Parents visited the classroom this past Wednesday. We talked about thinking symbolically and the power of the metaphor to facilitate higher level thinking. Then the parents got to do some of their own work.
"Think about the emotional journey of an immigrant, the journey of the heart. How can you represent all or part of the journey symbolically?"
The children came back to school the next day to discover the parents' creations. We spend time thinking and discussing the representations. Actually, we spend a whole hour looking at them and talking about them. It is more than one blog can manage, so here are a few.
Kali: They made green children because they were multi
cultural and they had two different cultures, not just one because if the
orange culture is its own culture and the blue culture is its own culture, then
they are technically making a new culture when you make it green.
Max: Then if even one orange person came over here, there could be hundred of green people because I more orange people come then maybe one of these orange people could marry another blue person. We Would end up getting a bunch of different cultures that you didn’t even have in the first place if just a few people didn’t immigrate. And it all started with just a few people immigrating here.
Cameron: The leaves, I like how she used the leaves because
if you are like on a sail boat trying to seek freedom …. when the leaves fall
from the tree, the wind could blow them away. Just like if a sail ship is
crossing the ocean for a certain destination, the wind could blow them away.
For example, the Mayflower was actually attempting to land in Jamestown.
Andrea: Sometimes you may end up where you weren’t
intending.
Henry: When a leaf falls, I think that means when one leaf
falls, leaves kind of spread. The first leaf starts all of the others. I think
that means that if only one or two people land in a place that no one else has
been before, they can make a whole settlement and make a civilization.
Henry: What happens if someone falls down the tree? It is like
climbing the tree to Ellis Island but when they get there, someone says, “No,
you can’t come!” so they fall back down the tree. I picture this never-ending
tree with tons of paths and ways and what I think he means by perspective is
that you can look down as past images of your life.
Aliza: I feel like once you get here [pointing to the three
colored paddles in the middle of the tree] you have to choose which path to
take.
Joe: When you get to the middle maybe you don’t have a job
but you have friends and you have a nice place to live. Even though you really
want a job, you still feel like you want to stay.
Andrea: You perspective changes along the way?
Mason: What happens when you get to the top of the tree? Do
you get back down?
Henry: I keep picturing a never ending tree, like it keeps
growing as you grow. I picture that the tree is your life… like your fortune or
something.
Rose: I think it is really interesting. I feel like the blue
panel is when they just see them, the red panel is when they are transitioning
and the yellow panel is like, “Hey we can see her clearer now!
Henry: I’m not sure if the panels have to go in order.
Everyone has a different perspective. Like what if someone sees them like this
[put the blue panel on] and someone else sees them like this [puts the red
panel on] and someone else sees them like this [puts the yellow panel on].
Andrea: So you are saying that rather than this person
having different panels throughout, the people looking have the different
panels? Someone sees everything with the red panel. Someone else looks through
the yellow…?
Kali: I was thinking that maybe the blue panel meant, “I
don’t really know this person.” The yellow means, “ Oh, we’re friends.” And the
red is like, “ I hate you!”
Andrea: So maybe the different panels represent different
emotions? Maybe one of them would be a prejudice.
Max: What I kind of thought was that you could have cross
panels. You could have purple [puts the red and blue together] . It gets really
dark. Then he almost becomes invisible to you. It is not going to help you, so you want to kind
of try to take the panel away from your eye. You want to tug it off.