Project Overview

Junior High students at Anser Charter School in Boise, Idaho co-authored this book of poetry with their refugee partners from the Hillside Junior High as part of a larger project to understand the growing population of refugees in Boise.

Anser reached out to The Boise School District’s Bridge Program, which prepares refugees and immigrants to go into regular classrooms. Twenty-four refugee students from Hillside visited Anser each Thursday for 20 weeks. Students discovered new ways to communicate through music, acting, play, technology, and eventually through words.

Students used their refugee buddy’s stories and words to write poetry—beautiful, powerful poetry that resulted in a published, high quality book that shares the refugees’ experiences. These books have been distributed to every school and library in the Treasure Valley with the knowledge that sharing stories is the first step in creating understanding.

As the students worked together their poems went through many difficult revisions, and they all learned the valuable lesson of “hitting the delete key” when writing wasn’t real. They became honest writers with something to say to a larger audience.