GOTTA GO! GOTTA GO!

You couldn’t miss them! Butterflies were everywhere during Parent Night at the Sullivan Migrant Summer School (SMSS) this July, where Migration was the theme.  Laminated butterflies hung from the ceilings, with one wing illustrating the life cycle of a butterfly and the other wing bearing the personal story of a student. Butterfly garlands decorated the walls. During presentation time, students from the upper grades demonstrated websites they had designed to explore and share their personal identity.

During the previous summer, the SMSS, coordinated and funded by the Mid-Hudson METS, was held at Benjamin Cosor Elementary School in Fallsburg, New York. As part of an arts project, each class completed a canvas that fit together to create a butterfly and gifted it to the METS, where it now hangs in the office.

This colorful and creative artwork inspired the METS Director to choose Migration (both human and animal) as a curriculum and project-based theme for Summer 2018.  She started with a children’s book that she uses in professional development to illustrate how migration is often a critical and necessary survival strategy. In Gotta Go! Gotta Go!, the life cycle of the monarch butterfly is told in simple language, showing how it knows that “I Gotta Go to Mexico.”

The 2018 SMSS curriculum team was enthusiastic about Migration as a theme and identified other relevant elementary books: La vida de una mariposa, Caterpillar to Butterfly and La Mariposa. A butterfly kit was purchased so students of all grades could get a first-hand glimpse of the caterpillars’ daily progress through their life cycle, culminating in their release outside as butterflies.

The upper grades read various materials about human migration, watched clips and movies about U.S. immigration, and listened to a presentation by a visiting Migration Policy expert. Texts included Mi Abuelita, a story comprised of letters from a newly relocated migrant boy to his grandmother back home. Students then wrote letters to family members who live in other countries.

The migration theme was reinforced through field trips: the younger grades went to the Bronx Zoo and among other things, visited the butterfly house, while the older grades visited Ellis Island. The integration of identity and migration was a powerful opportunity for students to reflect on their own racial and ethnic identity and begin to understand the external forces that shape their individual and collective development.