Social Justice Team Update

As ILA was gearing back up, each leadership team did an activity to welcome new students to the teams and set the tone for the new year.

Mrs Miriam, the Leader for the Social Justice team, heard of an idea for an activity from another staff member. This idea came from an organization called “World Hunger” and it’s called a poverty simulation. A poverty simulation requires various people to participate in a dinner. Some of the people are treated to a fancy sit down meal, and the others are told to sit on the floor and eat rice and beans. After hearing about this, Mrs. Miriam thought she would do her own poverty simulation with desserts.

When the students arrived to Mrs. Miriam’s class room she asked for two volunteers to be team captains. After the two team captains were selected those captains selected their groups. There was 2 in one group and 3 in another group. Those two groups were then led into another room where they were presented with a beautiful spread of fancy bowls, ice cream, brownies, and lots of wonderful toppings! Team 1 was told to go over to the table and sit down and then Mrs. Miriam served the team their choice of ice cream and toppings. Team 2 stood by the door and watched as Team 1 was treated to dessert. Then, Team 2 was told to go sit on the floor and they were able to pick just one little animal cracker and eat it!

Mrs. Miriam said that they all sat there for 10 minutes and it was very awkward in the room and the students could definitely feel the tension. One student in particular, Cameron who was on the team of ice cream eaters, sat in what Mrs. Miriam described to be as pure agony. Mrs. Miriam said that Cameron had a look on his face like “ you are not going to make me eat this in front of people!” Finally, after sitting there not eating anything Cameron sighed and ate the ice cream. Mrs. Miriam explained to me that she did not say anything to the students while all this was going on, because she really wanted them to “feel” what was going on.

When their time was up they headed back into their classroom to discuss what was going on. Mrs. Miriam started asking questions as to what they felt about the situation they had just come from. Cameron said it was very awkward and said that he felt guilty and wanted to give his ice cream to those who did not have any. Diamond, who was on the team of animal cracker eaters, said that it was unfair that one team got to eat ice cream. Mrs. Miriam asked the team captains how they felt about the groups they chose. Donte felt good about picking the group that got to eat ice cream, but Dillon said he felt guilty for picking the group who only got to eat animal crackers.

Mrs. Miriam was able to talk to the students about how the decisions they make every day affect those around us. She also talked about how people in poverty must feel like those who ate just the animal crackers every day! She also had the opportunity to talk about unfairness and gave a definition of Social Justice as righting wrongs. She then went into introducing what Social justice would be looking like for the new year. Mrs. Miriam introduced 3 main points Now-looking at what is happening now, New- Gods perspective, and How- How we can live out Gods perspective.

Mrs. Miriam feels that it is very important to find practical things that these students can do to affect those around them. I could not have been more excited to get this story from Mrs. Miriam, I hope you are as touched as I was.