Mosaic Students End Their Year Educating Local Fifth Graders

This fall Windham Tech’s Mosaic Group (a community service learning group sponsored by a grant program funded by the Connecticut Department of Education and facilitated by EASTCONN) picked up right where they left off last year. Last year Mosaic launched a successful awareness campaign through which staff and students were enlightened about the manner in which our community responds to everyday bigotry. This year they continued the momentum and played important roles in our Names Can Really Hurt school assembly held in cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League on November 3rd. Mosaic students were panelists, facilitators and even participants in this all day assembly that created awareness about the way we treat each other in our community. Mosaic students were so inspired by the momentum of the Names program that they asked if they could take the message to other schools.

With assistance from EASTCONN and the A.D.L, the Mosaic group took part in a training of facilitators this spring where they learned the skills necessary to co-lead a group of 20 students in the Lemons Activity, an exercise designed to introduce the concept of stereotyping as well as illustrate how generalizations influence our thinking. After several weeks of practicing, coordinating and team building the Mosaic students walked over to Windham Middle school on May 21st and led seven separate trainings concurrently. Mosaic students divided into groups and each group led a classroom of approximately 20 fifth grade students in the Lemons activity. Mosaic students had to think independently and rely on their own experiences as they led each classroom through the components of the exercise. By the end of the exercise the fifth grade students were able to apply the experience to the everyday conditions in their own school and communities.

For many Mosaic students this was the first time they had been placed in a leadership role outside of their own school. While many of them walked into their respective classrooms filled with fear and anxiety, they walked out with a sense of accomplishment and pride. This was the first in what Windham Tech’s Mosaic group hopes to be several opportunities through which they get to facilitate this educational experience.