"a house, not perfect

but bout it bout it. her living room big

enough for the whole West Side"

-Kevin Coval, How to Be Down

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago was another place my classmates and myself volunteered our time for. Together, we created a curriculum meant for middle school and high school refugee youth in order to explain some of the more confusing and complicated aspects of American culture. Some of the topics included were: drugs and addiction, health, American politics, and the college application process. I was in charge of creating a lesson plan for cultural identity and for values.

Topic: Cultural Identity

Pick any two activities. If there’s enough time, could do the third.

Activity: 1

Time: 10 minutes

Materials:

Lots of post-it note stacks

Large, blank area

Could be just a wall, or large chunk of paper, could draw the outline of a person on a blackboard

Markers

Action: “What makes you who you are?” Have everyone take a couple minutes to write down a 2 or 3 (or more) answers on their post-it notes. One post-it note for each answer. Whenever a person finishes they can stick the post-its where ever they want on the wall/paper/blackboard. After everyone is done, allow time for everyone to get up and walk along to wall to see the other answers

Discussion: Was there anything you noticed up there a lot? Was there anything you hadn’t thought of that you saw that you also identified with? Anything that particularly resonated with you? Could ask one at a time. Or you could ask more broadly if anyone noticed anything interesting.

Activity: 2

Time: 15 minutes (can make it shorter or longer depending)

Materials:

Large sheets of paper

Markers

Action: Have everyone get into small groups and have them fold the paper in half. Have them all share what country they or their families are from. Together, have them draw/write different pictures, symbols, or words of what they think of when they think of the country they are from on the top half. For the bottom half: Ask if any of those things that they drew helped make them who they are now. Have them draw symbols, pictures, or words for how they manifest that.

Discussion: Have all groups share with the rest of the students.

Activity: 3

Time: 10-15 minutes

Materials:

Strips of paper, enough to write a word on, and enough for 7 strips to go to each student

Markers

Action: Give each person 7 strips of paper. Have them write down their gender, religion, race, nationality, orientation, ableism. May have to define some words. Could also have them do class or age or other typical identity markers if you would like to, but remember to give them the correct corresponding number of strips of paper. You could also have them use one or two strips to write whatever part of their identity they would like on. Have them split into a group of 5 ones that are important to them and 2 that aren’t. Have them put aside the two. From the 5 remaining, have them again sort 3 into important and 2 into not important. Have them put aside the 2 non-important. They should be left with what they might consider the three most important parts of their identity. You may have to do more rounds or bigger splits if you choose to use more than 7 identity markers.

Discussion: Have them pair up and share the three identity markers they were left and their reasoning for why they did or did not take away some of the strips. Ask if anyone would like to share what ended up being most important to them. Did anyone rearrange their strips into a different order after taking some identity markers away? Did anyone have something that they felt was very important to their identity but was not ask to be written down on a strip (examples might be political affiliation,  familial position, etc.)

Topic: Values

Activity: 1

Time: 5-7 minutes

Materials: None

Action/Discussion: Asking some opening questions: What are some examples of values? How would you define ‘a value’. Where do you think we get our values from? How do we portray our values in our everyday lives? This will start the conversation and also helps define what ‘values’ means going forward for the rest of the session.

Activity: 2 – Individual Values

Time: 10 minutes

Materials: Handout https://www.nwabr.org/sites/default/files/ValuesActivities.pdf

Action: Have students fill out page 35 of the attached PDF. After they’ve finished hand out page 36 of the PDF and have them fill it out.

Discussion: Ask if they agreed with the value characteristic they got on page 36. Were there other values that stood out? If people would like to, they can share which values they found were important to them.

Activity: 3 - Cultural Values

Time: 20 minutes

Materials: Large sheets of paper

Markers

Action:

Have everyone split into small groups.

Premise: Earth has finally made contact with aliens. The group of students here have been selected to represent the different peoples and values of Earth. Due to differences in intergalactic time, we only have 10 minutes before the space shuttle is coming to pick us up. Within your group, draw 6 objects that will display the different cultural values of people in the group. The goal is to share what the people of Earth value with the newly discovered planet.

Discussion: Have each group share their poster. Ask if there are any values that seem to be represented across all the groups, and why that may be. Could ask if there are values that seemed to be unique to the different places people are from.

Topic: Workshop Held by Students

Activity: 1 – Dream Map

Time: 20 minutes

Materials: Sheets of Paper

Markers

Action: Have each student split paper into thirds. In each sections, have the write or draw where they came from, where they are, and where they want to go. Can be as specific or as broad as they want.

Discussion: Have everyone share their poster. Depending on how many students are there, may take a while.