Quick Digital Learning Day Lessons on Immigration by Students for Students

Officially, Digital Learning Day is February 17^th, but you can teach digital learning day and engage students (#DLDay) any day of the week on immigration with our mini-lessons! We pair historical political cartoons with short video clips produced by young adults on immigration themes and provide rigorous questions for student reflection and class discussion. No more than five minutes in length, these films inspire dialogue, critical thinking and creative teaching on immigration.  Additional activities are provided to extend learning and explore the themes covered in the films.

Our digital learning mini-lessons on immigration makes it easy to: insert and adapt short lessons, ask students to draw connections between historical and present immigration themes, engage students with multimedia, and underscore the power of young voices.  

Shadows of immigration past hangs behind the same Americans barring entry to new arrivals. Credit: The History Project, University of California, Davis

How to Use the Mini-Lessons

The mini-lessons include questions that can be used as warm-ups, homework, extra credit, in-between time during standardized testing days, or extended into full lessons in order to provide students with both historical context and real-world accounts on the impact of immigration today. Currently, we have three mini-lessons but plan to include more in the future. 

Teachers have to flexibility to adapt the guide to best meet classroom needs and extend learning with suggested activities.

Extend the Lessons

 

While we include suggested activities that build upon the themes discussed in the films, it is the perfect opportunity for students to cultivate their own voice through a digital storytelling project and/or service-learning. 

• Cross Borders with Digital Storytelling – Using digital storytelling to capture immigration stories is a powerful way for teachers to create opportunities for “empathetic moments” among students and shape classroom environments. Our most popular lesson plan for K-12 students makes it easy to implement in the classroom. 

 

•  Combine Digital Learning with Service Learning – Our current community grants recipients are using digital technologies to reach beyond the classroom walls to study immigration issues that matter to them. Read about our current inspiring teachers who use podcasts and digital immigration narratives to learn more about immigration and a previous project where students brought awareness and assistance to migrant farm workers in their local community. Use this lesson plan to create a similar service-learning initiative in your community – and of course, feel free to apply to our next round of community grants.

We’d Love to Hear What You Think! Let us know your thoughts by emailing us or by filling out a brief feedback form. We’re also on twitter – use the hashtag #DLDay, our handle @ThnkImmigration, and @OfficialDLDay.

Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story

Winner of the Carter G. Woodson Book Award presented to exemplary books written for children each year, Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story is another top-notch biography by Paula Yoo, who also wrote the popular Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds. Shining Star tells the little-known story of Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American born at the turn of the century. Since her childhood Anna was dedicated to becoming a movie star against everybody’s wishes and expectations. Her parents forbade her from becoming an actress and Hollywood was not receptive to Chinese actors. These barriers did not hold Wong back; she persevered and after many years of practice she was “discovered” by a director. After she begins earning money, her family has a change of heart and begins supporting her dream of becoming a movie star. Defined and limited by her ethnicity, Wong takes on some small roles and is frustrated by the discriminatory practices and negative portrayals of Chinese people in film. During her career, minority actors were not allowed to kiss Caucasian actors on screen and most films created roles that represented docile and obedient or sinister and conniving Chinese characters. 

 

Yoo’s book portrays a strong female role model and shows an era that not only limited the success of females (women couldn’t vote, own property, or attend many universities), but also limited the freedoms of many minority groups. The book has many valuable lessons for students as young as seven who can understand the concepts of following one’s dream, perseverance, and standing up for what you believe in—all principles Wong demonstrates. Other themes represented in the book are forgiveness, the ability to change your mind and providing support to somebody who is following their dreams, as demonstrated by Wong’s parents.

The book importantly lends itself to starting a conversation about racism, discrimination, and stereotyping with young learners. Some questions to ask might include: How is the current reality for Asian-American actors similar and different from that experienced by Anna May Wong at the turn of the century? Why do you think Wong was turned down for the roles she sought? What assumptions were people making about her appearance and ability?

Shining Star is a valuable addition to any diverse classroom library not only for its concise, powerful and ultimately inspirational story told with captivating illustrations, but for its ability to portray the damaging nature of stereotypes and harsh effects of discrimination.

Additional Resources

•  About Ana May Wong: Watch and hear more about Anna May Wong in this short six minute film “In Her Own Words” which would make a great companion piece to a classroom read. Listen to author Paula Yoo discuss the importance of Anna May Wong’s story in this brief video clip.  

•  About Historical Context and Connections: Read a previous blog post contributed by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation on What We Can Learn and Teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act today. 

• About Asian American Stereotyping: Read about critical and acclaimed successes, as well as persistent stereotypes of Asian-American writers, artists, and actors from Asian-Nation, a website by Professor C.N. Lee. Also, visit Teaching Tolerance’s “I Am Asian American” Toolkit for helpful resources and reflective questions on building an inclusive classroom for Asian-American ethnicities.

• About Building a Diverse Library: Visit book publisher Lee & Low’s website for more books like Shining Star included in their Asian Pacific American Heritage Collection.