Building Bridges Across Borders: Questions for the Classroom
by Aakanksha Gupta and Isabella Guerra Uccelli
Updated on February 11, 2019.
A recent article published by AZ Central explored the experiences of a group of 8 students from Brophy College Preparatory, a Catholic all-boys school in Phoenix, Arizona. The group went on a cross-border public service trip to help migrants in Nogales, Sonora. You can learn the entire story by reading the article and watching the video below.
A group of students from an all-boys Catholic school from Phoenix find out what life is like on the U.S.-Mexico border. Nick Oza, The Republic | Source: azcentral.com
Teaching Ideas:
- Based on what you’ve read, why do you think the school decided to go to Nogales for their public service field trip?
- Reading the student’s reflections on their experiences, what do you think they learned from their time in Nogales, Sonora?
- What do you think the trip might signify to the migrants? What makes you say that?
- As you reflect on the student’s experiences, what did you learn about borders and walls? What purposes do you think they serve? What impact do you think they have?
- What can we learn from the interactions between Father Pete Neeley, the Brophy students and the migrants?
- How do you think you might learn from someone who has had different experiences than you?
- How do our experiences create different types of privilege? How do these privileges shape our understanding of borders and walls?
Suggested Teaching Activities:
- Begin a think-pair-share activity to prompt your students to imagine what the border feels like for Nogales migrants and for the students from Phoenix. Ask them to represent this through a drawing or other visual aids.
- Consider incorporating Project Zero’s Step-in, step-out, step-back thinking routine to your classroom discussions on this article.
Choose: Identify a person or agent in the situation you are examining.
Step In: Given what you see and know at this time, what do you think this person might feel, believe, know, or experience?
Step Out: What else would you like or need to learn to understand this person’s perspective better?
Step Back: Given your exploration of this perspective so far, what do you notice about your own perspective and what it takes to take somebody else’s?