Student Achievements
School Counseling Graduate Student Makes Major Impact With Holland High School Students
February 03, 2017
Lauren Robinson, a graduate student in the School Counseling program at GVSU, is making a major impact at Hamilton High School. Hamilton High School is in rural area near Holland where Lauren is a teacher. Together with Zeinab Chami, a teacher at Fordson High School in Dearborn, Lauren worked to plan a field trip to Dearborn to visit the Arab-American National Museum and then to Fordson High School to sit down and talk to Chami's students. Hamilton High School is a predominately white community with approximately 90% of students identifying as Caucasian. Robinson wanted to expose her students to different cultures and ethnicities through this field trip and by creating a "Culture in America" class.
Fordson High School is nearly the opposite of Hamilton with 95% of students identifying as Arab-American. While at Fordson High School for the field trip, the teachers facilitated a conversation through small group activities to give the students an opportunity to interact and learn about each other.
Robinson said the goal of this project was to "increase empathy amongst our students and to help them understand that different cultures don't mean 'bad' and different cultures should be embraced."
Read more about Lauren's accomplishments and this project.