ugh

today we, again, got basically nothing done. except for when i read them an article in the paper about the beating incident and we talked about it.

the kid is an immigrant from liberia (like about 20%ish of the kids at our school) who spent most of his life in a ghanan refugee camp. he had never experienced personal violence until monday - after he had been in the US for a total of SIX weeks.

the article was interesting and brought out a lot of issues (email or comment if you want the article; i don't want to post the link b/c it uses the name of my school, etc on there and i need to stay as unplacable as possible ;). after reading it, we got into a big conversation about africa and refugee camps, wars and civil wars, slavery and the US, racism and bigotry, martin luther king jr and freedom, empowerment and education ...

it was quite good. unfortunately, about half my class didn't even see how all of this affects their lives, their history, their situations. i want them to understand all this stuff - but they don't really seem to want to.