Finding Home: A Year in the

Life of Syrian Refugee

Families
Objectives:

You will be able to:

• refer to details and examples from the TIME Magazine project
"Finding Home" in order to compare and contrast how they imagine a
home with the ways that three Syrian women imagine a home
• integrate information from two multimedia pieces from TIME in order
to write and speak about options for responding to the refugee crisis
in Europe
• integrate multimedia information to develop a full understanding of
how war has impacted the lives of three Syrian families and identify
how each media type contributes to their understanding
This lesson explores a project called "Finding
Home."
• On your own, or with a partner, use the table below to describe what
you imagine when you think of a home. Prepare to share and
compare your responses with the class:
 Reflect on the following questions and then
share your responses with the class:
• What does a place need to be a home?
• Why might someone need to leave their home?
• Have you ever had to leave your home? Why? How did that feel?
 "Finding Home" is a true story about four families who have
to leave their homes because they have become refugees.
• 1. Discuss: What is a refugee? What can cause a person to become a
refugee?
• 2. Discuss: How might your life change if a war started in your
country? If fighting was happening in your backyard, how could that
impact your daily life? At what point would you decide to leave?
3. Examine the graphic from TIME below. How many people are leaving Syria to get away from the
war? Where are they are going to seek asylum? Take two minutes to discuss with a partner: Should
countries be required to grant asylum to refugees? If yes, why and under what circumstances? If
no, why not?
The graphics above were created in 2015. As of December 2017, the
number of Syrian refugees was closer to 5.4 million, according to the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Today, we are going to learn more about the lives of three of those
refugees, and their families, by reading and viewing excerpts from the
story "Finding Home." The story was published in TIME Magazine by
journalists Aryn Baker, Lynsey Addario, and Francesca Trianni. They
spent a year researching the story and used writing, video and
photographs to tell the stories of the people they met.
• 4. As you explore the true stories in "Finding Home," listen for the
following:
• How do the people in the story describe the places they live?
• What do they say they want in a home and how does that compare
with what you said makes a home?
 "Finding Home" introduces us to four women who are pregnant
when they are forced to leave Syria. They are in Greece when when
the story begins.
1. Read the following paragraph from the first article in "Finding Home," for an
introduction:
More than 1,000 Syrian refugees have given birth in Greece this year, and since
September, TIME has followed four of them….Through video, social media,
photography and the written word, TIME will spend the next year documenting
the babies' first year of life. Wrapped in donated blankets and secondhand
onesies, they will likely spend at least the first months of their new lives in
hastily built refugee camps that offer little protection from winter's freezing
temperatures and summer's swarms of mosquitoes. They are between worlds.
In a world teeming with unknowns, about the only thing certain in their lives is
that they probably won't see their parents' home country until they are adults,
if ever.
2. Before reading more excerpts from this article, consider the
following:
Why do you think the story was titled "Children of No Nation"? What
do you think the story will be about?
What might a pregnant woman, or a mother with a new baby, want in a
new home?
Divide into three groups, and you will be assigned the story of Taimaa,
Illham, or Nour. In your group, or on your own, read your assigned
excerpt of "Children of No Nation" to meet one of the three women
who the journalists follow in "Finding Home." As you read, use the
table below to track details about what this woman thinks of when
she thinks of "home."