This week in Grade 8, we celebrated the end of a wonderful period of inquiry into our family history and culture by enjoying students’ documentary-style videos. ALL submissions were incredibly creative and personal. Students worked hard researching and building their family trees, going back to their great-great grandparents. Each of them recorded wonderful interviews with older family members and through them collected some beautiful stories about what life was like in the grandparents time They also gathered interesting stories about the origins of their names, what was like for their mothers to adapt to the cultural differences she found in the new governate of Liwa, and what it was like to live through the Cyclone of 2007. Students recorded many of these interviews in their home languages, and then added English subtitles to their video.
The most beautiful part of this project was that no two documentaries was the same. The individuality of each student, their creativity and their personal histories, shone through. I am excited for them to share their wonderful work with their peers in the coming weeks and am grateful to all the family members at home who so openly engaged in this process.
Thank you Omar, Hashim, Saba, Firas & Joaquim for sharing your stories with us.