BUILDING A CITY IN THE SEA
BY LAUREN HOWARD
For the last two weeks of the winter semester, Middle School students adopted the personas of refugees from seven countries around the world. Putting themselves in refugees’ shoes, the students’ aim was to work together to create a “City in the Sea” — a place for refugees to live in peace and harmony — as part of an interdisciplinary project called a minimester.
Minimesters replace traditional end-of-semester exams, and provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate what they’ve learned in the classroom, allowing students to implement skills learned throughout the semester including subject-specific skills, research skills and self-directed learning, according to Dean of the Middle School Zina Nasser.
“Minimesters are where we learn and educate ourselves on things
outside the regular academic curriculum,” explains Mufleh Akel ’27.
The groundwork for building the city in the sea actually began much earlier, with a group of 11 dedicated students who took a semester-long workshop in preparation to lead their peers through the unique learning experience.
Under the guidance of faculty members Gamze Keskin Pultz and Carly West, the student leaders
During the Middle School’s winter minimester, students put themselves in the shoes of refugees to imagine, plan and create a place that they can call home.
designed characters for their peers, assigning countries of origin, ages, and socio-economic backgrounds.
Then, in English class, all students took time to write character autobiographies, allowing them to build empathy for refugees and to cultivate personal interest in the upcoming minimester.
The student leaders researched various government structures and studied rhetorical techniques to build compelling arguments. After the presentation of government options in an assembly, the Middle Schoolers — from the perspective of their characters — voted to adopt a democratic government. Days before the minimester officially began, students campaigned to be governmental leaders and elected Jake Playle ’28 as their vice president and Hamza Sboul ’27 as their president.
“The best part of the job,” says Sboul, “is representing the community. There is no worst part, but I do have to face the challenges.”
The minimester began with a day of building — each student was assigned a part of the city to develop according to what they thought would best serve the community. Students poured over the draft of the city and, in small groups run by the 11 student leaders, identified key problems they would need to solve in the following weeks: How might the roads connect? How many hospitals, schools and apartment buildings should there be? What food would sustain the community? Did the city have a name?
Over the course of the learning experience, students engaged in daily Seek and Solve classes to further
explore and solve the problems that emerged on the draft build day.
The Culture and Language class, which created a thorough legal code, proposed city names to the community. After a vote, the city was named the Republic of Arminda.
In one course, students explored how to sustain the community, and voted to have an omnivore diet and use hydroponics to farm fruits and vegetables. In another course, with the support of Andy Harcourt, a visiting faculty member from Deerfield Academy, students designed a reverse osmosis plant to provide the citizens with clean drinking water. Students designed a city plan, researched methods to keep the city afloat, and filmed and televised daily breaking news to keep the citizens of Arminda informed.
“I couldn’t pick a favorite class,” says Zaina Khan ’28 in one newscasted interview, “because both are
fun; we are solving very different problems we have in the city.”
According to Amber Playle ’27, “we get a lot of self-directed learning. We, as citizens get to make lots of decisions ourselves.”
Each day, guided by their student leaders, the “refugees” formed small groups to address problems, such as how to build a bridge and a dam to stop flooding after a national disaster, how to contain a viral outbreak and how to write a resume to receive promotions.
Next, each group presented its solutions to the community in order to build a better final draft of the city. Grappling with ideas of community needs, students spent the last day building a second model of the city using recycled items.
“Student presentations and student work are not the organized, polished work of adults,” explains West, “but the work-in-progress of students who are still learning how to grasp these complex ideas.”
At the “Celebration of Learning” event, a culmination of the Middle Schoolers’ learning experience, students led their parents through a tour of the completed city to explain the problems their specific classes faced and how they tackled each one.
Yara Kanaan ’27 summed up her minimester experience simply: “It was unusual, and fun!”