Haiti's Recovery - Lessons in Health, History, and Globalization
After the devastating earthquake in January, Haiti's recovery efforts continue and provide rich learning opportunities for students.
By Debra Karr
On Tuesday January 12, 2010, Haiti experienced a crushing 7.0 earthquake that practically leveled the city, killing more than 220,000 people, and destroying approximately 60% of the Haitian government's infrastructure. About 190,000 homes have been lost, and unemployment within Haiti continues to be problematic. Relief efforts have been slow, due to bureaucratic systems that prevent the process from moving more quickly.
"The real priority of the government is to protect the population from the next hurricane season, and most of our effort right now is going right now in that direction”, said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive in July of 2010. So the people of Haiti continue to wait for new jobs, clean streets and new homes as relief effort delays continue.
As bureaucracy and bottle-necked funding continues to impede Haiti’s speedy recovery, former multi-platinum selling hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean of The Fugees, has stepped in to run for Haiti’s presidential office, claiming to “turn what I used to sing about into policy." If selected to run, Wyclef Jean will be running against his uncle Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the US.
These next series of lessons, explore the country of Haiti, its history, the devastating effects of natural disaster, recovery plans, and the impact that globalization has on humanity.
Haiti’s History, Natural Disasters, and Recovery Plans:
The Haitian Political Crisis: What Role Should the U.S. Play in Foreign Government?
Students, broken up into groups of four, play a game focused on current events in this lesson. Each group is given a series of questions about Haiti’s history, and students find the answers. After the answers are found, the teacher reads the questions and answers aloud to invite discussion. This is the warm-up activity that prepares students for the information about Haitian history that is to follow during the course of the week. There are four, information-rich web sites that students utilize to complete activity sheets and discussions. The first site gives demographic and statistical information that students can utilize for future research, presentations, and reports about the Haiti region. World history, civics and language arts standards are covered throughout this informative lesson.
Impoverished Nations and Natural Disaster
In this lesson, students read an article entitled, “Earth Science Meets Social Science in Study of Disasters”, and answer questions by either writing them or discussing them as a class. Some of the questions include, “What connection between poverty and race became apparent through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina?” Because the Haiti earthquake is a more recent topic, teachers can obviously substitute their natural disaster of choice (like the Haiti earthquake) into the discussion questions. The lesson also includes a world map where certain areas particularly vulnerable to natural disasters are colored and highlighted to serve as a resource for further discussions about geography, global disease and natural disaster topics aligned with geography, history, language arts, science and health standards. You can have students get into groups, with each group focusing on one region to research. Then you can have each group present their findings, using statistics and visual aids. This is a good way to cover multiple standards and engage students in a current-events oriented topic.
In this role-playing lesson, students re-enact a situation in which affordable medications are distributed in poverty-stricken regions. Students learn about the history of the spread of infectious disease and global health. The warm up introduces John Snow’s quote from 1849 which states: "Epidemics of cholera follow major routes of commerce. The disease always appears first at seaports when extending into islands or continents." Students are asked to write about the significance of this statement, which leads to the other activities in this lesson, which includes a role playing activity. United States and world history, geography, health and economics standards are intertwined within this very enlightening and engaging lesson which combines globalization and public health.