New intercultural link up with UK secondary school
At the Hands up Project, we love doing intercultural link ups between young people in different places in the world. You can read in a book about what it's like to live in a particular place but it all becomes so much more engaging, and the learning is much richer when you actually hear about it from young people of your age who live there themselves.
We did our first one more than four years ago between pupils at Kevics secondary school in Totnes, UK, and students at New Khan Younis Prep girls UNRWA school in Gaza. It was organised by long-standing HUP volunteer in Gaza, Amal Mukhairez. I dare you to watch the video below without being moved to tears.
So I was especially excited when a few days ago I had a really nice phone call with Ruth Sheard-Pearson, the assistant head teacher of Hazel Wood High School in Bury in the North of England. Ruth has an inspiring plan for an intercultural link up between young people in schools in Palestine and all of their classes in Grades 7, 8 and 9. We would love to be involved of course!
Pupils are being asked to prepare a piece of creative work to be performed or presented to our students in Palestine in a live link up. So we're looking for classes of students of a similar age (11-15) who they can link to and who can present something back to them. We'll make sure that there is plenty of time for students to share questions and experiences too.
Here are Ruth's ideas for what the students' presentations could involve:-
The link up will last for an hour and it will take place at some point in the UK school day (11-5 Palestine time ) in the week beginning Monday 29th March (Monday to Thursday). If you're a teacher and you'd like your 11-15 year old students to be involved, please send us an email to info@handsupproject.org telling us the grade and the number of students who'd like to take part, as well as an idea of what you'd like to do. It could be some of Ruth's ideas above, or it could involve a performance of a remote play, or something else. We'll need up to 5 classes for each of the three grades, so there are plenty of opportunities for lots of Palestinian students to be involved but please get in touch as soon as possible to reserve your place and so that the students have sufficient time to prepare.