Insiders and Outsiders: Understanding Identity, Belonging, and the Movement of People Throughout the World

Insiders and Outsiders: Understanding Identity, Belonging, and the Movement of People Throughout the World

This year, Mead’s seventh and eighth graders are participating in an integrated humanities program that emphasizes connections across disciplines and curriculum areas. As part of this ongoing inquiry, students are currently studying the Holocaust and the refugee crisis that followed. They are reading Night, by Elie Wiesel, and I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a play by Celeste Raspanti inspired by the poetry and artwork created by children imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto outside of Prague. In the coming weeks, students will examine the mixed—and often insufficient—global response to the refugee crisis caused by the Holocaust.

Throughout this work, students are grappling with the consequences of hatred, discrimination, and the abuse of power. Equally important, they are exploring the transformative power of empathy, courage, and standing up for others. As a learning community, we place great emphasis on care and connection, continually practicing what we call “holding one another’s stories and hearts” in the classroom.

Last week, seventh and eighth graders traveled into New York City to visit the Anne Frank exhibition at The Center for Jewish History. The exhibit included a full-scale recreation of the Secret Annex and featured original artifacts from the Frank family history. In the days following the visit, students engaged in thoughtful, informed, and sensitive discussions, making connections between the museum experience and their studies of Irish and Chinese immigration, Jim Crow–era legal discrimination, and even contemporary events affecting individuals and families during recent ICE crackdowns across the United States.

Mead students are stretching and growing in profound ways. This group has come together as a powerful, dynamic group of diverse individuals in pursuit of understanding and finding ways they can make meaning of, and become active participants within, the world around them.

Amy Kyle Parker