Windrush Child

Cross posting from my teaching blog.

You can find that here.

'Windrush Child' is a book by Benjamin Zephaniah which follows the story of Leonard. His father was one of the passengers of 'Empire Windrush' and when he is 10, Leonard joins his father along with his mother, travelling on the 'Arosa Star' to start a 'better life' in the UK.

The book follows Leonard's life, the ups and downs of life in Manchester, school, racism, attacks on his family, but also the kindness of neighbours, a work mate and ultimately finding love.

The book ends with events mirroring the Windrush Scandal - which is still ongoing. I have blogged about the book previously, and my plans to create this unit as part of a range of work around decolonising the curriculum and adding a colonialism lens to topics such as food and globalisation.

For the first teaching of the unit, I was able to get a bargain price on a book for each Year 7 student from Bookpoint.

I put together a 28 page booklet to help guide the reading, along with support from my colleague who teaches both Geography and English. This was printed as a booklet, with an image of a landing card from the Goldsmith's project on the back.

Along with some context and details on the author, there were also spaces for students to jot down key events in each of the chapters along with a factfile on Leonard - the main character.

As the unit has gone through, I have amended the booklet and changed a few of the questions and emphases - there is plenty of reading and further references at the back of the booklet as well.

The recent DfE guidance on political impartiality has added an interesting dimension to the teaching of this unit, as there is inevitably mention of the Home Office destroying landing cards which would have proved citizenship, deporting people without good cause, and the famous vans suggesting to migrants that they should leave - except the Windrush migrants had lived here and paid taxes and paid into pensions, raised families, worked for the NHS and were then treated terribly.

A few extra activities also worked particularly well - my colleague Helen Melville had great success with students writing 'Chapter 33' - what happened next, with some really creative outcomes. I am also preparing to create a new display on the work that we completed based on the book which will offer opportunities for interactivity with those who see it.

In response to requests, here is Version 1 of the booklet that I created. There will be some amendments made to this before I teach it again, with some clarity over some of the tasks. 

Thanks to students for their feedback on the module. It will certainly be repeated next year.

Windrush Child - Student Workbook from GeoBlogs

I'd welcome feedback from those who see this post, or who use the booklet.