Allen ISD Where Eagles Soar Magazine Summer 2018 | Page 13

The Great
Escape
Students learn what
it was like to escape
Germany during WWII
E
ach year, Melissa Jackson has her eighth-grade
English class at Curtis Middle School read
“Parallel Journey,” the story of a young Jewish
woman trapped in Nazi Germany. Inevitably her students
would ask Jackson the same question: “Why didn’t Jewish
families just leave the country?” Jackson would always try
to explain, but then she thought “why don’t we show the
students how hard it was to leave?”
Jackson decided to bring the story alive by hosting
Emigration Simulation, a class activity that grouped
students into small families. Each family was handed
a passport, some fake money, and told to find a way to
escape the country. Students had to complete several
items on a checklist, such as obtaining medical records or
birth certificates, before they could purchase a ticket out
of the country.
Acquiring every item on the checklist was an
intentionally frustrating process. Teachers and
administrators manned each station and confused
the students by sending them on divergent tasks or
overcharging them for services. Many of the students
didn’t know who they could trust, and one family
contemplated escaping after they were detained by
History teacher Doug Key. The students were overjoyed
when they finally realized that Key actually wanted to
help by providing them with extra cash.
“Even if you did everything you
needed to do, there was no guarantee
you could escape. A lot of it was luck,
and we experienced that in the project.”
really let us see what it was like for Jewish people and what
they had to go through back then,” eighth-grader Shreyas
Chandra said. “Even if you did everything you needed to
do, there was no guarantee you could escape. A lot of it
was luck, and we experienced that in the project.”
Making a story from 80 years ago come alive is no easy
task, but Jackson is committed to helping the characters in
her classroom novels jump off the page.
“When students can relate something to their own
world, they become much more engaged,” Jackson said.
“I want my students to know that we’re not just reading a
book, but that we’re learning about our world.”
Curtis Principal Sonya Pitcock inspects birth certificate applications
during the Emigration Simulation.
“It’s so important for these students to be able to relate
and understand that this isn’t just a story in class, but real
life,” Jackson said. “Some of the students were frustrated
because of the lack of instruction, but that was all by
design. It was not a clear cut process back then, and we
tried to emulate that.”
The project opened the eyes for some of the students
and showed them that escaping a country wasn’t as easy
as ordering an airline ticket online.
“I’ve never done anything like this in class before, and it
Curtis Assistant Principal Anthony Arnold inspects a family’s
passport.
13