Darfur Now Lesson Four: The Messages of Darfur Now

Warm up

• Begin by asking students to respond to the following prompt in their journals: Based on what you know about all six activists, what do you think motivated them to do their work? Encourage students to review their work from lesson three, such as the activist posters and their presentation notes, when answering this question.
• Once students have finished writing, have them pair up to talk about the motivations they recognized in the activists. Instruct each pair to come up with one or two words that describe what inspired, motivated, and/or sustained the actions of the individuals profiled in the film. As pairs present their words, record the list on a large sheet of paper. (This is similar to the exercise students completed at the beginning of lesson one.)
• Post this list next to the list that students made at the beginning of the lessons. Facilitate a brief discussion focused on a comparison of these lists. Prompts for this discussion include: What strikes you about the lists? What can you learn from identifying the motivations of activists?

Main Activity
The Big Paper activity described below provides a structured way for students to respond personally to ideas expressed in Darfur Now. When transitioning to this activity, explain to students that the purpose of this lesson is to help them to consider how the ideas presented in the film Darfur Now connect to the choices they make in their own lives. You might refer to a particular moment from the warm-up activity conversation to illustrate how studying the lives of others, in this case the Darfur Now activists, can help us think about our own actions.

Big Paper Directions

Step One: Importance of silence
Before beginning this activity, clarify that during the first two parts of this process there is to be absolute silence. All communication is done in writing. Students will have time to speak in small groups and with the whole class later. To minimize the chance that students will interrupt the silence once the Big Paper activity begins, be sure to answer any questions about the directions prior to step two. To help students keep track of the directions, we also suggest writing the five steps of the Big Paper activity on the board.

Step Two: Response to quotation
Each small group (two to four students) receives a large sheet of paper with a quotation written in the center of the page. (Alternatively you can print out the quotations and tape them to the middle of the paper.) Quotations might come from students' posters from lesson three, from the list of suggested quotations included with this lesson, or from other Darfur Now materials (e.g., excerpts from the film transcript or from Not on Our Watch). Ask students to respond to the quotation by silently writing questions or comments on the paper. Then students respond to each other's questions or comments, also in writing. We suggest giving students at least 10 minutes for this step, as it often takes students a few minutes for the written conversation to develop.

Since the purpose of this lesson is to help students connect the material from Darfur Now to their own lives, you might want to direct students to address how the quotation makes them think about their own behavior and choices. Some prompts to direct students' thinking include: How do the ideas in these quotations relate to your own choices and behavior in your school and in your community? How do the ideas in these quotations shape your understanding of your role in local events? Global events?

Step Three: Written conversations
Still working in silence, students leave their small groups and walk around reading the other big papers. They should bring their pens with them so that they can write comments or questions on other big papers.

Step Four: Silence is broken
Returning to their own big paper, small groups now read comments written by other students in the class. Then they can have an oral conversation about the text, their own ideas, what they read on other papers, and comments their peers wrote back to them.

Step Five: Class discussion
Begin a general discussion about themes and ideas noted on the big papers.

Follow-through
Students can begin creating a found poem to synthesize their understanding of the material in this unit. The handout "Writing a found poem" has been designed to take students through the following steps:

• First, ask students to review the texts posted around the room, including the big papers, the list of motivations, and the posters from lesson three. As they study these texts, they should record any language that they find particularly moving or thought-provoking. To provide more structure, you might require students to write at least 20 words, phrases, or quotations on their list. In addition, you might direct students to review other written materials from this unit (such as homework assignments, journal entries, or film notes) to find ideas to add to their list.
• Instruct students to write a poem drawing from the list of words and phrases they have just recorded. The poem should express a message related to a theme from this unit, such as genocide, violence prevention, or activism. Remind students that, except for prepositions and articles, their poems should only consist of words found in texts from this unit. Students do not have to use all of the words on their list. As they construct their poems, students might need to return to particular texts to find additional language to express their message or theme.
• Finally, give students the opportunity to share their poems with the rest of the class.

Possible homework assignments
To accompany their found poem, you can ask students to write an "artist's statement." In the artist's statement, students explain the message of their poem and how the words they chose express that message. Students can also reveal some of the difficult artistic choices they encountered while writing the poem, we well as any personal connections to the ideas in the poem.

Suggested quotations for use with the Big Paper activity
In addition to the quotations students selected during lesson three, you can use any of these quotations as prompts for the Big Paper activity.

Most people, we care about our family, our neighborhood. We cannot care about the world.
- Pablo Recalde

And then you start feeling like, well, I wouldn't want horsemen riding down on me and killing my children, and maybe their plight is in some way tied into my plight, or their journey is in some way tied into my journey on this planet.
- Don Cheadle

Those people who go to school and get an education are the ones who will solve the problem. But fighting with guns, that will not solve it. Even in a hundred years.
- Hejewa Adam

As we sit here today, we are all complicit in the genocide. Indifference is complicity.
- Adam Sterling

The world will stand witness as you describe what happened to you.
- Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Abakar

It's a bureaucracy committing the crimes. For them, the killing civilians, okay it's bad but when you drop a bomb, some people die. It's not a crime, it's just a counterinsurgency operation . . . to win the battle. That's it. That's why we need the law.
- Luis Moreno-Ocampo

I am a Jew who remembers when my people in German-occupied Europe were condemned to isolation, hunger, humiliation, unspeakable terror, and death. Until almost the end of the war, nobody came to our rescue. . . . For the sake of our humanity, SAVE DARFUR!
- Elie Wiesel

If women children and old people were to be murdered one hundred miles from here, wouldn't you run to help? Then why do you stop this decision of you heart when the distance is three thousand miles instead of one hundred miles?
- Raphael Lemkin (creator of the word "genocide")

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Footnote

[1] Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide, (Free Press, 1979), 4.