Time has definitely gotten away from me this semester, but in November, my students heard from C-PP exchange student Korish. (I won't include students' full names on my blog.) Korish is from Pakistan, and he spoke to my English 10 classes about the dangers of the single story for him and his country.
After teaching us some basics about Pakistani culture and society, Korish addressed the stereotypes. He started with the misconception that Pakistanis ride camels to school. Apparently a student at his school asked him this during one of his first weeks. Though he was taken aback by the question initially, it's become of his presentation that he uses to help students become more comfortable talking about misconceptions and stereotypes. As he showed us pictures of his home city, students realized that Corning is small town in comparison and Campbell, a tiny village. Korish went on to address the misconception that Pakistan is in the Middle East and gave students a quick geography lesson about southeast Asia. The majority of Korish's presentation was about breaking down the stereotypes of terrorism that are common in the U.S. He confronts the stereotype that Muslims are terrorists head-on. Keep in mind that Korish is only sixteen and is here studying on scholarship. That is a tremendous undertaking for someone so young, but his talk with my student was enlightening and, I think, effective. He shared the Pakistani perspective on effectively combatting terrorism and emphasized that Pakistan has been affected by terrorism far longer than the U.S. He also reminded students that there is no terrorist nation or religion: nations and religions want peace, terrorists do not. To emphasize his point, Korish talked about local areas his host parents won't allow him to go because of violence. Students agreed that this was a dangerous area to avoid, so Korish asked why, if there are violent places in the U.S. can't there be peaceful places in other areas of the world? I think this example helped students understand his point about not judging others. Although we've been studying Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDTalk, "The Danger of a Single Story" in class, Korish's presentation added a layer of relevance. I'm grateful to him for his willingness to be a peer educator to my students, and I plan to continue to invite student presenters to my classes in the future.
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Mrs. ShepardTeacher, ELL tutor, traveler, hiker, reader, and aspiring citizen of the world. Archives
April 2019
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