posted on 21 Jul 2016

The Chase School Event

I was delighted to be involved in a whole enrichment day event with Year 10 pupils at The Chase School in Malvern. This was organised by teachers from the English department with the theme of ‘Empathy through Literature’ with a focus on the very topical subject of Asylum Seekers and Refugees. I am part of the ‘Malvern Welcomes’ campaign which is trying to raise awareness about this particularly with reference to Syria in preparation for receiving families of Syrian Refugees to settle in Worcestershire.

After some general context about the experience of many people fleeing war and persecution to the whole year group, the pupils were then divided into smaller groups that would be working with the teachers to produce pieces of creative writing inspired by the information plus powerful stimulus images from The Arrival by Shaun Tan and The Island by Armin Greder. My job was to introduce them to some other examples from Children’s and Young Adult literature. I decided to focus on giving an overview of some key texts and to include reading some extracts in order to give them a flavour of the different writing styles, plot and characterisation.

I started with the autobiographical account When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr whose family was forced to flee Germany because her father was a political journalist who was critical of the emerging Nazi regime. It was interesting that none of them had come across this book before and they were surprised to be told that this is the same author who had written The Tiger who came to Tea. I suppose this made me realise that the recent TV and radio programmes about this marvellous 93 year old and my avid desire to rush to buy every one of her books when published is something of a niche interest!

I was a bit disappointed that none of them had heard of Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah, or indeed anything by this prolific author who writes specifically for this age group.  As they were mostly aged fifteen I hoped that they might identify with fourteen year old Alem, now alone in England having travelled here with his father to escape from the civil war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.  I read an extract which shows his puzzlement when he is told that his asylum request has been denied by The Home Office. His very kind foster parents chip in with their own memories of being rejected, blamed and treated as outsiders when they arrived in the country as Irish immigrants many years ago. I wanted the pupils to make the connection with history and perhaps even reflect on their own heritage. 

Next I moved to discuss The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo which again tells about the frightening experience of two unaccompanied asylum seekers from Nigeria who were coping with the memory of witnessing their mother’s brutal murder. I had previously contacted the author about using her book at this event and she sent a wonderfully inspirational message for me to read. As someone who had personal experience of living under the apartheid regime in South Africa, she wanted them to understand the importance of books in helping to understand the world, books that ‘opened my eyes by taking me over and through the physical and invisible walls that separated us. Their stories allowed my mind to travel. They helped to free my mind’.

Shadow by Michael Morpurgo was a book that several of the pupils had read. This is a moving story about a young boy fleeing the war in Afghanistan and the extract that I read showed the awfulness of having to leave an elderly grandmother behind because she was too unwell to travel to England.   

I then selected Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzman about a boy who was fleeing Afghanistan to make the long and perilous journey to Australia – a country that would not welcome him in the way that he hoped.   I also wanted to include the comic style format of Azzi in Between by Sarah Garland in case they might be inspired to do something similar in their creative writing session. I like this story because it describes what a family has left behind in a war torn country but then spends half the book showing how the family settle successfully and are welcomed into a new community in England.

As I have already explained, part of the focus for this day was to make pupils aware of the particular circumstances of families fleeing the war in Syria. A gripping extract from The Pomegranate Tree by Vanessa Altin described the terrible possibility of a thirteen year old girl having to use a grenade in order to avoid being raped by soldiers. Closer to more familiar circumstances, I then used a short piece from A Strange Land by Alan Gibbons which is a story about a school where bullying takes place and the newly arrived boy from Hassan looks like being the latest victim.

The finale was an extract from Catching the Stars by Malorie Blackman, a story set in the future on a star ship in outer space which includes taking on board some refugees who are fleeing an oppressive regime. I wanted to give the pupils a completely different set of circumstances to consider and again hopefully inspire some creative writing. This writer had also sent them a personal message in response to my request. She wanted them to be aware of how real events could influence storytelling:

This part of my book was directly influenced by the rhetoric used by certain politicians and so-called celebrities who referred to refugees fleeing bombings, brutality and persecution as 'cockroaches' and talked of such refugees as "a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean." Such words have the effect of trying to make us forget that these refugees are people, are human, just like us.  

A forty five minute slot wasn’t really sufficient to do justice to all these excellent and very different books but I hope that some of the pupils were inspired to think about the characters and plots to inform their own writing. I also hope that some of them might decide to read one of them over the long summer break.

Karen Argent

July 2016