Human Migration — An exploration by Northstar learners

Currently  our middle school learners are exploring Human Migrations. I believe it  is critical for kids to understand the idea of migrations from multiple  perspectives, whether it is because of economic exigencies or  incentives, war zones, ethnic conflicts, or other reasons. In a world  where we are quick to judge and make someone “other”, awareness of and  sensitivity towards other perspectives will go a long way in making a  peaceful world.

These  explorations are 6 weeks long(sometimes longer) and we integrate  multiple learning areas within this unit. There are no textbooks that we  can use as reference for any of our explorations. The planning for  explorations is difficult and long but a rewarding experience. Four to  six educators from different domains (particularly language and social  sciences) sit together for hours to work out a teaching sequence. The  background knowledge that educators must bring to it is enormous. As  educators we ourselves go on an exploration of these topics and share  our ideas and experiences which then can be translated into teaching  sequence.