By Maria-Nefeli Andredaki,
Following up my “Talking to my students about police brutality” article, I was surely not going to shy away from any more controversial topics in my classroom. As I’ve said already, children learn the target language best by speaking about topics they find interesting.
As we all know, the refugee crisis in Greece is a bottomless pit of mistreatment and hatred. From the Moria camp in Lesvos, which was established in 2013 to the pushbacks evidently happening on several islands, it is important for these kids, who rarely watch the news, to be exposed to the reality of the situation. One of the biggest challenges, in fact, is the racist and xenophobic opinions that young students have been indoctrinated to believe from their family environment. Most Greek people are fed up with the financial crisis, the inflation, and the lack of support, which often leads to scapegoating refugees that “take their jobs”.
Since my main mission was to awaken their empathy, which is often dulled by the massive amounts of information they receive daily, I started off with an article about a teenage refugee (almost the same age as them) and their journey through the many countries they had to visit and be kicked off from, including Greece. They seemed really surprised that someone their age could have such a difficult and unsafe life, and kept asking questions about why and how someone could manage to persevere and fight for a better future. It was very emotional for me too, seeing them empathize with someone they’ve never met through reading and storytelling.
Thanks to the article, we got to talk about the terms “refugee”, “immigrant”, “government” and “asylum”. We watched interviews of the three elderly ladies of Lesvos, who took care of refugees and were even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. The students were able to listen to the interviews in their mother-tongue and comment on them in the target language, using new vocabulary. We wrote our own “A day in my life as a refugee” diary and tried to get in their shoes just for a few minutes.
As a literature fanatic, I could not complete the lesson without incorporating a book. For the specific level of the students, I decided to bring one of my favorite graphic novels, called “When Stars Are Scattered”, by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. The graphic novel takes place in a refugee camp in Kenya, where the author of the novel, Omar and his younger brother Hassan, are found as orphaned refugees from Somalia. The graphic novel depicts the struggles of two extremely young refugees, including the constant search for their mother, Omar’s responsibility to take care of his brother, who has some kind of disability, and his journey to getting educated. Omar has to juggle being a caretaker and going to school, in order to secure a better future for himself and his brother. The book also showcases the problems caused by bureaucracy, sexism, and racism.
Teachers of all kinds must never forget their primary role; to shape and educate the next generation, so that they have a better, more just life than we did or currently have. Cultivating empathy and critical thinking towards subjects such as the refugee crisis, going against everything that is force-fed to us, and humanizing the objectified is truly what matters. Being able to do so in the target language is a much appreciated bonus.
References
- Greece: Ongoing Pushbacks and Tragedies – More Reports Highlight the Country’s Inhumane and ‘Failing’ Asylum System – ECtHR Rules Against the Authorities. ecre. Available here
- My life as a teenage refugee. Dazed. Available here
