Telling Family Immigration Stories

Telling family immigration stories is a powerful way to build community within and outside of the classroom. Whether the story comes from a student, parent, or a school professional, giving voice and an audience to the story opens channels for empathy and understanding on what can be a divisive topic.

Our latest lesson plan, created by English Language Learner (ELL) teacher Ms. Angeline Sturgis from Eldridge Park School in Lawrence, NJ, demonstrates how to record, illustrate, and share family immigration stories from individuals in your school and community. Ms. Sturgis implemented this project as the result of our Community Grants program.

The finished product of this lesson is an illustrated book and an opportunity to read the story aloud to others. Although this project can be done digitally, the physical book makes an important gift. A culminating public reading with a focus on celebrating, acknowledging, and supporting the immigrant author's triumphs, struggles, and continued efforts to build a new life in the U.S. transforms a lesson into a truly special and unforgettable event. 

Reflecting on the project, Ms. Sturgis wrote, “I've always believed that everyone has a story to tell. Encourage your families to share their stories, whether orally or written and illustrated, like I was able to do. One of the authors, a mother who came to this country as an impoverished child, said to me at the end of our event, ‘I actually feel different. My story needed to be told. All those years, it was living inside me, and I needed my children to hear it. Not only have they heard it---they illustrated it! Now my story is a part of all of us.’ To read the full article, please click here (and scroll down).

Students illustrate a story.

Teacher Ms. Angeline Sturgis records Eldridge Park School staff member William Perez's immigration story from Cuba.

Books wrapped for presentation on the night of the event.

Illustrations are presented on a large screen as the audience listens and watches.

The American Immigration Council grant program is an initiative to provide educators and community organizers with the resources they need to implement a successful immigration curriculum or an immigration-themed project. Grants are awarded on a bi-annual basis. The deadline for the next grant is July 1, 2016, so it’s not too late to think of an idea and apply by clicking here.

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.

Three Classroom Resources to Engage Students this President’s Day

President’s Day will be celebrated on Monday, February 15^th. Usually when President’s Day is addressed in the classroom, it takes place in the primary grades with activities centered around some of the nation’s most revered presidents. But what if this year, observing this national holiday in the classroom was different? What if President’s Day was used as a springboard for engaging students in exploratory learning where they connect the study of our presidents and the power of the executive branch to the topic of immigration?

Here are three engaging resources, two of which are created using HSTRY, a digital learning platform, to help you plan an exciting lesson to teach about immigration. We encourage you to set-up a free teacher account on HSTRY in order to adapt the lessons and share with students.

1) American By Belief: A Family Story - Unless you are 100% Native American your family came to the United States from someplace else. People come for a variety of reasons — to work, reunite with family, get an education or sometimes in search of safety and freedom. This brief lesson is a perfect way to initiate a classroom discussion on why people migrate. You can also extend the activity with our Crossing Borders with Digital Storytelling lesson plan, as well as with the President Lincoln Cottage’s lesson plan for their American By Belief exhibit. The brochure of their educational programs includes a map to “Tell Your Immigration Story.” You can also email them for a free hard copy which makes for a larger classroom display.

An immigrant writes on note on the wall of the "American by Belief" exhibit at President Lincoln's Cottage explaining how she named her son after the President. Credit: http://lincolnscottage.tumblr.com/ 

Engage your students using this lesson we co-created with HSTRY. After you set-up a teacher account, click “copy the timeline,” then sort images and text (using a drag and drop function) into the six identified push/pull factors of immigration. Designed for primary learners (grades 3 and up), this lesson can easily be modified for older students. Students can copy the timeline and add more text and images to fill the categories. Debrief as a class and use the student handbook on HSTRY to properly cite online sources.

Click here to access the American By Belief: A Family Story lesson.

2) Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to the Civil War – This lesson is almost guaranteed to deepen understanding of our nation’s 16^th president! In this lesson, students will evaluate the impact and reception of immigrants and their contributions to the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War and explore how immigrants view Lincoln.

Examining three essential questions about immigrant contributions in the Civil War, students sort the text and images to best answer the questions using the HSTRY platform. They add more resources through recommended sites such as the Library of Congress’s Civil War collection. This lesson is designed for high school students, who can then use sentence stems provided to write and discuss how immigrants contributed to the Union victory. Additionally, this lesson could not have been developed without the scholarship of Professor Jason Silverman, author of Lincoln and the Immigrant, and Patrick Young, Esq.

Click here to access the Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to the Civil War lesson plan.

3) Two Timely Lessons to Teach about Executive Action: The President’s executive action on immigration has been greeted with joy, relief, sadness, and contempt. Just what is an executive action and how can students examine the multiple responses to it are the focus areas of our two popular lesson plans. It is a rich opportunity in the high school classroom to: extend critical discussions on the separation of powers, examine the effects of policy on individuals, and analyze the arguments made by both sides to help students become civically engaged and informed.

Click here to read our blog post about our lessons and access both of the lesson plans.

We seek to connect teachers and students with the most relevant, fact-based information to teach immigration critically and creatively–-at no cost. If you like our work, please share this email, tell a friend and give them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to receive updates and free resources such as lesson plans, books reviews, and community grants. Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.

Digital Learning and Empathy Underscore the Classroom Projects of our Community Grant Winners

The American Immigration Council is proud to announce the winners of the 2016-2017 Community Grants Program. The grant program is an initiative to provide educators and/or community organizers with the resources they need to implement a successful immigration curriculum or community-based project.

This year’s winners are using digital tools in the classroom with students to make personal and relevant connections to immigration and importantly to engender understanding and empathy. The awardees are teachers Ms. Ashley Fort at Batesburg-Leesville Primary School, Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina and Mr. Tyler Thornburg at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The idea behind Ms. Fort’s project titled “Family Artifact Research Project” is that “young students need to know how culture has contributed to the diversity of their community and country” and digital storytelling on immigration and family heritage supplemented with literary and informational texts can help provide students with both context and personal content to deepen their understanding and appreciation for diversity. To produce their digital narratives over the course of this one-week unit, second-grade students will conduct online research, use the Little Bird Tales storytelling app (which we feature on our Crossing Borders with Digital Storytelling lesson plan), and read the The Granddaughter’s Necklace by Sharon Dennis Wyeth among other texts. 

In Mr. Thornburg’s project, “How Immigrants Affect Us,” students will create a podcast interviewing an immigrant about their journey to the U.S. and how that affected their life. The theme for eighth grade students is immigration particularly “understanding how immigrants have played a critical role in the creation of the U.S. and how often their side of the story is left out of textbooks.” The interview podcast project aims to insert those often overlooked, but critically important voices in American society. The interviews will take place during an evening at the school when community and family members can be present. Mr. Thornburg noted that “many of our students come from immigrant families and I do not think that many of them understand the sacrifices that their family members have made to get them to where they are.” It is his hope that the project will tell the stories of the people who make their school.

Senior Manager of Education Claire Tesh, says, “Our grant program rewards classroom teachers and community leaders who have innovative ideas in integrating immigration issues into their teaching. In return, the American Immigration Council shares their results with the greater public through lesson plans, multimedia and other projects.”  Please join us in celebrating these two noteworthy projects and stay tuned as we follow their developments in the classroom.

For over the past decade, the American Immigration Council has been providing educators with funding for projects that support its mission of promoting the benefits of immigrants to our nation. This collaboration with motivated educators across the nation engages students and communities in thoughtful dialogues centered on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism. 

Please share this email with fellow educators to spread the word about the great work of these teachers. To learn more about our 2016-2017 grant programs and resources, including how to apply, please click here. Our next deadline is July 1, 2016. Congratulations to our deserving and inspirational teachers! 

If you like our work, please pass this email, tell a friend, and give them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to sign up to receive updates and free resources.