Education

Our goal in creating this site is to offer access to the personal stories of Bosnians who have been resettled in Vermont so that we can all begin to understand their experiences from their perspectives. To that end we have assembled an array of audio interview excerpts, commissioned new video, and reproduced the Bosnian portion of the In Their Own Words exhibit. Together these various elements offer a complex picture of both the war and the resettlement process.

This site includes 31 audio excerpts, three videos, and nine photographic images and associated text, which could easily be a bewildering amount of information. The basic logic of its organization, on pages titled “Bosnia,” “Vermont,” “Culture,” and “Exhibit,” is—we hope—clear, and we encourage you to explore the site and become acquainted with this material on your own. But to help you become better oriented, we have also created several guides that suggest ways you can make use of this site in classroom and community contexts. These materials are available as downloadable PDF files below.

In the coming weeks we will be developing lesson plans for this site that explore the questions “What does it mean to a refugee?” and “What does it mean to be a Vermonter?” and we will post these materials as they are completed. But we also would like to hear from you and would welcome your feedback as well as your ideas for using this site as a classroom resource. If you have something you’d like to share, please get in touch with our Education Director, Gregory Sharrow, whom you can reach at gsharrow@vermontfolklifecenter.org

Overview of audio and video resources on the New Neighbors: Bosnia Website

Classroom Discussion Topics Related to the New Neighbors: Bosnia Website

Using this Website with Katherine Paterson’s Day of the Pelican

A Selection of Books and Videos about Bosnia and the Balkan Wars