Oxfam Education

Transcription

1 Activity bank 2 Survivor or victim? Begin by giving each learner a Victim outline and a Survivor outline (see below). Explain that they will use role play to explore what it is like to be in an earthquake and to distinguish between a victim and survivor mentality. Start a simple role play, encouraging learners to demonstrate a range of responses to houses falling down. Pause the role play to allow learners to record victim and survivor responses within the most appropriate outline. These can be recorded by writing words, choosing symbols, or by having photos taken of themselves expressing victim or survivor responses. You may find that learners develop survivor attitudes spontaneously within their role play. For example, they may help each other or try to dig their way out of imagined rubble and/or describe themselves as brave or strong. If this does not happen, you can prompt it. Now give your learners the extract from the Daily Mail article reporting the earthquake Richter-scale.html#ixzz2twtEP91Q. Ask your learners to highlight the describing words in the piece and write them onto their victim outline; you may need to support them in this. Now look at slides 15 and 16 of slideshow 1. Notice the change in language and add phrases such as incredible work and great challenge and words such as overcome and unite to the survivor outline. Ask learners to stick the survivor and victim outlines back to back to emphasise that this activity reveals two ways of telling the earthquake story: a person can be portrayed as either a courageous survivor or a helpless victim. Explain to your learners that when stories of the earthquake were told in newspapers in Haiti, the people affected were portrayed as courageous survivors. However, in many international newspapers, including those in the UK, the stories told often portrayed people affected by the earthquake as helpless victims. Discuss the following questions with learners: Which version of the earthquake story do you think is more accurate? Why do you think the different newspapers wrote in the way they did? Which version of the earthquake story do you think is more helpful to the survivors of the earthquake (link responses back to survivor and victim mentalities discussed earlier)? Why?

2 If you were affected by a disaster like the Haiti earthquake, would you wish to be portrayed as a victim or a survivor? Why? If you have time, you could also discuss how learners think other people s attitudes affect those living through disasters and compare with others attitudes towards disability. Dig for survivors This is an activity for learners who access the curriculum at a sensory level. One of the things that survivors did in the aftermath of the quake was help to rescue other survivors. Bury paper people, or people figurines, beneath bricks and have learners dig to find them. You can talk to learners about the survivors as you share in this activity with them, turning it into a mini role play. Can you find evidence of survivors? This activity builds on the Survivor or victim? activity above. Give learners a news report (or allow them to find one for themselves online) about the earthquake in Haiti. It could be a newspaper, radio or television report. Tell learners to read/listen carefully. Can they spot survivor words in the report? More able learners can be challenged to compare different reports and rank them in terms of how they portray the people involved in the Haitian earthquake. My many stories Like Haiti, your learners may well have one story that the world knows about them, often just from looking at them: He s a boy in a wheelchair, / That girl is wearing hearing aids. Like Haiti, that one story may be true, but it is not the whole story. Challenge your learners to write a list of their many stories. They can begin with the one they think everyone will know and try to include ones people might be surprised by. They can tell their stories in words, pictures, signs, symbols, photographs. Am I a survivor or a victim? This activity pairs nicely with the Survivor or victim? activity above. Survivors and victims are found in all walks of life, not just during earthquakes. At some point in our lives, each one of us may find ourselves a victim in the sense that we are harmed or injured by another person or event. It is then entirely normal to react by feeling sad, confused or afraid. However, whether we become a victim in the sense that we come to feel helpless and passive in the face of misfortune or ill-treatment or whether we become a

3 survivor who copes well with the difficulties in our lives is often determined by our attitude. Our attitude can be affected by the attitudes of those around us. Support learners in writing their own story or an imagined story of someone who encounters hardship, choosing whether to have a survivor or victim mentality in their thoughts and actions. If they have time, learners could then re-tell the story from the opposite perspective and compare the effect. Finish by emphasising that most people are likely to become victims in the sense that they are harmed or injured in some way at some point in their lives, but that they can choose to become resilient survivors like so many of the people of Haiti. Survivor/victim actions Survivors are thought of as active, victims as passive. This is an abstract concept but one you can support your learners in understanding by showing them the survivor outline and asking them what they think that person does, and similarly with the victim outline. It is likely that they will come up with contrasting suggestions. Focus on the positive: that people who undergo great tragedy often get up and do something to help others afterwards. Challenge your learners to find evidence of survivor actions. They can look at news reports (paper/radio/television) and watch the films: Stories from Haiti: Up to 2010: Stories from Haiti: : Can they find people doing something such as digging, rescuing, rebuilding or re-starting their businesses? Ask learners what they would they do if they had just survived an earthquake? Learners can respond to this challenge using writing/speech/symbols/signs or role play.

4 Victim Oxfam Education

5 Survivor Oxfam Education