After hearing about the devastation in Haiti and seeing the vivid images brought to the front pages of all of our newspapers, magazines and billboards, I thought to myself, how can we explain this to our kids and how are schools going discuss this disaster with students?
As reports from Haiti continue to come in, so do some amazing stories from parents, students and schools. Young preschool students are drawing posters “Help Haiti”, middle school students are forming organizations to raise money through student vs. staff basketball games and bake sales, and College and University students promote fundraising events with Facebook and Twitter.
As we continue to see the death toll, violence and devastation in Haiti rise, it’s reassuring to see students across Canada joining forces to bring aid and help in some way. We’d like to help you raise more money. Tell us what you’re doing so we can help spread the word.
How to discuss the Haiti Disaster with Kids
I came across a great blog post on eduTOPIA by Elena Aguilar “How to Discuss the Haiti Disaster with Your Students”. In the post, Elena shares some ideas on how parents and teachers can speak about this tragedy and what we can learn from it. A few ideas include:
- Provide students with a history of Haiti so they can better understand the situation
- Teach children to analyze media coverage from various points of view
- Organize a drive to collect donations
The Globe and Mail also put together a great story with some ideas on how parents can help their children better understand the awful situation. The first step for parents? “Acknowledge that it is awful.”
We’d like to hear what you’re doing. Please share.
Agnes Stawicki
Agnes is the Managing Editor, Special Projects at Our Kids Media. We invite you to subscribe to our Our Kids Newsletter for Parents.
Follow Me:
[...] living.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe January 12th earthquake in Haiti has touched all of us. Since we first blogged about the relief works focused on this Caribbean island we have been trying to draw attention to [...]