By: Tanya Raghu
Staff Writer
@tanya_raghu

On Wednesday during fifth period, Coppell High School sophmore English students had a Skype session with Sarah Palmer, the rescue team manager from Liberty in North Korea (LiNK).
Coppell’s LiNK club helped organize the event and contacted LiNK who directed them to Sarah Palmer, a mediator between LiNK and rescue teams worldwide. Senior Becky Chung, president of LINK at CHS, had the idea to have a Skype session.
“Originally I wanted my club to have a Skype call with them but my club sponsor [Alexis Glover] said it fit in with the sophomore curriculum so we asked LiNK and they were open with answering questions,” Chung said.
North Korea has been a prominent subject in the news and media, making its problems easily comprehensible by students and allowing them to tie it into their understanding of their material being taught in class.
“We chose North Korea because there are a lot of current controversies and worldwide issues surrounding it,” English teacher Amelia Antillion said.“There’s a lot of social justice and humans rights issues at hand and that’s been a very big theme especially in literature so we picked a country that we felt would represent this theme and would also be something that our students were cognizant of.”
Sophomore English classes are reading “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, which demonstrates how propaganda can be used in political situations. This can clearly be seen in North Korea.
“What we saw in [a video we watched is] that Kim Jong-un is trying to persuade his people by putting himself in a positive light so his actions are justified,” Antillion said.
The conference with LiNK is not the first and has had many beneficial results for the students’ learning experiences.
“Students had the opportunity to use guiding questions but at the same time inquire about the specific process of saving North Korean refugees and LiNK’s part in the process,” Samantha Neal, English teacher said.
Visit www.libertyinnorthkorea.org for more information.