Essex Elementary School

ESSEX — When sixth-grade social studies teacher Joanne Maino taught her students about the displaced Chinese in the wake of last year’s earthquake, and the exiles of war filling refugee camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, the children asked: “What can we do?”

Maino had a plan; the students would make picture books.

When Maino, a first-year teacher, developed the grade’s world geography curriculum, she decided to have the students create picture books to donate to a non-profit organization called Kids to Kids International. The organization, founded by children’s book author Pat Kibbe, sends school supplies and student-made picture books to refugee camps and oppressed children in more than 50 countries, according to the organizations Web site.

“The recognition is really pretty clear cut — right through to the core details of things,” Maino said of the children’s understanding of the crises they’re learning about.

“To them it’s not at all confusing,” she said. “They all just reached out and became very involved.”

Maino, who also teaches English, had her students begin working on the picture books in October as a cross-curricular assignment and as a way to tie her lessons into the district’s global education theme.

The theme, one of three this year, is designed to expand students’ understanding of other cultures’ diversity and languages, and “to link students to their peers around the world,” Superintendent of Schools Marcia O’Neil wrote.

Maino said her students wrote about animals, sports, the alphabet and other educational or cultural topics.

“We didn’t focus on personal stuff and what we have,” said Maino. “Instead, we focused on books that would help educate them and help them become aware of customs and cultures in our country.”

The students then worked on illustrations for their books in art class.

Maino said her sixth-grade class explained their projects and what they had been learning about to first-graders — so they, too, could make books to donate.

“It was very interesting, and we had to soften a lot of the language,” Maino said of having her students use computer presentations to teach younger students about the crises. “A lot of it was telling them what Kids to Kids is, what is a refuge camp is, and why kids would have to go.”

Maino says she plans have her class give a similar presentation to the third grade as well.

Her class taught the first graders that children in refuge camps need things like food, water and clothing — things that “we take for granted every day,” she said.

They also explained that children in refuge camps “need the people of the world to reach out and help them in may different ways,” said Maino.

Each first- and third-grader has been working on a book of their own to send, and Maino hopes to have all the books shipped out to the non-profit by the end of the year. Kids to Kids then sends the books, supplies and disposable cameras to the refuge camps with the help of volunteers, according the organization’s Web site.

The disposable cameras are included so the recipients can take pictures of themselves and their surroundings to send back to those who donated, the Kids to Kids site notes.

Maino said there’s no mistaking the positive reaction she’s seen from her students.

“‘This feels great,’” Maino says she hears. “‘I want to do this more, I want to volunteer and do more to help people.’”

Robert Cann can be reached at gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com.
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