your thoughts! Thank you for being an amazing educator and for teaching more than what's in the textbooks to our students. Keep up the amazing and important work.
Thanks for reading, Rhianna!
Thanks for reading, Rhianna! I appreciate the encouragement and kind words.
I developed a similar
I developed a similar activity, but as I am a preservice teacher and haven't yet gotten to implement the activity. I tied in technology by using Google Earth to show the school's neighborhood. I tried to figure out how to be sensitive to students who are currently experiencing homelessness and decided the assignment would be to make a map of a place that is special to the student in general (not necessarily just their neighborhood); leaving it open in this way could allow students to share whatever they're comfortable sharing.
Thank you Sarah. I'm
Thank you Sarah. I'm planning to add this activity to an opening series of lessons for my 10th grade world history class that what maps reveal about the perspective / bias of the mapmaker. I usually show the Peters Projection and the "Upside Down" map of the world. This year I also plan to show students some of the writing/maps in "Strange Maps" by Frank Jacobs. His book includes lots of examples of maps that reveal unique perspectives and maps that combine art and cartography. Jacobs' stories might be inspiration for students to take a personal map of their neighborhood or homeplace to a new level in terms of expression. We'll see!
Thanks for reading, Miriam!
Thanks for reading, Miriam! And thanks for sharing your own resources. I'll definitely look for Frank Jacobs' book.
There is a fantastic book
There is a fantastic book called Creating Welcoming Schools: A Practical Guide to Home-School Partnerships by JoBeth Allen. I used this as a text book for a Master's in Education course in Family, School, and Community Partnerships that I taught for several years to first and second year K-12 teachers at the University of San Diego. I had the teachers complete the assignments in the book as if they were their own students--and one of those assignments included drawing their own childhood neighborhood map as part of creating their own cultural memoir/autobiography--which was their final project for the class. It was extremely powerful and may launched this project in the classes immediately and brought their student's maps into share with us.
This is a practitioner's dream of a book--as it offers really engaging ways to interact with students that celebrates their family, community, and culture. In Chapter 2: Writing Cultural Memoirs, drawing the neighborhood map is included as a variation that one can include as part of the memoir. The teachers were asked to labele their personal "power" places located within their childhood neighborhood (if they had more than one--they picked just one to draw)--places that held a lot of importance for them as children--like a church, a neighbor that mentored them, their school, their best friends and the places that they avoided as well. It was powerful stuff.
I collected all kinds of children's books that focus on different kinds of maps--some from the bird's view, some from a recent immigrant's view, one you can create online which is personal. These are great it share with kids to help them see all the ways maps are used and made before they begin the project. LOVED it! After completing a cultural memoir, these teachers never viewed their students the same way. They told me it had changed who they were and how they viewed their own life and the lives of others.
Melissa, could you post a
Melissa, could you post a link to the site where personal maps can be created online. I work in a technology forward environment and this would be a great resource for me and my students. Thanks!
I will definitely look for
I will definitely look for this book! I teach at a school that develops curriculum through a place-based (or community-based) lense, so this looks like perfect fit. Thanks for the tip and thanks for reading!
Yeah, this is a super idea.
Yeah, this is a super idea. A teacher in our district had his students complete this class assignment years ago and it is how we found out how many kids DIDN'T live in our district. It was one of the only ways to remove the freeloaders from our school.
No wonder some students are
No wonder some students are hesitant to be open about their lives and experiences and don't trust their teachers. They appear to have good reason in your school.
Just what I needed! I was
Just what I needed! I was looking for a theme for my next year, Neighborhoods is it. My school is part of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, my students are in town temporarily while a family member (or the student themself) is in treatment here. Students come and go throughout the year and I am always looking for ways that they might connect with each other.
Thanks for the reminder of
Thanks for the reminder of this activity that I stopped having time for under the constraints of testing and teaching content. However, as a geography teacher, I would like to encourage fellow colleagues to be more specific when referring to African countries similar to how we refer to European ones. For the boy who spent his early childhood in an "African village," why not say a village in Lesotho or Tanzania or Mali, at the least, so that are students can view Africa as diverse, much as they do Italy, Spain, Norway or Poland in Europe?
I use this same strategy in
I use this same strategy in Spanish and ESL classes. Students create a class schedule (electronic or paper) with information about their class size, teachers, class demographics in each time slot and then map campus (electronic map from school website or drawn by student) showing their daily routines, favorite places on campus. Students have color coded their days, places, provided informational keys and then write paragraphs about their classes. It is helpful to link difficult prepositions of location vocabulary to real life situations in students' lives and also begin and sustain conversations in student groups. We find out who is studying what and informal study groups spring up outside of class in Spanish, ESL and other subjects as well. We learn more about where students in class like to "hang out" too.