Mayan Codex Project: Reflection and Personal Story
Help me give my students supplies (glue, twine, markers) to create their own Mayan codex. We especially need twine to tie our books together, we are all intertwined!
I teach in a high school ESL program of 600+ students. All students are newcomers to the country and are learning English, most have to work while they attend school. The program is majority Central American, next is Afghani and Ethiopian. The high school overall is the most diverse in the country. This project is part of EL World History social studies classes, my students are not only new to the country, but many are new much of the the history we will learn, and significant number have not attended school for a few years before arriving in the United States.
I want students to see history as the story that unifies our human experience, so my classes will contextualize history through an overreaching theme of human migration and how are we are all intertwined.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
My Project
A codex is a double sided folding book, the Mayans documented 3000 years of culture in these books, during Spanish conquest of the Americans all but 3 were destroyed. The written language was almost lost.
The codex is a reflection on their country of origin and their migration to this country in connection with units we will study in class.
This is a project was begun last year where students created their personal codex and there were constructed using colorful twine in the books to tie them together and they were displayed this way, "we are all intertwined in a garment of destiny" -MLK.
Next year, we will include other classes and schools, many students who are not newcomers to continue the them of inter-relatedness demonstrated in our human story.
Oh and even cooler, there are Mayan kids in my classes! Please help us buy twine and sharpies to write our stories!
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Whelan and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.