Welcome to the 2021 Ethical ELA Teacher Educator Series. As we step into 2021, many of us carry wounds from 2020, some more visible than others. Education does not look like it did when we entered this profession (some much longer ago than others), but I think we are coming to understand that it shouldn’t, that it can’t if we are to imagine greater education equity, justice, and healing. And how about joy! Can we imagine more joy in education? And so Ethical ELA has called upon friends, scholars of education across the country, to contribute ideas and practices that will help us do “good” work for, with, and alongside the human being with whom we are entrusted: our students. Welcome, Bryan Ripley Crandall and Ger Duany. Happy New Year!
Bryan Ripley Crandall is an Associate Professor & Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University. Raised in Syracuse, New York, he began a teaching career in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also volunteered with refugee families.
Ger Duany is an actor, model, activist, and author who survived the tragic exodus of 20,000 Sudanese children, often referred to as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” He is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, a High Profile Supporter to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), an international speaker, a husband, and a father.
Walk Toward the Rising Sun: A New Year for Reflection & Offering Wisdom with Refugee-Relocation Stories by Bryan Ripley Crandall and Ger Duany
In Roman mythology, Janus is the God of passages, transitions, open doors, gates, and opportunity. He is lord of dualities: war/peace, life/death, young/old, and a sage of new beginnings. Janus represents the fusion of the past with the future to make the present. He is commonly depicted with two faces – one that looks forward and the other that looks behind. His greatest influence, perhaps, arrived in the 16th century when Pope Gregory the XVIII adopted Julius Caeser’s Gregorian calendar and named the first month after him.
January provides a great location for students and teachers to look behind them and forward. It is the month to say goodbye to 365 days that just were, and to welcome another 365 days ahead. As we pack away the glitz of Times Square, fireworks, kisses, champaign, and resolutions, the first week back to school is a great time to say “Hello, 2021. We got this.”
January 1st, however, is also a date for thousands of immigrant and refugee Americans who celebrate their birthdays, many of whom fled to the United States from war, poverty, famine, and violence. These are individuals who arrived to a new nation without Western tradition of cakes, candles, and parties. Instead, when they were greeted by a country that celebrates The New Colossus (Lazarus 1883) and e pluribus unum, some never had record of the date they entered the world. As a result, when asked for the day they were born, they name January 1st. It’s not only the first day of a new year, but the hope they have in a new nation.
This is why January seemed perfect to write for Ethical ELA with one of my favorite January traditions: the January Letter. It also seemed logical to invite actor/model/ activist/author Ger Duany to write with me and offer his reflection of 2020 to be shared with teachers, educators, students, writers, and readers. We hope fellow educators will promote similar writing in their own classes and add Walk Toward the Rising Sun to their classroom libraries.
Ger Duany survived the tragic exodus of the estimated 20,000 Sudanese youth – often referred to as “Lost Boys of Sudan” – during the nation’s civil unrest during the 80s and 90s. His childhood of tending cattle turned to living a life as a child soldier where he witnessed the loss of friends and family, before finally escaping to Ethiopia at the age of 14 (see also, From Refugee to Global Ambassador | Ger Duany, TEDx Talks, March 10, 2016). Ger found help within Dadaab refugee camp and resettled later in the United States where he played basketball, earned a college degree, began acting, and embraced an American dream.
Ger Duany’s memoir, Walk Toward the Rising Sun was released in 2020,under Christopher Myer’s MAKE ME A WORLD imprint with Alfred A. Knopf/Random House Children’s Books (an educator’s guide is available to those who wish to read his story with students – one I wrote with teacher Abu Bility).
Our purposes here, though, is to offer brief context of the January task and to share the one Ger wrote. Assigning January Letter with students as they arrive back to school from the holiday break in 2021 is a great way to kick off the new year.
The January Letter
For over a decade I taught high school English at the Brown School in Louisville, Kentucky – a K-12 public school with a mission to represent the diversity of the city and to celebrate the uniqueness of every child. Early in my career I learned from a mentor, Sue McV, about the longstanding tradition of the school’s January Letters. “On the first day students return from break,” Sue taught me, “assign them to write letters about the year that just was, and let them think about the year still ahead.” This is exactly what I did.
Every January, I assigned my students to craft these letters as the first assignment of a new year. The grading was easy. “If you turn the letter in tomorrow,” I wrote on the chalkboard, “it will be an automatic 100 pts.” I did not read them; instead, they sealed the letters in envelopes, and I stored them in safely for 365 days. A year later, I returned them.
These January Letters were a tradition of the English Department at the Brown School, and something the English teachers coordinated. We provided stamps to the senior class, and these letters were mailed to their homes right before the holiday break. The letters were meant for them. When we returned to a new year, students were greeted with what they wrote the year before. It was a day for classrooms to erupt with many emotions, because the writers learned how quickly things change in one cycle of the calendar. That’s what it’s all about.
Walk Toward the Rising Sun
While teaching in Kentucky, I also volunteered with the Kentucky Refugee Mission in support of several “Lost Boys of Sudan” relocated to the city. With the Louisville and National Writing Project mantra with me – the best teachers of writing are writers, too – I wrote with (and for) students. I also wrote with (and for) the refugee populations I volunteered with. School life blended with my out-of-school work. Soon, refugee-relocations stories found a way into my curriculum, where we all looked at our responsibilities to local, national, and global inequities.
For juniors, after I assigned the January Letters, I began a unit called, “Why Africa?” and we spent six weeks challenging stereotypes and misunderstandings about the continent. I assigned Sara Corbett’s (2001) The Lost Boys of Sudan; The Long, Long, Long Road to Fargo from New York Times Magazine, and for six weeks, students were given opportunities to read Waiting for the Rain by Sheila Gordon, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad,and/or Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. We also worked through Skills4Life, a set of tools upheld by Hoops4Hope in Zimbabwe and other countries in southern Africa, where we asked ourselves what does focus, self-awareness, self-esteem, responsibility, empathy, and integrity have to do with upholding a literate community?
My hypothesis during the “Why Africa?” unit was, “To understand the United States, we must also understand a world outside the United States.” For 26+ years now, the work has helped me to embrace a philosophy of human togetherness, integrity, and responsibility that supports refugee- and immigrant-background families and youth (i.e., Crandall, Baldizon, & King, 2020; Crandall, 2019, 2018, 2017).
I first learned of Ger Duany, though, when a student came to class one day in 2004 and declared, “Hey, I think there’s a ‘Lost Boy of Sudan’ in the movie I Heart Huckabees. [Insert Ger Duany Movies]. You should watch it.” I did, and sure enough it was true. Ger Duany played Stephen Nemieri, a character I have since referenced throughout my career. In the film, Stephen Nemieri was dubbed a ‘coincidence’ – an individual who keeps popping up in our lives and helps us to question our world. I used to joke, “Wouldn’t it be a coincidence if one day I met ‘the coincidence’ in real life?”
Well, sure enough, I did. And here we are today. What a coincidence.
It was only logical to invite Ger Duany to write with me as a welcome to 2021.Lucky for me, he agreed. January is a perfect time to applaud his memoir, Walk Toward the Rising Sun, and to invite him to share his own January Letter (one that can be used with students).
Ger Duany’s January Letter, 2021
Dear Ger,
Reflection, for me, is always about learning to detach myself from the past, and to look at my experiences with a critical, even artistic, eye. Writing and publishing a memoir was difficult, especially because many of my childhood stories were tragic. It’s hard for readers to believe that I am still alive. I had to dig deep to bring Walk Toward the Rising Sun to fruition. While acting in the movie, The Good Lie, though, I knew I had many stories within me that needed to be told. That’s what started the memoir, and in 2020 everything aligned. The book was published.
The Nuer people of Sudan are known for their spiritual attitudes and braveness. Nuer people begin a celebration of life and a new year early, and it lasts for weeks. In Nuer tradition, everything a person does is attached to the larger universe. Individual acts play a role in the past, the present, and the future. It’s all connected. For these reasons, we have numerous festivals, and often sacrifice a cow in order to hold a feast so that ancestral ghosts can get their share, too. In return, they watch us – those who still have life.
This past year was transformational and a year of reawakening. Our humanity was confronted with new sets of challenges, and most of us never thought we’d be witness to a global, economic shutdown, a pandemic, and civil unrest all at once. It helped us to stay at home, to perfect meals, and to even think with our pens on paper for the sake of clarity – a gift to ourselves. Perhaps 2020 was supposed to be a year of self-actualizing where we could bring ourselves together spiritually and mentally. Sometimes, letting go is necessary. This was the year where Kobe Bryan’s helicopter crash shocked me because I knew him personally and where I witnessed George Floyd being murdered in front of a camera. We also said goodbye to actor Chadwick Boseman from colon cancer. The events broke my heart into small pieces and we lost leaders of our time.
2020 wasn’t only challenges, though. There are also celebrations. I had my first-born son and wrote my first book. Covid caused me to stop traveling the world as a refugee advocate and helped me to make a choice not to audition for movies or modeling jobs. Instead, I dedicate time and energy to go deep in expanding my worldview and what it means to create a sound family structure as a new father. My heart cries for the world, and I know we must empower ourselves to take possession of our health (emotionally, financially, mentally, physically, spiritually). Health is key to our longevity.
Two of my younger brothers were the last people brought to the United States before the Trump administration shutdown resettlement. They were lucky. Others weren’t so lucky and have been desperately awaiting to be reunited with family. Many immigrant parents, too, were separated from their children. In 2021, it is my hope that a new administration will revisit its foreign and immigration policies, with an intention to bring back what has always made America the nation that it is. America became powerful by allowing individuals from around the world to pursue their dreams. I hope the U.S. will reform programs to offer immigrants and refugees asylum, so they can, like me, strive and thrive. I hope 2021 will bring back the humanity, integrity, and grace that the United States was always been known for.
Writing Walk Toward the Rising Sun helped me to express myself and, interestingly, I found it fun to do research about my history. For the past five years, I was a Goodwill Ambassador to UNHCR (see From Refugee to Global Ambassador TedTalk, 2016). My 27 years of life in America equipped me with serious tools to tell my story, so I wanted my memoir to be compelling and universal. My story is an American one, but I wanted it to be one for our world, too, and the responsibility we have to our fellow human beings. Readers of my memoir should take away what resonates with them most and recognize that I am just like them, with the same values: a love of family and a strong sense of community. We may have had different starts, but nothing should topple faith and goals. Our stories matter.
I feel fortunate my journey brought me to Christopher Myers, the writer/illustrator with a strong background in the literary world (son of Walter Dean Myers). Chris has always believed in my stories, just as he’s believed in the stories of so many others that haven’t been represented in the United States (see The Apartheid of Children’s Literature, 2014). Chris saw the potential in my memoir and encouraged me to sit down and write it. He thought it could be a bestselling story – and that’s how Walk Toward the Rising Sun began. “We can cook this pot, together, Ger,” he told me. I believed him. Chris helped me navigate my stories beyond politics and war, and understood the power in writing and storytelling. For these reasons, I am proud to call Chris Myers a friend today. My life journey from North East Africa to the Western world has now been published. It is a celebration of my educational opportunities and a way to amplify the voices of immigrant and refugee people like me.
I still have more stories to tell, as new life keeps creating itself in front of me. Chris Myers told me I have several more books to write. Since much has been simmering between the U.S. & South Sudan over the past few years, I am ahead of the curve and have ideas. My first book captured life as a child soldier, being a Lost Boy of Sudan, my arrival to the United States, and how I came to basketball and acting. I want to write books to share stories between my two countries. I look forward to writing new chapters, as well.
Sincerely,
Ger Duany
The January Challenge
Ger and I wish everyone a Happy New Year and we encourage teachers to begin the new year with their own January Letter traditions. It’s a wonderful month to be reflective and we hope schools will add Walk Toward the Rising Sun with other refugee narratives already in use in schools across the nation. We hope you are walking towards hope, too, and the new year is better than the one before. Here’s to you next 365 days of sunrises (and also for a year of beautiful sunsets). Happy New Year!
For an additional resource about Ger Duany’s memoir, Walk Toward the Rising Sun, see the National Writing Project’s The Write Time – Ger Duany with William King.
References
Crandall, B. R., Baldizon, J., & King, W. (2020). “We Are All Projects…Together We’re Strong”. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 63(6), 607-613.
Crandall, B. R. (2019). Who We Are Together: Emphasizing Community in the Work We Do. Voices from the Middle, 27(2), 9-14.
Crandall, B. R. (2018). “History Should Come First”: Perspectives on Writing of Somali-Born, Refugee-Background Male Youth on Writing in and out of School. In R. F. Shawna Shapiro, Mary Jane Curry (Ed.), Educating Refugee-background Students: Critical Issues and Dynamic Contexts. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Crandall, B. R. (2017). Writing with Ubuntu in support of refugee and immigrant youth. English in Texas, 46(2), 12-17.
I love the idea of a January Letter. This couldn’t have come at a better time. I am working this into my lesson plans this week. Thanks so much for sharing.
I teach Middle School, any suggestions on how to adjust this assignment for them?
I love this… thank you!
The January Letter is a simple, but brilliant idea for the first assignment of the new year. Thank you, Bryan and Ger, for sharing this with us!
This post led me on to a rabbit hole that I enjoyed jumping into. So much rich wisdom and inspiration here. I want to shout it out to all ELA teachers. Thanks!
Thank you, Bryan, Ger, and Sarah. This is a wonderful activity to use with our students, especially this year! Our students are still processing the events of 2020. Writing this kind of letter will surely help them. Wishing you all the best in 2021.
I’m sitting here, at my kitchen table just gob-smacked at the wisdom, care, attention, love in this post. What a wonderful activity to do for and with students. I have a New Year’s activity planned for my NJHS students this coming week. But, I think I will see what gems from the advice here I can embed into it. Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for this.
Happy New Year Linda. Keep well and safe!!