High school English teacher, Mrs. Jennifer Lund,  has put together something she calls “The Country Project” for all the students in her Freshman Academy class. Mrs. Lund explained, “Freshmen are participating in country projects and are involved in simulations where they have to work through scenarios to keep peace between nations. ”  She feels that “it’s been going really well.”

Mrs. Lund’s class is primarily based on social injustice around the world.  Mrs. Lund related that one day, “One of my students asked me, ‘Why is Russia invading Ukraine?’ and, honestly, I couldn’t answer them. She then uprooted the planned curriculum and  created these country projects.  In the project, groups of students have a country they have developed. Mrs. Lund gave them a government and an economic structure.  She explained, “From there, they have been put into a simulation where they have to defeat global problems.”   In order to do this, they need to create alliances.

Gavin Longmore spoke about how he feels about the class: “I think this is a great project. It’s helped me understand the Russian and Ukraine war that has been happening.”

Max Rectenwald explained, “There are about five or six countries. I don’t know about all the alliances, but I know there are three.  My country, called Asgard, has made an alliance with the country Ambrosia.”

Isabela Hand is one of those countries who has an alliance with Max.  She informed us of some information about the class project.  “My country, Ambrosia Island, was the only country that has military dictatorship ,so my country got a better standing on this . .  we don’t have to pay the people in our military while other countries had to. Recently we have made an alliance with Asgard; we merged with Asgard because we didn’t have the resources that they had, so we started to share.”

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