Interpreting César Chávez’s Legacy with Students

“When the man who feeds the world by toiling in the field is himself deprived of the basic rights of feeding and caring for his own family, the whole community of man is sick.”

 — César Chávez

Huelga 'Strike' César Chávez Photo by Jay Galvin

                                    

César Chávez was a Mexican-American labor activist and civil rights leader who fought tirelessly throughout his life to improve the working conditions of migrant farm workers. A man of great courage, he championed nonviolent protest, using boycotts, strikes, and fasting as a way to create sweeping social change. Importantly, his work led him to found the United Farm Workers union (UFW).

His remarkable achievements towards social justice and human rights serve as an excellent example to young people of how vital their voices are in bringing about change and championing causes that are as relevant today as they were in his day.

Thursday, March 31^st is César Chávez Day, a day aimed at celebrating the life and work of this remarkable individual through education and community service.

Inspired to enrich your classroom with the legacy of César Chávez? 

Start with a lesson

Interpreting the Impact of César Chávez’s Early Years

In this immigration lesson plan, students will understand how César Chávez’s adolescence as a migrant farm worker influenced his later achievements.  First, students will analyze how an artist and biographer have interpreted Chávez’s legacy.  Then by reading excerpts from Chávez’s autobiography, students will draw connections between how his early years shaped his later beliefs and achievements around organized labor, social justice, and humane treatment of individuals. Once students have read and critically thought about these connections, they will write a response supported with evidence from the text to answer the investigative question on the impact of Chávez’s early years and development.  This Common-Core and C3 aligned lesson includes extensions and adaptations for ELL students and readers at multiple levels. 

Click here to view the lesson.

Use visuals and picture books

Appropriate for younger students, but inspirational for all ages, picture books have a unique capacity to captivate and educate. The following books all have linked teacher’s guides.

• Poems to Dream Together/Poemas para Soñar Juntos by Francisco Alarcón pays tribute to those who toil in the fields, and to César Chávez. This is an excellent bilingual book to use in your celebration of National Poetry Month in April.   

• Amelia's Road by Linda Jacobs Altman explores the daily life of migrant farm working in California's Central Valley from a child’s perspective. According to the publisher, Lee and Low Books, “it is an inspirational tale about the importance of home.” 

• First Day in Grapes by L. King Perez follows Chico and his family traveling farm to farm across California where every September they pick grapes and Chico enters a different school. But third grade year is different and Chico begins to find his own voice against the bullies at his school.

• Calling the Doves / El Canto de las Palomas by Juan Herrera is the current Poet Laureate’s account of his childhood as a migrant farmworker.  Beautifully illustrated and composed in Spanish and English, Herrera describes the simple joys he misses from his native Mexico as well as detailing his personal journey in becoming a writer.

• A brief video Mini-Bio: César Chávez sets the foundation for older students to learn about the major achievements of Chávez’s life.

Initiate a community service project

Chávez was explicit about the need to serve one’s community. As a class, identify a need in your community and then brainstorm ways that students can make a difference from running a donation drive to decorating school walls in order to welcome all students and families.  Take inspiration from a group of middle school students in Fellsmere, FL for a more intensive service-learning project. They wrote and produced a short news broadcast highlighting the unfair labor practices and strenuous conditions of migrant farmworkers who pick oranges in their community. Then they held a school-wide donation drive for materials farmworkers sorely needed. Their teachers were winners of our Community Grants program and a lesson for this project can be found here.  If you do decide to do an immigration-themed service-learning project, please let us know about it and apply for our community grants (deadline July 1, 2016). 

Extend learning into the present state of migrant farm workers

• Read How Inaction on Immigration Impacts the Agricultural Economy (American Immigration Council) and What happens when more than half of migrant workers are undocumented? (Michigan Radio)  Ask students: What is the status of migrant labor today in the U.S.?  How much has changed and stayed the same since Chávez’s early childhood?

 

• Read Interview with a Crab Picker (Public Welfare Foundation) and explore what it is like to apply for U.S. jobs while residing in the home country.  Pair this reading with the short film about a Public Welfare Foundation grantee: Centro De Los Derechos Del Migrante, Inc. available on their website. Ask students:  How do these recent interviews and stories compare and contrast with the conditions facing Chávez and his family? How are some individuals in home countries benefitting from sending migrant workers to the U.S.?

Have more ideas on teaching César Chávez and his legacy with students?  We’d love to hear them.  Email us at teacher@immcouncil.org and follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration.

Mark your calendars! We’re presenting at Share My Lesson’s Ideas & Innovations Virtual Conference on April 5^th, 2016 at 8:30pm EST. Register for our free interactive session “So You Want to Teach about Immigration?” at this link: http://bit.ly/22zBOnk and please share broadly.

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.

Explore Immigration with Edwidge Danticat

We have long been admirers of award-winning author, Ms. Edwidge Danticat, who emigrated from Haiti when she was twelve-years-old.  On the occasion of Women’s History Month (March) and International Women’s Day (March 8) we bring you a new interview with the author, book reviews and lesson plans that highlight Ms. Danticat’s life and literature.

Throughout her prolific career, she has offered moving and engaging portrayals of the immigrant experience often with highly memorably female characters. Ms. Danticat published two books last year: Untwine, a young adult novel of identity, loss, and grief where Haitian-American twin girls are irrevocably separated (in our review, we suggest it’s fitting for readers of all ages) and a brave children’s book, Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation, where a young girl must learn new ways to communicate with her mother while she is detained in an immigrant detention center. Please click here for a review by The New York Times.

Recently, we interviewed Ms. Danticat and asked her to revisit one of our favorite novels, Behind the Mountains, published by Scholastic in 2002. In Behind the Mountains, Celiane Esperance, a young girl living in Haiti is forced to flee political violence to the U.S. with her mother and brother and reunite with her father in Brooklyn, NY. Along the journey, Celiane captures her thoughts and feelings in a journal she affectionately names her “sweet little book.” 

We asked Ms. Danticat about her personal immigration story, changes she’s observed in immigration since 2002, what Celiane might be doing now, and what advice she has for young writers.  The video interview encourages youth voice in writing and underscores the challenges facing immigrants today.

Please click here to watch our interview. 

This video resource is replete with images of Haitian and Haitian-American art. It is a terrific companion to our comprehensive unit plan on Behind the Mountains designed for high school students. The plan includes activities for students to: keep a dialectical journal while reading, decipher the meaning of figurative language in Haitian proverbs and art, apply the “push-pull” factors of immigration, understand how a “duality of cultures” and “stages of adaptation” function in the lives of immigrants, as well as write an argumentative essay.

Please click here to read our Behind the Mountains Unit Plan.

Ms. Danticat also volunteers her time to judge our Celebrate America Fifth Grade Creative Writing Contest where students write on the theme “Why I’m Glad America is a Nation of Immigrants.” To learn more about the contest, please click here.

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.

Discover the “Celebrate America” Effect

The American Immigration Council’s “Celebrate America” fifth grade Creative Writing Contest began 19 years ago with just a couple dozen entries. Today, it has grown to over 5,000 entries annually! Since 1997, close to 75,000 students, from nearly 750 schools across the nation have participated. Each year, students write around the theme “Why I’m Glad America is a Nation of Immigrants.”

What continues to surprise us about the contest are the multiple and unforeseen ways the contest affects communities, schools, and individuals.

Click here to read about the evolution of the contest and its impact.

Lasting Relationships

From this contest, we have been able to forge lasting relationships focused on a shared commitment to raising awareness and understanding about immigration and the important role of youth voices. Two immediate examples with extensions for the classroom include:

1) Last year, we had the privilege of meeting the local winner of the Washington, D.C. metro area contest, Marlyse Ngouabe. She read her winning entry at a naturalization oath ceremony along with the national winner, Anya Frazer. Since then, Marlyse, now a sixth-grader continues to write young adult literature reviews on immigration-themed books that her peers might also find appealing to read. To read her latest book review on The Color of My Words, please click here.

“Celebrate America” fifth grade student winners read their entries at a naturalization oath ceremony at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Field Office in Fairfax, VA on June 18, 2015. Pictured Left to Right: 2015 National Winner Anya Frazer, Washington, D.C. winner Marlyse Ngouabe, and Senior Manager of Education at the American Immigration Council, Claire Tesh.

2) Another perk of the contest is that we are extremely fortunate to have an accomplished list of celebrity judges who donate their time to read student entries. This year our judges are: Gerda Weissman-Klein, Founder of Citizenship Counts, Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author, Valentino Achak-Deng, Minister of Education in South Sudan, Arun Toke, founder of Skipping Stones Multicultural Magazine, and Anya Frazer, the 2015 Grand Prize Winner.

Many of our judges volunteer for subsequent years. Author Edwidge Danticat is a returning judge and her novels continue to engage a wide audience on immigration issues. To read our latest book review of her recently released novel, Untwine, please click here. 

Want to Get Involved?

There are many ways to get involved in our work to teach about immigration.

• Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest - If you want to participate in next year’s contest, please click here. If you’ve previously participated in the contest and would like to be included in our 20^th anniversary celebration by offering testimonials, please email us.

• Book Reviews – Do you know an avid young writer or reader interested in the topic of immigration? Or have you read an immigration-themed book you’d like to review? We accept unsolicited reviews. Please email us for more information. 

•  Lesson Plans – If you’ve used our lesson plans, we’d love to know how it went so we can continue to improve it or let us know about a resource or lesson plan you would like us to develop on immigration. Please use this feedback form or email us.  

• Community Grants – We offer community grants to teach about immigration. Click here to learn more and apply.

•  Social Media – Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter @ThnkImmigration 

If you like what we do, please forward this email to a friend or colleague, tell them about us, and share with them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to sign up for updates and resources to teach immigration at no cost. Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.