Challenges of Migration: Building Resilience Through Stories

3. Mentor Text release to small groups: The Only Road by Alexandra Diaz, novel

Lexile: 830

Recommended on the “We Need Diverse Books” website under the link “Social Justice Books: See What We See”; also recommended on the “Social Justice Books” website:

https://socialjusticebooks.org/the-only-road/

Summary: The book is about Jaime, a young boy forced into a decision to join a dangerous gang or to flee with his sister, Angela, from their small town in Guatemala. Based on a true story, it is about the realities of the large numbers of undocumented people heading to the United States from Central America. The novel is stark and might be challenging, but it is an important topic, especially in today’s political climate, to discuss the challenges of refugees and the obstacles they must face to find safety. It represents a chance for students to tackle a current, relevant social justice issue and an important problem in the world today, especially as it relates to the United States and our country’s response to the most vulnerable immigrants, refugees. The book demonstrates the resiliency of people as they work together to reach a place of freedom from fear and violence.

4. Bridge Text: Newsela informational text article, “Migration in the 21st Century and its Effects on Education,” by Human Rights Watch

Lexile: 850

Summary: This news article is about the reasons why people emigrate, and what the results can be on their education. Reasons for migration include war, violence, jobs, an education, and a better life. The article focuses on the impact of forced migration on children, and it introduces the United Nations mandate that all children have the right to an education The article explains how some countries disregard the idea of education for all children, and it details the difficulties refugees face when trying to obtain legal documents while undocumented in a foreign country. Human Rights Watch is an organization that documents the abuses children face in non-compliant countries, or those that deny children their basic human rights. By reading the article, students will begin to understand the legitimate reasons why some people must leave their countries, and they can begin to challenge their own assumptions about immigration and immigrants.

5. Mentor Text release to strategic pairs: Refugee by Alan Gratz

Lexile: 800

Summary: This is a novel about three teens and their families, each from three different time periods. Each teen and his/her family must escape their home countries, and all three end up as refugees. Josef Landau escapes Nazi Germany during World War II; Isabel Fernandez escapes on a boat from Cuba during the Castro regime and heads with her family to Florida; Mahmoud Bashara crosses the border from Syria to Turkey in 2015 to escape the Civil War in his country. The author narrates each teen's unique story from his or her point of view, with the settings, conflicts, and plot twists of any good novel. The characters’ choices impact future generations, and the crossover between countries and time periods is very interesting. Since the book is rich with historical facts, combining it with Social Studies in a cross-content lesson would work very well. One suggestion would be to have three different reading groups, each group reading only the chapters that pertain to one character. Then each group could teach their portion to the rest of the class or use a jigsaw to share what they learn each day. Reading the book as a whole group would provide opportunities to do cross-content teaching of both Language Arts and U.S. History.

6. Stretch Text:"Home" by Warsan Shire, poem

Summary: Warsan Shire is a Somali-British poet living in England. The first six stanzas of the poem are a first-person narrative about what it is like to be a refugee forced out of your country against your will because of civil war. The poem begins with several powerful examples of imagery and a raw, emotional tone to express the poet’s feelings about the loss of leaving one’s country. The poet uses the negative form “No one…” throughout the poem as repetition, and it will be a way to introduce students to the idea of doing things you have to do, not because you want to, but because you must. The poem opens the window to the point of view of the asylee who wants to be home but cannot due to circumstances beyond his or her control. Students can make strong connection or disconnections to this poem based on their personal experience. They can write their own poems, using Shire’s repetitive phrase, “No one…” to connect with the poem’s theme in a personal way.

7. Mentor Text release to individuals: A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, novel

Lexile: 720

Summary: This is an historical fiction novel written as a dual-narrative, with each story alternating from chapter to chapter. In the first narrative, 11-year-old Nya lives in South Sudan, and her main job each day is to make two extremely long treks to the water hole and back to collect her family’s water supply for the day. In the second narrative, 11-year-old Salva must escape from his village because rebels and government forces fighting each other destroy his village. As Salva runs for his life, he becomes separated from his family. Salva makes his way to several refugee camps, and he is one of the “lost boys” of Sudan. Both Nya and Salva’s story contain the themes of water scarcity, water-borne diseases, refugee status obstacles, civil war, and the displacement that results. In the end, both characters meet as adults, one helping the other’s villagers to dig a well and provide the whole region with potable drinking water. I chose a lower lexile to give all the students an opportunity to read a book at an independent reading level.

8. Stretch Text: Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal by Margarita Engle, novel

Lexile: 1310

Summary: The novel, which is in free verse (not prose) tells the stories of four people who help build the Panama Canal. Mateo is a 14-year-old from Cuba and works on digging in a dangerous area; Henry is from Jamaica and breaks rocks; Augusto is an educated engineer from Puerto Rico who, because of his race, can perform strictly labor jobs; Anita is a young, local girl who is the daughter of a healer. She is aware of the unique biodiversity of plant and animal species in the region and their potential destruction because of the Panama Canal. The book has themes of racism, child labor, colonialism, migrant workers, and environmental concerns. Since the stretch text is the most challenging, I will give my more advanced readers a chance to read independently while I do read-alouds and guided reading with students who will find this book more difficult to read.

9. Disruptive Text: We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls around the World by Malala Yousafzai, collection of Non-Fiction essays

Lexile: 800 to 900

Summary: This text is a newly released Non-Fiction book that is unique in that the main author, Malala Yousafzai, is not only one of the writers, but she includes real narratives of other displaced people from different locales in the world. Part One is Malala’s shortened version of her story of being targeted, attacked, and shot by the Taliban. Most people know her story, but the beauty of using this as a disruptive text is to show that instead of cowering out of fear from Taliban reprisals, Malala chose to be an activist instead, traveling the world and collecting authentic stories about people who have been displaced. Part Two includes the stories of two sisters, Zaynab and Sabreen, as well as eight other stories from displaced women in different parts of the world. The text is disruptive in that I want students to consider not just the obvious realities of displaced people, immigrants, and refugees that they have learned about in the whole text set. I want them to think about what courage it would take in choosing to use a devastating experience to take action, as Malala did, and advocate for the rights of women to have an education. In this disruptive text, the author takes political action using her voice and unique writing talent to bring attention to the issue of gender discrimination around the world. It is a very empowering novel and aligns well with Critical Literacy theory.

10. Anchor Text: TED Talk excerpt from “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, both audio and written transcript.

Lexile: 1000

Summary: Return to the Anchor text and read/listen to it again. Focus on what emerges the second time, and how much more the students can understand the complexity of the text after reading so many multimodal texts on a similar topic (see synopsis in #1). Since the students have read multiple texts on the same thematic topic, they are poised to answer the essential question: When facing adversity through forced or voluntary migration, how do people persevere and overcome obstacles? There is an opportunity to culminate the text set with a summative assessment since the students have read substantive texts and various levels of complexity. They have formed opinions, disrupted their thinking, and can now produce quality work to demonstrate their learning.