Teacher's Tool Kit

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Lesson 3

Toolkit

Activities & Lesson Plans

- University of Minnesota Immigration History Resource Center

Storytelling ActivitesEach curriculum is a complete resource for making Immigrant Stories in the classroom or a public workshop. They contain schedules, lesson plans, worksheets, a grading rubric, and written instructions that correspond with the website’s tutorial videos.

https://cla.umn.edu/ihrc/research/immigrant-stories/toolkits

- Making an Immigrant Story: Curriculum for English Language Learners

University of Minnesota Immigration History Resource Center

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1eIDteoJgugSTY3eTRwdUw0WW8/view

- Making an Immigrant Story: High School Currriculum

University of Minnesota Immigration History Resource Center

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1eIDteoJgugb1NyWHl1TjNoS0E/view

- Complete lesson plans for teaching Richard Blanco’s immigration poem, “Translation for Mamá” from The Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community, a project developed by the Academy of American Poets.

https://poets.org/lesson-plan/incredible-bridges-translation-mama-richard-blanco

Poem in English and Spanish. Includes video of Richard Blanco reading the poem.

- Complete lesson plans for teaching Juan Felipe Herrera”s “Every Day We Get More Illegal” from the Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community, a project developed by the Academy of American Poets.

https://poets.org/lesson-plan/incredible-bridges-every-day-we-get-more-illegal-juan-felipe-herrera

Poem in English. Includes video of Juan Felipe Herrera reading the poem.

- If It Were My Home:

Compare living conditions with your home compared with another via an interactive map and social data

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/

- Syrian Journey: Choose your own escape route.

An interactive digital game in which participants experience understand the real dilemmas Syrian refugees face based on the choices they are forced to make along the way.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32057601

- Toolkit for educators for promoting empathy from the Ashoka Change Maker Schools

https://startempathy.org/resources/toolkit/

Videos

- Greencard Voices:

Farhat Sadat: https://www.greencardvoices.com/speakers/farhat-sadat/

Farhat is a high school student from Aghanistan

Karelin: https://www.greencardvoices.com/speakers/karelin/

Karelin is a high school student from Guatemala

Nathaniel Valera: https://www.greencardvoices.com/speakers/nathanael-valera/

Nathaniel is a high school student from Mexico

Texts and Films

- Arau, S. 2004. A day without a Mexican. Xenon Pictures.
- Chavez, L. 1998. Shadowed Lives: Undocumented immigrants in American society. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
- Urrea, L. 1993. Across the Wire: Life and hard times on the Mexican border. New York: Anchor Books.
- Online Resources in Learners’ Mother Tongues/Heritage Languages, Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults (LESLLA.org: https://www.leslla.org/resources-in-mother-tongues)

This page provides links to storybooks in migrants' native languages with the idea of supporting the development/maintenance of these languages while migrants are learning English. The storybooks represent a number of languages from all over the world.

Additional Resources

Stories about Documented and Undocumented Immigrants

NPR, “Employers Struggle With Hiring Undocumented Workers: 'You Cannot Hire American Here'”:

https://www.npr.org/tags/170688633/undocumented-immigrants

Motus Monologues:

https://www.motustheater.org/motus-monologues-podcast

Somali Refugee Now Directing Seattle Clinic that Treated Her as a Child:

https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/n-america/somali-refugee-now-directing-seattle-clinic-treated-child/

Why a Grandma Takes Asylum Seekers into Her Home: "I'm Doing it Because it's the Right Thing."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1a0PsNcVY0

Meet The 8-Year-Old Refugee Who Won New York State’s Chess Championship | NBC Nightly News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsJfZ-JMal4

Spoken word artist Muna Abdulahi reading her poem “The Unwritten Letter from my Immigrant Parent”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUsWWmCI1bM&feature=youtu.be

Additional Resources

Immigration and Empathy

Empathy for Immigrants (appropriate for classroom):

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201809/empathy-immigrants

Teaching Students to Consider Immigration with Empathy: an Association of American Colleges & Universities article by Miguel Vasquez

https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/teaching-students-consider-immigration-empathy

Understanding Immigration: Exercises in Empathy & Advocacy for Families from Doing Good Together

Exercises 2 and 5 could be used or adapted for the classroom.

https://www.doinggoodtogether.org/bhf/blog/understanding-immigration

How to Foster Empathy for Immigrants: a Greater Good article by Jeremy Adam Smith

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_foster_empathy_immigrants

In Their Shoes: Empathy and Immigration

This is a recording from the National Immigration Forum's "Only in America" blog that could be excerpted for high school or above at high intermediate to advanced level English.

https://immigrationforum.org/article/in-their-shoes-empathy-and-immigration/

Green Card Voices

Video

https://www.greencardvoices.com/

“Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy”

An article by PJ Manne, published in Journal of Evolution and Technology

https://jetpress.org/v19/manney.htm

Reimagining Empathy: The Transformative Nature of Empathy, by Paul Parkin

Video

https://youtu.be/e4aHb_GTRVo

The Empathic Civilization, by Jeremy Rifkin, RSA Animate

Video