Our Precious Cargo

We were tasked by our admin to create culturally responsive and meaningful door decorations in view of the holidays, and the timing could not have been better. My Grade 5/6 class had just finished the Precious Cargo Artifact Gallery Walk, and I learned so much about them through their choices. We made our own origami boxes and added some other packaging and used a peint out of the Precious Cargo objects chosen by each student to decorate our classroom door. Our door is a portal to items my students care about deeply.

Precious Cargo was something that I turned from a homework assignment that I had come across into a project that I revisit often. I have done it as a Building Outside the Blocks project with students choosing their own date and medium, but I am in the middle of two other BOB projects, so I made this into a gallery walk assignment instead. All the selcected "cargo" is pictured on a Google Slide, and the class had time to walk around the room and persuse each one, writing a reflection to show learning from each other and from looking back on their own work in view of others’. Instead of a homework assignment, this quick project is a window into themselves and a doorway to each other.

The Precious Cargo project begins with the decision around what you would take with you if you had to move to another country.  So often, immigration requires hard choices, and students had to be able to justify why that item was so precious to them. Through a gallery walk, the sharing is more passive, and the students can be vulnerable without feeling overly vulnerable. They can also learn a lot about each other. The project is wonderful  as a companion with Social Studies because it is about an artifact (Grade 5) and immigration (Grade 6), but it is also very personal and culturally responsive. When students select the object and explain their choice, they share a piece of their story, their lived experience and identity. 

This year, students shared items that helped me learn more about them and what they value. The Precious Cargo project garnered religious and personal objects, but their justification for their choice is where all the juicy parts of this project lie. The two students who chose religious pendants expressed the back stories to their cross and Magen David. The student who shared a picture of her new bed explained how she worked for the money to help pay for that bed and that it took her over a year to achieve this space that made her room her own. The students who chose to share their stuffies shared stories of grandparents, gifts, and comfort, and those who chose their pets explained why their pets mean so much to them. I will never forget how one of my former students shared that he had to leave his dog behind when he immigrated to Canada, and that pain was something that really stuck with me. There was other jewelery and jewelery boxes, and there were seemingly random choices that all had a story and rationale. Surprisingly, there was only one poiece of technology, and he chose it for more than games. For him, it was about connecitng with others and communiting through various platforms. This project is an intersting lens on what our learners value in their lives.

Here is a picture of our classroom door. I'm not sharing it becasue of its beauty and design. My name is not on the door because I am not their homeroom teacher. Our door decorations may appear simple and nondescript, but this door screams their identities and mine as their teacher. Identity work is very personal, so we didn’t share the stories that go with the artifacts outside our class community. Each of my students who look at our classroom door know that something precious to them is a part of it, and they are a precious part of what’s inside.