To the teacher:
In today’s lesson, students will
- reflect on recent images of refugees from Ukraine
- reflect on perspectives about and from refugees from other parts of the world, using poetry
- compose some of their own poetry in response
The extension activities at the end of the lesson introduce additional refugee voices through poetry.
This lesson uses a circle format. See this introduction to circles. If you are not using a circle format, the activity can be adapted by inviting student responses through simple go-rounds.
Before introducing this lesson, consider the possible impact on your students. Be mindful of experiences your students may have had as displaced people, refugees, or as family members of refugees. Related experiences of students who have been displaced from their homes by natural disasters or fire, or those who aren’t safe in their homes or neighborhood, should be considered as well. Consider providing a trigger warning to give students a preface about the sensitive content in the lesson below.
And be prepared yourself by reviewing these guidelines for discussing upsetting issues.
Background on the Invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine, after a months-long military build-up on the border. Russian incursions and bombardments have battered Ukrainian cities in the months since then, resulting in thousands of deaths, many more injured, and millions of people having fled their homes.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are, still today, hunkered down in freezing dark basement shelters, with no food or water, awaiting humanitarian aid and a possibility for escape.
The Russian invasion, and Ukrainian armed response, has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe unseen in Europe since World War II. Investigators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who looked into numerous reports of rapes, abductions, and attacks on civilian targets by Russian forces, said that war crimes may have been committed.
Moscow had expected to overrun Ukraine and topple its government in a matter of weeks, but Ukrainian armed resistance has proved formidable and President Volodymyr Zelensky is still very much in power.
However, the toll on civilians grows by the hour. (See the latest updates from the New York Times here.) Half the nation’s 7.5 million children have been forced from their homes. Across eastern and southern Ukraine, cities and villages are in ruins. Russian forces have destroyed critical infrastructure, leaving vast swaths of the country without power, heat, and water.
Opening: Images of Ukraine
See Handout 1, which includes a quote by the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire, along with images from Ukraine.
Project the handout on the whiteboard or print the handout for students to use.
Invite students to consider the quote and look at the pictures. Ask them to reflect on what stories these pictures tell. What larger story might these be pictures of?
Send a talking piece around twice, inviting students to share:
- What picture were you most drawn to? Why? What might the story behind the picture be?
- What larger story might these pictures be about? What feelings do you associate with this story?
Summarize what you hear from students and explain that today’s lesson will be about the plight of refugees from Ukraine and other parts of the world.
Ask students to define what a refugee is.
Invite students’ associations with the word refugee and map their responses in a word web or word cloud.
Once you have recorded a good number of responses, ask students what they notice about the words in the web. Then work with students to build a definition of the word refugee.
To guide students’ thinking, you might reference the related word “refuge.” (Refuge is defined by Merriam Webster as: “shelter or protection from danger or distress” and/or “a place that provides shelter or protection.”
According to Merriam Webster, a refugee is
“one that flees” and “especially: a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution”
According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR:
“Refugees are persons who are outside their country of origin for reasons of feared persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order and, as a result, require international protection.”
Share with students that as of late March, the number of people fleeing Ukraine has grown to over 4 million, according to CBS News. The head of the U.N. refugee agency called it the fastest exodus of people in Europe since World War 2.
An Example of Solidarity
Ask students what they know or have heard about how the refugees pouring out of Ukraine have been treated in Europe and countries around the world.
Elicit or explain that people and governments across the globe have welcomed Ukrainians fleeing the violence and destruction.
- The European Union has allowed Ukrainian nationals the right to live, work, and access public services in E.U. countries for three years. European authorities have set up new housing for Ukrainian arrivals, and volunteers have offered arriving refugees food, clothing, and shelter.
- The Biden administration announced that the U.S. would welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.
Share that often, refugees from other countries who are also escaping war and violence have not been received so warmly. More than 34 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homeland as of the end of 2020. These include millions of people from Syria, Palestine, the Republic of Congo, and Yemen, as well as Afghanistan and other countries.
Share with students this quote by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, speaking about the response to Ukrainian refugees and other refugees:
“This level of solidarity should set the example for all refugee crises. Even as the Ukraine crisis intensifies, we must not forget the millions more children, women and men displaced by conflict, persecution, violence, and human rights abuses. In many other regions of the world – far too many – the devastation inflicted on millions of innocents is no less real and no less cruel. The right to seek and gain asylum is universal. It is not conditional on the color of your skin, your age, gender, beliefs or birthplace. Respect for refugee rights is not open to interpretation or negotiation.”
Ask students:
- What point is the UN High Commissioner making?
- How might the response to Ukrainian refugees “set an example” for all refugee crises?
Poetry as a Vehicle to Express Ourselves
Share with students that in 2017, medical students and faculty at Boonshoft School of Medicine responded to a U.S. immigration ban by performing a poem called "Refugees" by Brian Bilston.
Give students Handout 2, which includes the text of Bilston’s poem. (The poem is also included below.)
Play the video clip in two parts and invite students to read along with Brian Bilston’s poem.
Pause the clip at the 0:47 minute mark.
Send a talking piece around to invite students’ thoughts and feelings on the poem so far.
- What can bring people to look at the world from this perspective?
Now play the poem from the 0:47 minute mark until the end.
Send a talking piece again, inviting students’ thoughts and feelings on this part of the poem.
- What can bring people to look at the world from this perspective?
Poetry Response
Share this quote with students:
“For those who want to be heard by others, poetry has a particular power. Its emotional force is concentrated into a few essential words, and the rocket fuel of longing, hope or anger can be sheathed with the seductive beauty of language and imagery. These two elements together may seduce readers who would run a mile from a rant or an op-ed, dissolving their defenses into simple human empathy.”
- Sheila Hayman, documentary filmmaker, journalist, novelist, and coordinator of Write to Life
Explain that next, students will work in small groups to collectively compose their own poetry in responses to Brian Bilston’s poem.
Part 1:
Invite students to think about what they might want to say to the person whose perspective is like the first part of the poem. Ask students in each group to write a collaborative poem in response, one line per person at a time.
Part 2:
Invite students to think about what they might want to say to the person whose perspective is like the second part of the poem. In the same small groups, invite students to write a collaborative poem in response to this part of the poem, again one line per person at a time.
Alternatively, have students choose which response poem they’d like to work on in their small groups.
Back in the circle, invite students to read their poems (or parts of their poems) out loud.
Closing
Invite students to share one takeaway from today’s lesson or one idea or image that sticks with them.
Extension Activities
According to Sheila Hayman, Write to Life Coordinator:
“The most amazing thing about writing is that, with only a pen and paper, you can open up a boundless universe of the imagination; a place to nurture yourself with joy, jokes, beauty or just your own listening ear. For people like the writers in our group, often penniless, unable to work and in a dreadful prison of isolation and paralysis while they await the outcome of their asylum claim, this is a lifeline.”
Author and activist bell hooks said:
“A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are clinging to old hurts and wounds and that writing which offers to us a space where we are able to confront reality in such a way that we live more fully. Such writing is not an anchor that we mistakenly cling to so as not to drown. It is writing that truly rescues, that enables us to reach the shore, to recover.”
Below are links to three poems by and about refugees that provide us with further insights into their lives. Be sure to read or view the poems in advance to make sure they are appropriate for your students.
Invite students to pick one poem to focus on, then write a letter (in prose or poetry) in response. Ask them to think about what they might want to ask or share with the refugee/s from the poems, or their relatives.
1. Home, by Warsan Shire
(British-Somali poet, daughter of Somali refugees)
Text: Home, by Warsan Shire (scroll down to see an excerpt from "Home.")
2. Refuge, by JJ Bola (refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, resettled in England)
Video: Refuge Poem (performed) by JJ Bola
Text: Refuge, by JJ Bola
3. What They Took With Them, by Jenifer Toksvig
Jenifer Toksvig wrote What They Took With Them in 2015, inspired by stories and first-hand testimonies from refugees forced to flee their homes and the items they took with them.
Here the poem is performed by the actors Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley, Juliet Stevenson, Peter Capaldi, Stanley Tucci, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kit Harington, Douglas Booth, Jesse Eisenberg and Neil Gaiman
Video: What They Took with Them
Text: What They Took with Them
Refugees
by Brian Bilston
Part 1
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
Part 2
The world can be looked at another way
Do not be so stupid to think that
A place should only belong to those who are born there
These are people just like us
It is not okay to say
Build a wall to keep them out
Instead let us
Share our countries
Share our homes
Share our food
They cannot
Go back to where they came from
We should make them
Welcome here
They are not
Cut-throats and thieves
With bombs up their sleeves
Layabouts and loungers
Chancers and scroungers
We need to see them for who they really are
Should life have dealt a different hand
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
So do not tell me
They have no need of our help
(Shared with permission.)