Introduction
On the streets of Chicago, violence rips apart families on an almost daily basis. Every weekend, the newspapers tally the injured and the dead—victims of gun violence. In the meantime, it is life as usual as the ambulances cart of victim after victim or the coroner removes the dead. Children play inches from where a crime scene took place. It is a normal occurrence.
At Harper High School (HHS), situated in the middle of the gang-infested Englewood neighborhood, the effect of this violence is felt school-wide. Students know victims and/or are victims of gun violence. The tales one can hear in the cafeteria sound much like war tales told by combat soldiers. They duck for cover; they run and hide, but inevitably, someone takes a bullet. In my nearly six years at Harper, I have lost four students from my classroom (the school lost over thirty), and have known more than I care to count who have been wounded. Most recently, one of my students revealed himself as a young man who, years ago, was shot in the face, through a window of his home, while he watched television. He had not even left his house. I remembered the news story.
Through all of this, it seems the children of HHS seem to have lost their ability to empathize with historical tragedies and inhumanities because so much has happened to them. It is difficult for them to feel emotions for events that happened so long ago and had no bearing on their everyday lives. It is with this unit that I hope to bring back a sense of empathy, to bring a sense of family to my classroom, to have that sense of family extend to the community, and, ultimately, to each of my students' homes. I only wish for my students to be able to feel for others the way others feel for them.
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