Teaching for Immigration

Introduction

Learning and knowing about the experiences of people who have immigrated is always an important place to start when framing any discussion or lesson around immigration. An important group of immigrants that is particularly vulnerable are those who are undocumented and risk deportation all while struggling to find employment, obtain licenses, or attend school.

Films like Sin País provide an intimate look into the lives of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.  Our website provides some resources for working specifically with DACA students. In general, most immigrants do have legal documents granting them the legal right to live and work in the United States, as revealed by Learning for Justice's (formerly Teaching Tolerance) Ten Myths About Immigration.

It is important that teachers understand that immigrants' experiences in the US differ and can be drastically shaped by race, region and nationality of migration, and documentation status.


These Educational Resources for Immigrants, Refugees, Asylees, and other New Americans can be used by yourself when supporting your students or they can be shared directly with your students and their families. 

Do you have another resource you would like to share? Send it here!

Science

1. Science is not free of cultural influence.

2. Science textbooks are not free of racism.

3. History and development of science should not be solely attributed to European cultures.

Read this brief article on the importance of creating a multicultural learning environment when teaching science. 


The Zinn Ed Project has published the No Option But Escape activity that centers around climate justice and immigration. Teachers can incorporate this activity into their lesson when teaching about climate change and environmentalism to discuss some of the impacts it will have upon people's lives.

Art

Begin by sharing this video in your class. Use this to initiate a conversation on immigration, how migration has changed over time, and how the art following it has changed as well. You could go on to discuss the significance of one of the art styles presented in the video and craft an assignment around that.


You could also use this PowerPoint on Migration and Movement created by the Museum of Modern Art that pieces together different pieces, portfolios, and series to show how people who migrate use art to display movement, struggle, and hope. You can incorporate one of the suggested activities into your lesson prior to introducing a project.


If you are teaching a class where students have to perform or act, advise students who are not immigrants to refrain from acting out an experience that is not their own as this could come across as insensitive. For a class like film production, while some students may be documenting their own experience or family's experience, other students can create a presentation on the data, facts, and impacts of public policy.

Social Science

The Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota has put together a series of nine core lesson plans across three units, with seven optional lesson plans. These units will correlate with most state's social studies standards. By presenting immigration from a human rights framework, teachers using these lesson plans should hope to guide students through thoughtful discussion on historical and contemporary issues around immigration and immigrant rights while constantly bringing back these ideas to primary and secondary sources.


The Chinese Historical Society of America has an online exhibition on the Chinese Exclusion Act that you can have students 'walk through' to learn about the history of Chinese immigration and federal policies that targeted Chinese immigrants. This is a great resource that allows students to learn at their own pace and focus on specific details that they may find more interesting or be able to connect to other ideas. When using this resource, you can connect historical policies to current policies by coming up with prompts that relate to this resource such as: 


The National Network for Immigrants and Refugee Rights provides some great resources on immigration that teachers can use in the classroom. Consider having your students take this quiz to see how much they know about immigration and immigration policy. You can also use this film list and accompanying discussion guide to inspire some dialogue in the classroom.


You can also use Learning for Justice's (formerly Teaching Tolerance) lesson on Immigration Myths. This lesson utilizes the organization's piece on Ten Myth's About Immigration as a base for inspiring student dialogue on the false narratives about immigration that are commonly promoted in news and social media.

Math

Connect ideas that students should be learning in social science to different math standards using some of the ideas suggested in this paper on The Importance of Connecting Mathematics to the Social Sciences in the Classroom.


Try out this free five-day lesson plan, Maths of Migration, that connects immigration data to standards on statistics, probability, and modeling and can be used in elementary and secondary schools.

English



The book Funny in Farsi can be used in upper-elementary school or in secondary-school English classes. Firoozeh writes this memoir about her experience as an immigrant from Iran and readers get a close look at how she begins to make sense of the world around her. This Teacher's Guide suggests using it in middle and high school courses and provides several prompts meant to spark discussions on the different experiences that immigrants in the US have. Elementary school teachers should be able to use this book to weave a multidisciplinary theme between social studies, geography, and English.

World Language

World language teachers have a unique opportunity to teach about immigration through discussions on culture and language in the US and abroad. Teaching about immigration will help to build intercultural competence in the language classroom, which helps students to keep an open mind and build more meaningful relationships.


Esperanza Renace is a good book to use in Spanish 2 and 3 classes and tells the story of a young girl who immigrates to the US from Mexico during the 1920s. The National Endowment for the Humanities has prepared this pretty comprehensive lesson plan for the English edition of this book, which can easily be adapted to the Spanish edition.


One resource that some Spanish teachers use is Newsela which produces news articles designed to help learners of a language. Create an account to view their section with Spanish articles on immigration. This website has articles at different levels so that they can be used with any level of Spanish learners.


The Smithsonian has prepared this article that can be used to contextualize the poems in Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 which are written in Chinese and come paired with their English translations, making this book accessible to students of different levels. Using this book and history can give students the chance to consider how immigration policy has historically split up families and resulted in long-term detention for many people seeking to come to the United States. WL.CL2 and WL.CN1 can be fulfilled by teaching students about poetry and culture and connecting world language to the social sciences.


Similar to social science, you can come up with prompts that relate to these resources such as: