c15md

On the ship the Amistad,
I wait.
Wait for things to change.
To get better. To go home.
I think of home, and I wait.

This is one of the poems that a kid wrote in Ms. Edinger’s
House for a project that they did on Forced Immigration.

They did a lot of other things, like reading their teacher, Ms Edinger’s book. Ms. Edinger’s book was about a girl named Sarah Margru Kinson, one of the four children on the ship the Amistad.

Also, one of the other students, whose dad is from Mali, Africa, brought in some cloth, bags, necklaces and jewels.

Also, a poet named Natasha Trethewey came into the children’s class and read them some of her poems. After that, they wrote a poem together about Sarah Margru Kinson and then each of them wrote a poem a bout another person on the Amistad. The Amistad was one of the last slave ships to travel across the Atlantic before slavery was made illegal. A few weeks later, Natasha came in again to listen to the poems that the kids wrote.

Another thing that happened and that had to do with forced immigration was a slideshow that the kids saw. It had to do with Olavdah Equaino and their teacher. It had to do with their teacher because she lived in Sierra Leone and she took pictures that she put on the slideshow. It had to do with Olavdah Equaino because he lived in Sierra Leone and he lived in Africa and he got made into a slave.

“ I thought that this unit was interesting and I learned a lot from it,” said one of the students in Ms. Edinger’s class.

“I thought that the curriculum and ideas that my teacher came up with were amazing and I had a lot of fun learning about forced immigration,” said another one of Ms. Edinger’s students.

Maybe when Ms. Edinger’s book comes out, you can read it! This took place in New York in 2007, from January all the way to the beginning of March.

It was a lot of fun!