Polytechnic School: SEP Students Learn About Farm Workers
After learning about Cesar Chavez, students in the Skills Enrichment Program (SEP) participated in a simulation as migrant farm workers. To explore the frustrations felt by the farm workers, students were given difficult parameters and less than ideal equipment to complete their task of picking beans.
As an attempt to heighten the exercise, a few students were given cards with statements about fabricated problems and make-believe ill family members. As students broke off and experimented with a strike, the boy who received a card saying his father was ill continued to suffer the conditions and kept working. The exercise was brief, but students took away a new understanding of the difficulties faced by farm workers.