Overview

In this lesson, students will explore how imagination can be used to create beauty out of ugliness, and in turn how that beauty creates peace.

Additionally, students will gain a deeper understanding of how art can be used to engage global communities to dialogue and examine narratives around identities, social norms, and  conflict in an effort to create sustainable peace in their communities.

Notes for Teacher

Country:

This lesson plan focuses on both the Burj Barajneh Refugee camp which is located in the southern suburb of Beirut, which is the capital of Lebanon. Although it is in Lebanon, the refugees within the camp do not have citizen status of Lebanon. They are stateless. This lesson will address these issues through the eyes and voice of Mira Sidawi.

The Burj Barajneh Refugee camp was created in 1949 by the Red Cross Societies. Originally there were approximately 3500 refugees but it expanded in 1969 and was not given the proper attention to build out safely. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, “Building work was undertaken randomly, with no opportunity to increase the foundations. Roads became extremely narrow and infrastructure was put under heavy stress. These problems were compounded by the destruction of several Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war and the ongoing Syria crisis, each resulting in a wave of new refugees to Burj Barajneh” (https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/lebanon/burj-barajneh-camp). According to the Anera charity there are now 35,000 refugees living in the camp.

Below is background information about Lebanon:

“Since its independence in 1943 from France’s Mandatory rule, Lebanon’s fragile government has been based on its National Pact, a complex division of power granting preferential status to the then majority Maronite Christian community, over its Shiite, Sunni, and Druze citizens. The rationale for this was Lebanon’s 1932 census, the only official census conducted to this day. After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors emigrated to British Palestine as the United Nations began to create a partition plan which would create two states. By 1948, the Arab-Israeli war displaced 700,000 Palestinians in what is known as the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe.’ This resulted in the UNRWA establishing refugee camps in Lebanon. Christian President Camille Chamoun attempted to keep Lebanon aligned with the west as Arab nationalism swept across neighboring nations, pushing Lebanon to the brink of civil war. The Six Day War in 1967 and Israel’s victory over its Arab neighbors, meant Israel took control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. The immediate effect was to create hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and to bring nearly a million Palestinians under Israeli control within the captured territories…Today the World Bank recognizes that as much as half the population is below the poverty line, inflation and unemployment continues to climb and basic infrastructure services, together with health care, are failing.” (EIHR, 2021. Adapted from Imagine: Reflections on Peace).

Meet: Mira Sidawi. She grew up in the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Lebanon and has only known life as a refugee. She is a Palestinian actress, director, and writer who shares the plight of the statelessness through her artistic expression. In 2015, she created her first short film, Four Wheels Camp. Her second film, The Wall, takes place in the Burj al-Barajneh and Shatila refugee camps.

Meet: Nichole Sobecki is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. After graduating from Tufts University, Nichole spent the early years of her career in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, focusing on regional issues related to identity, conflict, and human rights.

 

Student Ages or Grade Level

9th - 12th Grades

Essential questions the lesson will address:

  1. How can we use our imaginations to create beauty and peace out of ugliness?

2. How can art engage local and global communities to dialogue and examine narratives around identities, social norms, and conflict?

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to . . .

● Visualize how beauty can be created out of ugliness

● Articulate how imagination can contribute to the creation of peace

● Explain how art can engage local and global communities in dialoguing aimed at fostering peace

● Read and analyze a work of art, exploring themes around peace

● Write about ideas related to peace and the cultivation of imagination?

● Create a piece of art, either a poem, crawing, or painting which illustrates a vision of more peace within local and global communities

Common Core State Standards (11th grade)

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.1.B Work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision-making, set clear goals and deadlines, and establish individual roles as needed.

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.1.C Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.1.D Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task.

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.2 Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

●       CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Curriculum Glossary and Key Concepts and Ideas

Imagination: 1: the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality. 2 a: creative ability/ b: ability to confront and deal with a problem. (Merriam Webster)

 

Formative Assessment Strategies

The teacher can make a note of…

● Class dialogue about video of Mira creating art out of ugliness

● Individual participation in poem and closing activity about peace and creativity

 

Materials for Instructor

Mira Sidawi Video

● Laptop

● Projector

● Speakers

● Copies of the Poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “I See What I Want”

● Copies of the photograph by Nichole Sobecki

Materials for Students

● Imagine Journals and writing utensils

● Copies of the Poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “I See What I Want”

● Colored Pencils, Markers, Crayons

● Copies of the photograph by Nichole Sobecki

Lesson Plan

I. Introduction, Background Information, and Opening Discussion – Meet Mira Sidawi (15 min)

Step 1:

Provide a brief background on the Burj Barajneh Refugee camp, where Mira Sidawi grew up..

 

Step 2:

Introduce the students to Mira Sidawi.[1]  Mira grew up in the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Lebanon and has only known life as a refugee. She is a Palestinian actress, director, and writer who shares the plight of the statelessness through her artistic expression. In 2015, she created her first short film, Four Wheels Camp. Her second film, The Wall, takes place in the Burj al-Barajneh and Shatila refugee camps. Explain to students that we will be watching a video with Mira in today’s lesson.

Introduce the students to Nichole Sobecki who is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. After graduating from Tufts University, Nichole spent the early years of her career in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, focusing on regional issues related to identity, conflict, and human rights.

Step 3:

Project the following film clip. Ask the students to watch the film clip of Mira explaining how she creates art out of ugliness.

 

 [Audio– Timestamp: 14.37–23:39. See Otter Transcript for section highlighted in yellow]

 

Step 4:

Open up the room for conversation, soliciting dialogue around the following questions:

●      What do you notice about this video?

●      What questions do you have?

●      What do you feel empathy for?

●      What connections are you making between this video and your own life?

 

 

II. Poetry and Imagination – Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (25 min)

Step 1:

In her interview with the Imagine curriculum’s team, Mira quotes the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish as saying, “In imagination we have life.”

Take five minutes, have students turn and talk with a partner about what they think is meant by this statement.

Step 2:

As a class, read the following poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “I See What I Want”[1] [2] 

I see what I want of the field... I see

braids of wheat combed by the wind, and I close my eyes:

this mirage leads to the nahawand

and this serenity leads to lapis

I see what I want of the sea... I see

the rise of seagulls at sunset, and I close my eyes:

this loss leads to an Andalus

and this sail is the pigeons' prayer for me...

 

I see what I want of the night... I see

the end of this long corridor by some city's gates.

I'll toss my notebook on the sidewalk of cafés, and seat this absence

on a chair aboard one of the ships

 

I see what I want of the soul: the face of stone

as it is scratched by lightning. Green is the land... green, the land of my soul.

Wasn't I a child once playing by the edge of the well?

I am still playing... this vastness is my meadow, and the stones my wind

 

I see what I want of peace... I see

a gazelle, grass, and a rivulet... I close my eyes:

This gazelle sleeps on my arms

and its hunter sleeps near his children in a faraway place

 

I see what I want of war. I see

our ancestors' limbs squeeze the springs green in a stone,

and our fathers inherit the water but bequeath nothing, and I close my eyes:

The country within my hands is of my hands

 

I see what I want of prison: a flower's days

passed through here to guide two strangers within me

to a seat in the garden, and I close my eyes:

Spacious is the land, beautiful through a needle's eye

 

I see what I want of lightning... I see

the vegetation of the fields crumble the shackles, O joy!

Joy for the white almond song descending on the smoke of villages

like doves... What we feed our children we share with the doves

 

I see what I want of love... I see

horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm

of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes

until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place

 

I see what I want of death: I love, and my chest splits

for a horse of Eros leaping out of it white, running over clouds

and flying on endless vapour, circling the eternal blue.

So do not stop me from dying, do not bring me back to a star of dust

 

I see what I want of blood: I have seen the murdered

address the murderer who bullet-lit his heart: from now on

you can remember only me. I, too, murdered you idly, and from now on

you can remember only me... and you won't bear the roses of spring

 

I see what I want of the theatre of the absurd: beasts,

court judges, the emperor's hat, the masks of the era,

the colour of the ancient sky, the palace dancer, the mayhem of armies.

Then I forget them all and remember only the victim behind the curtain

 

I see what I want of poetry: in ancient times, we used to procession

martyred poets in sweet basil and then return to their poetry safely...

But in this age of humming, movies and magazines, we heap the sand on their poems

and laugh. And when we return we find them standing at our doorsteps...

 

I see what I want of dawn in the dawn... I see

nations looking for their bread among other nations' bread.

It is bread that ravels us from the silk of sleepiness, and from the cotton of our dreams.

So is it from a grain of wheat that the dawn of life bursts... and also the dawn of war?

 

I see what I want of people: their desire to long

to anything, their tardiness in getting to work,

and their hurry to return to their folk...

and their need to say: Good Morning...

 

Step 3:

Now lead the students through a class discussion using the following prompts:

●      What do you notice about this poem?

●      What patterns do you see?

●      What questions do you have?

●      What connections are you making to the world, yourself, or other works of art?

●      Do you feel empathy for anyone or anything in this poem?

●      Are there any moments of ambiguity in the piece? Why do you suppose this is?

 

Step 4:

Based on the discussion of the above poem, have students now take ten minutes to write in their Imagine journal answering the following questions:

●      What is being said by the author about peace and the cultivation of imagination?

●      How can you use your imagination to create peace in environments where it may be lacking?

 

Step 5:

In small groups, have students dialogue about their ideas, especially about what the implications might be for creativity and imagination when fostering peace in your own community. Have each group choose one scribe to write down key points from their discussion.

 

Step 6:

Take a few minutes for each group’s scribe to share the key points from the group’s discussion.

 

this poem is super long. maybe it could be expanded in a separate document? If teachers are printing this lesson plan, the poem takes up a lot of space

Yes, great idea

 

III. Closing Discussion – Photography by Nicole Ssobecki (10 min)

Step 1:

Take a look at the following photograph by Nichole Sobecki of Mahmoud Sabha, 15, a Syrian refugee, releasing a pigeon from its coop. Thousands of Syrian refugees live in informal tent camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

In closing, ask students to think about how this photograph can be viewed as a representation of creating peace and joy in spaces where it may seem difficult to find. How can this photograph act as a lesson for building peace in difficult settings?

IV. Homework / Extension

Create a piece of art, either a poem, drawing, or painting which illustrates your vision for creating more peace within your own community, and bring it in to share with the class next time.

Resource Links

**All resource links and excerpts are embedded into the above lesson**