Imagine a child being silent for 24 hours.
Parents and teachers can only imagine the silent bliss.
But the St. Augustine Grade 7 class is silent for more than just their teacher’s sanity.
On Nov. 20, they were We are Silent campaign through Free the Children brought awareness to voiceless children all over the world.
Grade 7 teacher, Melissa Stockbrugger-Knaus says their silence speaks volumes for people living in poverty.
“They don’t have a voice.” Says Stockbrugger-Knaus. “Maybe because they are starving, maybe because they don’t have an education like girls in some countries, maybe because of bullying and they can’t speak out.”
Stockbrugger-Knaus says that their silence is a show of how lucky her students are to be born into a country with basic rights and freedoms.
“We are lucky we have voices, we are heard all the time.”
The students had a choice. Some went silent for the whole school day, others chose to be silent for 24 hours. Some of her students had a hockey tournament that day so they tried very hard to be silent before and after their hockey games.
The hours that the kids were silent were logged and sent into Free the Children. The kids collected pledges for their silence, which will go towards education initiatives in Haiti.
Some students even took the fundraising efforts one step further. If they raised $1000 or more, some male students said they would wear dresses for a day while other students will dye their hair crazy colours.
Despite the challenge of remaining silent, for some kids for a whole 24 hours, the kids were excited for the day, says Stockbrugger-Knaus. Four of her students were missing the day for a hockey tournament but they have said that they will still be silent for the day and show their hockey team the importance of what they are doing.
Stockbrugger-Knaus went silent herself for 24 hours which meant preparing and creating lesson plans for the day that saved her from explaining the assignments. Other teachers were prepared not to call on kids for answers during their classes and also prepared for quiet class time.
“I was talking to a couple of (the teachers) and they said they love this day when we go in there and it’s quiet and we can just talk and teach.”
The silent ones do have other forms of communication, like writing stuff down. But Stockbrugger-Knaus is encouraging her students not to text during that time.
“I think texting could very easily take the place of talking, so they are not going to be texting each other.”
Free the Children started when Craig Kielburger saw an article about the death of Iqbal Masih in the local paper, a 12 year old boy from Pakistan who was speaking out about human right injustice. Kielburger was shaken by this because he was 12-years-old at that time too.
For more information, visit www.freethechildren.com.
Stockbrugger-Knaus’s class will also be selling Rafiki bracelets with each colour going towards a different social issue in third world countries.
