Traffick Jam - Part 2

Last Friday, two of my 11th graders - Dasha and Vitalik conducted their own training on human trafficking with a group of 15 students from the 8th grade as part of our school's human trafficking awareness week. Dasha and Vitalik attended the "Traffick Jam" counter human trafficking training with me in Kharkiv last month, and I'm proud to say that they learned enough there to be able to teach a lesson on human trafficking by themselves!

A group photo with 527 pamphlets and the class certificates.

with Dasha and Vitalik (in my teal suede shoes).

Dasha and Vitalik prepared for this lesson for 2 weeks with Ira Ivanovna, our school psychologist. For the most part, the 8th graders were attentive and the girls were more active then I expected. Personally, I don't like teaching lessons to 8th graders because they don't listen to me (since I'm young for a teacher) and rather play on their cell phones.

Vitalik starting off the lesson by asking the students what do they know about human trafficking. 

Ira explaining that human trafficking is more than sexual exploitation. 

 After covering the basics about human trafficking, Dasha and Vitalik discussed some facts related to human trafficking in Ukraine. For example, Ukraine is not only an origin point - it is also a destination and transit point. Not very many of the 8th graders knew this, so its a good thing that we had this training (otherwise they may never have been made aware of the dangers of human trafficking).

Listening to the 8th graders compare their answers about who are the traffickers. 

Dasha explaining the task - the students had to label a pie chart with their guesses as to which countries Ukrainians are trafficked to. 

The kids working together to brainstorm where traffickers can find potential victims. 

Tanya sharing her group's answers with the class. 

The group debating over different statistics.

Vitalik explaining the statistics to the students. 

Even though this was only a short training on the basics of human trafficking, I'm grateful for two things: the first is that Dasha and Vitalik had the chance to conduct their own lesson and the second is that the 8th graders seemed actually interested in what we were talking about. Before this training  I was worried about how they would respond to this topic since it can sometimes be a little controversial among Ukrainians - not all Ukrainians believe that human trafficking is a problem in Ukraine, and I'm glad that we taught our students to believe otherwise!

Great job Dasha and Vitalik!