Hide Away

Stepping out of the plan a rush of serenity came over me, although I was 1000s of kilometres away from home I didn’t feel so out of place. I may not of sounded like the moving bodies around me but I knew I cloud fit in with them. Once I was out of the airport I had to try and find soon as I walked into the classroom you could feel the tension. Our classroom teacher didn’t speak to anyone and so I though something was wrong because normally she is a extremely welcoming person. We all slowly started to sit down with our books. She slammed the door closed once we were all in and yelled at us to stand up, once we got up she made us put our books down in the corner. At this point I still had no idea that it was an exercise. I was so scared and was trying to work out what we had done. I listened to her as I didn’t want to get in more trouble. Once she asked us to line up from lightest to darkest I realised what we were doing. Even though I knew it was an exercise I was still really unsure how to act. As a class we were looking around at each other to find some reassurance about what was happening, none of us knew what was going. We all followed along with what our teacher was saying because we felt the need to respect her authority.

I think the fact that from the start we didn’t know what was going on made our reactions more raw and pure and in the moment. And made us later think about how those young innocent kids would have been feeling when they first entered. The experience of the exercise has really made us all think and put ourselves in the shoes of the kids.

...