This unit truly impacted our classroom. Students became very critical of things they previously took for granted and wondered a lot about what other unfair things were going on in their world.
Fair Trade chocolate has never left our classroom. Students took their knowledge of the topic to help them write both How-To and All About Books during the required Non-Fiction writing unit and now that we are nearing Valentine’s Day, the discussion of chocolate has flared up again. Luckily for my co-teacher and I, it also happens to be during the letter writing unit so we plan on writing persuasive letters to the World’s Finest Chocolate CEO, as suggested in the Global Exchange Curriculum. We also are using Fair Trade Chocolate chips with our students to melt down and mold into Fair Trade Valentine’s chocolates to be shared with their families.
Here are some examples of the work the students continue to do with the topic:
Assessment of this unit was plentiful but has been informal. We were able to use the students’ movie to uncover what students had actually learned about Fair Trade chocolate but to uncover what students had learned about the importance of social justice we had to rely on discussion and analyzing their conversations.
A few students really felt strongly about not supporting child/slave labor and encouraged their parents to buy Fair Trade products. One student wrote in her homework that she was driving by Whole Foods with her mother, and convinced her to stop and buy Fair Trade chocolate because it was the only place she could find it. Another students’ mother informed us during parent teacher conferences that she was getting frustrated because her child wouldn’t let her buy anything chocolate without first checking to see if it was Fair Trade and then giving her a hard time if it wasn’t. These showed that students understood how to see if things were Fair Trade but didn’t really illustrate if students understood what that meant.
We were afforded this opportunity when students were creating gingerbread houses. Some of the decorations included M&Ms. One student was having a very difficult time with this. She seemed frustrated and torn. She wanted to use them because they were colorful and many of the other students were using them but when asked why she wasn’t using them she explained,
“I don’t want to support that. It’s not fair. Kid’s are dying in Africa because of this and I don’t understand how the other kids are using them.”
This statement was very powerful and really showed us that she grasped the whole concept. It also enabled a discussion amongst the students. Some had listened in and agreed. Though they had used some of the candies already they stopped and declared that they wouldn’t eat that part. Others stated that they could use them if they wanted. I made sure that all the students remembered where the M&Ms came from and what it meant that they were not Fair Trade and told them to make the decision they felt was right for them. And they did.
