Eighth Graders Reflect on Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes

Having just returned from Israel, eighth graders spent time in Ashley Bitton’s language arts class reflecting on their experience and incorporating one of the eighth grade through lines into their reflections: What it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. This through line is also front and center in their current reading unit of To Kill a Mockingbird. “For this particular first class after Israel,” explains Ms. Bitton, “I wanted students to write about their experiences and then discuss as a class.” Students started class by removing one of their shoes and putting on a classmate’s. “They walked around the room in them, felt the difference between their shoe and the foreign one, and reflected on how that felt.” Along their journey in Israel, our eighth graders met so many different people and, adds Ms. Bitton, “hopefully they found a connection between themselves and those people. And it’s always a pleasure to connect themes in literature—particularly for this unit, walking in someone else’s shoes—to real-world experiences.” MORE PHOTOS