UN Day IFP Activity with Grade 5 Buddies

To celebrate UN Day, our supervisors thought it fitting that we, grade 11s, facilitate an activity with the grade 5s who had done a unit on peacebuilding. The activity was aptly named Game of Life and we had to divide the kids into three distinct socioeconomic statuses: the “Reds”, who represented the lower class. the “Purples”, who represented the middle class, and the “Blues”, who represented the upper class. The facilitators represented the government and controlled the three classes using prompts that dictated the flow of money in the form of tokens. The “Reds” were given the least amount of tokens and fell into misfortune. The “Purples” were given a moderate amount of tokens, experienced a series of losses and gains, and moved between the classes. The “Blues” were given a large number of tokens, constantly received more, and had a few corrupt transactions with the government. Conflict arose within the respective classes themselves as there were kids who wanted to maintain and accumulate more wealth, and kids who wanted to distribute their wealth and contribute to society.

All in all, the kids were very observant, took their time in considering their options, and engaged themselves fully in the activity. Afterward, during the debriefing and reflection, they brought up interesting points such as their awareness of their privileges as students in UWCSEA, their prior knowledge about peace, and their yearning to be changemakers in an unjust world.

I really like children and I found this was a great way to test our classroom management and people skills. This was a  challenge I took on wholeheartedly as it gives me insight on how the actual conference will run. I felt like I wasn’t teaching anything to the grade 5s, rather, I was learning from the different perspectives they had. Now, more than ever, I am motivated to be involved in the incoming IFP conferences.