Teaching Human Rights

As a teacher of human rights to snarky, know-it-all preteens, I would have my students enter the classroom but I would not acknowledge them. On the board in English, it would say “First day of Human Rights class.” Then, after everyone is seated I would have out a form to apply for asylum in the United States. However, the form would be written in Creole. “You have 5 minutes to complete this form!” I would yell. After the time is up, I would collect all forms whether finished or not. I would call each student up and read their form and if they did not answer a question (correct or not), I would say, “Asylum denied!” and tell to sit down. Once the exercise is finished, I would ask my students how it felt to be a refugee in a country where you do not know the language. Then, I would have the students participate in a class discussion about how it made them feel as well as think about how most refugees feel.

Then I would transition into the academic portion of the lesson by explaining a simple definition of what human rights are and asking the students some examples of human rights. Since the refugee crisis is a hot topic in current events, I would spend most of the lesson focusing on the violation of human rights of refugees. Maybe I would include poetry or short stories of those whose rights have been violated because they were a refugee. Also, I would ask students if the Muslim Ban in 2017 is considered a human rights violation against Syrian refugees. Finally, I would close the lesson with the spoken poem by all of those celebrities sponsored by the UNHCR.

http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/edumat/hreduseries/hrhandbook/activities/2.htm