Get Schooled: Spanish Classes Simulate Border Life

By Amber Lester Friday, May 14, 2010

I learned many important life lessons from a computer game called “Oregon Trail.”

“Oregon Trail” was an immensely popular computer game in the ’80s and ’90s that simulated a family’s journey westward. It was delightfully low-tech compared to contemporary games; it was slow and plodding and usually took the entire computer class period to play. As the family leader, I would choose my traveling companions, buy supplies and set out for the West Coast, full of optimism about the land I was going to make my own.

But early in the game, players are hit with an important, potentially life-changing decision. Should the wagon attempt to ford a river, or pay to board a ferry (which still had the potential to sink)? Every decision afterward was similarly complex, full of potential to go wrong. It was a game of risk, and my middle-school classmates and I were masterful at writing epitaphs as we buried our virtual kin along the trail.

It was a great exercise is learning how even the smallest decisions can affect your journey. It also taught me that sometimes, risks can yield great tragedies or even greater triumphs.

Students in Nancy Feigenbaum’s Spanish I class at Yorktown Middle School learned some of those lessons last week when they participated in a simulation of life on the border between Mexico and the United States.

Students from William and Mary designed the lesson and activities, based on the experience of visiting the U.S. Holocaust Museum. At the museum, visitors are given booklets bearing the names of people who experienced the Holocaust. As they travel through the museum, the visitors learn how their person might have been affected; the last page of the booklet reveals the person’s fate. It’s a smart way to encourage empathy, to have visitors walk in another person’s shoes.

The WM students had a much more literal experience of walking in another’s shoes over spring break this year, when they visited the Tucson/Nogales region of the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the most heavily trafficked and dangerous crossing points. The students met with humanitarian organizations, customs and courtroom officials, and immigration attorneys to learn about the complexities of immigration issues along the border.

When the students returned, they expressed interest in sharing the information with younger students, according to their professor, Jennifer Bickham Mendez. They decided to give the Yorktown Middle School students (and a class at Lafayette High School) personas as Mexican immigrants living in America. Then they gave the students several decisions to make, some with dire consequences.

Some of the students were told that their person was a legal immigrant, working on a visa. Others had illegally crossed the border to look for work. They were given three potential careers to choose from: working in construction, at a meat-packing plant or in landscaping. The students had to weigh the options; working in construction guaranteed more money, but only seasonal work, while working in a meat-packing plant was steady employment, but dangerous.

While the students considered their options, the WM students explained why so many people choose to leave their homes to start a new life in the U.S. They talked about the impact of NAFTA on Mexican corn farmers, the increasing violence from drug wars and the market for migrant workers in the U.S. They also explored Mexico’s own illegal immigration problem; thousands of people cross illegally into the country from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador every year.

Feigenbaum - Yorktown Middle's teacher of the year - says it was important not to try to change the students’ opinions, but to give them information to form their own ideas about immigration. “The students only know we have an immigration problem and they hate it,” she says. “They don’t understand the problem goes both ways. We wanted them to understand why people are coming here.”

At the end of the exercise, students were shocked to see how their decisions affected the fate of their characters. “They were saying things like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really made a bad choice,’” Feigenbaum says. “It was really neat to see them thinking like adults at all.”

She wondered if they would have empathy for their parents as decision-makers after seeing how one choice could leave their immigrant injured and unable to find work. Feigenbaum says she asked the students if they knew anyone who had made a choice to leave Mexico; at first, few raised their hands. Then she asked if they had seen any Latino construction workers or landscape workers at their homes, or eaten at a Mexican restaurant in the area, and soon, all the hands had shot up.

She said the lesson coincided perfectly with the school’s efforts to become an official International Baccalaureate middle school. The teachers are already running lessons that promote understanding how our country connects with the rest of the world. “We want them to open their own eyes,” Feigenbaum says. “Whatever opinion they have, we want them to have it for a good reason.”

Be true to your (new) school
Rising magnet students in James River Elementary’s International Baccalaureate program have the chance to meet and greet fellow students and families this summer.

The school already hosted two visits earlier this week, but another mini-visit and tour will be from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. on June 8. The school will also open its doors for a reception to kick off the year at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 2.

Enjoy the Strawberries
Matthew Whaley Elementary will host a Strawberry Festival from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday at the school on Scotland Street. The event will feature a dunking booth, cake walk, book walk, silent auction, raffles, giant inflatables, food vendors and more. Tickets may be used to purchase food and play activities and are four for $1 at the event. All proceeds will benefit the education of Matthew Whaley students.