My wife and I teach a high school course we designed ourselves called Global Studies. The goal of the course is to expand our students' horizons and introduce them to what we call the Big Beautiful World.
This entails an overview of the major "culture clusters" of the world -- Anglo, Nordic, Arabic, Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan African, Eastern European, South Asian, Southeast Asian, etc. -- what makes them unique and beautiful -- as well as following current events and important issues from these cultures as well as our own.
One of these great issues of our time is the worldwide refugee crisis. You might remember the adventures my wife and I had in 2016 and 2017 when we went to Greece to observe the Syrian refugee crisis up close, then the following year to work in the infamous Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesvos. (The above link is to one of a number of podcast episodes dedicated to these life-changing experiences.)
Don't let anyone tell you there are easy answers to the refugee question, let alone the broader, pressing immigration issue. Where we come down on the issue with our students, whatever theirs or our political bent, is this: If they're here, they deserve our kindness and respect and have stories we can learn from.
Last weekend provided an opportunity for our students to get an idea of what refugees face when thrust into unfamiliar and often dangerous situations. We took them to a refugee simulation experience called Race for Refuge, organized by Urban Promise Nashville.
The Saturday morning was divided into three phases:
We were divided into our teams, where we learned our fictitious identity as refugees, as well as the perilous situation we were facing. We then had to choose which belongings we would take, some of which were then taken from us.
Each "family" was sent to a series of "stations" representing the stages of being processed as refugees, from finding hand-me-down shoes to fetching water, from making makeshift toys for the kids to filling out paperwork in a foreign language. While there was a certain fun aspect to this "race" for these teenagers, they were all too aware that the real life situations these exercises represented are anything but fun.
A scavenger hunt took us to foreign-owned businesses in our city of Nashville, where the kids discovered the cultural diversity many of them had no idea existed. The checklist included tasting a new food, talking to an immigrant worker and finding out about their background, spotting international murals, and shopping in international markets where dozens of ethnicities come to shop.
Reading some of the students' journal entries after the fact, my wife and I were gratified, to say the least, by the fact that their eyes have been opened to the plight of the "89.3 million people worldwide who were forced to leave their homes in 2021 due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations". (unhcr.org)
In the words of more than one of the students, "I will never look at refugees the same way again."