Monday, November 25, 2013

XYSTER

An xyster is an instrument one uses to scrape bones. Seems gross.

In other news, today in 6th grade Humanities class we talked about migrant children. We just finished reading The Circuit by Francisco Jiménez. Also, we've been working on ways to develop and assess empathy in our students. Turns out, that's kind of hard to do. We've been thinking about perspective-taking as a way to display empathy. To that end, kids took on the perspective of one of the stakeholders in the CARE Act, HR 3564 and wrote a letter to try to persuade the Minnesota senators to support their opinion. Tricky stuff.

The CARE Act is not yet a law. It's probably not an option at this point; however, I'd really like the U.S. to take more of an interest in the health of migrant farm workers. Especially the kids. We can start by viewing The Harvest [la cosecha]. Then, we can decide what to do after that.

3 comments:

LH said...

This is great work with the 6ers. There's a book probably out of print now called Voices From the Fields. Migrant kids telling their stories. If you google "Augustino Nieves" you'll get some great articles about this 13 year old who spoke to Congress about the condition of farm worker kids. Here's one we used from Rethinking Globalization:

http://books.google.co.il/books?id=gfv2NePkYngC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=Rethinking+Schools+Augustino+Nieves&source=bl&ots=BsM6-25wKn&sig=u9dNT75nYOAxdKGYsg6FvRi0wb0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Mz-UUvXKHsmV7AaCjoDoBQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Rethinking%20Schools%20Augustino%20Nieves&f=false

You probably have seen all this stuff already, but I get so excited about it. It would be cool to put some of the letters on a web page and then put any responses on there too.

You're awesome, possum.

KC said...

I don't know about this stuff. So thanks a million!!! This Humanities gig is really cool, but it also pulls you in a million directions, so it's good to have someone looking out.

Also, last week was NCTE, so I super missed you, lh. My boss went. I didn't go. It's in D.C. next year. Who's in?

LH said...

Me.