Current weather:  42° F   cloudy

sponsored by:

Fifth-graders' film explores plight of refugees

Dan Hansen
Staff writer
June 10, 2008

Cooper Elementary student and film director Payton Walling, center, answers questions about his class' video project documenting several Myanmar refugees arriving in Spokane. (Brian Plonka / The Spokesman-Review)

Welcome to Studio 137, also known as Mr. T's fifth-grade classroom at Cooper Elementary School. The usher will show you to your seat after you've received your complimentary Red Vine candy.

Today's 19-minute feature, "The Difference," relates how the class helped Burmese refugees resettling in Spokane.

Hope you brought Kleenex. One tough dad made it through the movie last week without showing emotion, "but after school he was actually in tears," confided his son, 11-year-old director Payton Walling.

The film opens with the kids running en masse into the Spokane International Airport, carrying welcome signs and flowers. There are close-ups of their expectant faces, and the soundtrack is momentarily replaced by a heartbeat.

But then the story leaves the viewer hanging, as it slides back to when the class was searching for a subject for its "year-end integrated writing project."

Each year in Mr. T's class – the T stands for Tanaka and his first name is Joey – students pick a topic and turn it into a video.

Typically he's taught third-grade, and the film has been a work of student-created fiction, like last year's "The 5 Magic Pencils." Students pitch story ideas, work with lighting, create props, costumes and special effects – as much as possible, things are run like a Hollywood production.

This year's older class learned through Gonzaga University and World Relief that two Burmese families were coming to Spokane and that the five adults and five children would need help getting settled. The class had just three weeks to gather the necessities of life for two households.

Some students called stores for donations, while others organized a drive through the Cooper community. Canned foods, clothes, bedding, toys and more – goods poured in like no one expected, eventually filling a room.

Meanwhile, students including Jaqueline Craipo began researching Burma, the Asian country called Myanmar by its military dictators.

This was before the May 2 cyclone that killed an estimated 100,000 people and left many others homeless and at risk of death from poor sanitation, hunger and other causes.

The Burmese people already were suffering; some groups believe that under the dictatorship of Gen. Than Shwe, more than 1 million people had become refugees, even before the cyclone. Others say what's happened to the Burmese people over the decades can only be described as genocide.

Certainly, human rights groups say, more people than necessary are dying in the aftermath of the cyclone because Shwe's government has so severely restricted the work of outside groups.

"Here in America, we have freedom. But in Myanmar, that's all they want," Craipo said.

You won't hear anything about genocide or despots in the Studio 137 film.

Tanaka said World Relief requested that the class omit that information, in case the video is posted on YouTube or other Web sites. Linda Unseth, Spokane director for World Relief, said relief agencies were just getting access to Myanmar when the class was working on its project.

Unseth, whose group has settled about 200 Burmese refugees in Spokane in less than two years, said the intent was not to censor the kids. Nevertheless, Tanaka said, it did spark a class discussion about censorship, with the students ultimately deciding to leave unanswered the question of why the refugees are fleeing.

At the start of the project, classmates were asked on camera what they knew about refugees.

"I don't know what 'refugee' means, OK?" said one.

Several others gave similar responses.

Later, as the project built steam and students learned more about their subject, they started talking about it at home. One girl speaks frankly in the film about the response from her family: Refugees should be greeted with signs saying, "Go home."

"And maybe after they see this movie or hear it, they will understand how (the refugees) have to move and they don't have a choice and that they will change their minds about what they said," the girl says in the film.

Then came moving day. The students packed up everything they'd collected into cars to caravan to an empty house. The film shows them arranging the rooms, sweeping the walkway, scrubbing floors, cleaning window screens and putting up an elaborate "Welcome" sign.

By the time the film returns to the airport, it's anticlimactic.

The refugee families were supposed to arrive at midnight on a Thursday, but were delayed in Seattle. So the students gave their flowers to another just-arrived family of Burmese immigrants, then returned to the airport the next morning to welcome "their" families.

And with a few closing comments, the film ends.

Tanaka hopes to arrange a summer picnic to draw together the students and refugees. Tanaka says he doesn't want the newcomers to be like an immigrant who told the class he had no friends his first three years in America.

Helping the families and making the movie was empowering, students said.

"I used to think that I could never help a family because I'm too … too …" said Stevee Jo Mauro, struggling for words. "I'm only 11."

Mauro made posters to welcome the families and helped set up the children's rooms.

"I've become a better person," she said. "I used to be more selfish."

Craipo, a researcher on the project, said Burma comes to mind sometimes when she thinks the world is not treating her fairly.

"I stop and think, there are a lot of people who are a lot worse off."

back to top