During my time teaching in a bilingual school in Guatemala City, I taught geography to two groups of highly motivated 9th graders. This was a class I genuinely loved to teach, because my passion for world travel, languages, and cultures could really shine. One of my favorite units of study was about Asia. This region of the world is home to roughly two-thirds of the world population, but is often overlooked and under-studied in our Western classrooms.
During this period of study, projects were required to be something politics-related as elections were going on in Guatemala, so we wanted to relate the study with the students’ current situation. What is the election process? How does it work? What if any challenges are there going on in Asia right now? I chose for students to learn more about China’s “One Country, Two Systems” which was a very relevant tie-in, as the year before, Hong Kong had been involved in the Umbrella Movement that sparked rebellion and protests against Mainland China’s control of them. At the same time, politics in Guatemala were also pretty sticky: the Vice President had become embroiled in a corruption scandal that quickly involved the President and several other high officials, which prompted weekly protests that eventually resulted in the resignation of both parties. We had some interesting and productive discussions about what these protests meant for students, and how they were similar (and different) from the protests that had taken place in Hong Kong.
As we looked closer at what “One Country, Two Systems” really means, I challenged students to research further, and then pinpoint the key information relating to this arrangement, and present it to me in an infographic. We used the tool Piktochart, as I found it the most user-friendly, and of course FREE!
If you would like to download this project with the full lesson plan, materials, and rubric, you can find it at my TeachersPayTeachers store here:
Amanda M. Orozco 