Objective

Participants will examine the role immigration has played in the history of the United States, beginning with stories from their own families.

Materials

Video:   The Energy of a Nation: Immigrants in America and corresponding handout

or: Many Faces of Immigration newspaper supplement 

or: an anthology of immigrant stories

Post-it notes in different colors, or large squares of construction paper

Overhead with initial instructions (optional)

Crayons or markers (optional)

Procedure

1. As participants (students) enter the room, or as a homework assignment the day before, give them each a post-it note or square piece of construction paper with the following instructions:

Think about your family. Choose one person who came to the United States from somewhere else. (If your family is indigenous to these lands, and no one came from any other country, choose someone who may have migrated from another region.) On your paper, include the following:

• the name of the person
• the country or region from which s/he came
• his/her year of arrival in the U.S. (or approximate year)
• a symbol that depicts his/her story in some way

When you have completed your square, place it on the large poster in the front of the room.

2. Watch the video and complete the corresponding handout, and/or read about different immigrants’ personal stories.

3. Discussion or written evaluation:  compare and contrast the experiences of your ancestor with the people in the video of stories. (With students, consider using Venn diagrams or some other sort of graphic organizer.)

Evaluation

In the discussion, participants will demonstrate and understanding of the different reasons people immigrate while relating current stories to those of immigrants throughout history.

Prepared by:

The B.I.A.S. Project (Building Immigrant Awareness and Support)

The Advocates for Human Rights, March 2000

tel 612.341.3302 • www.mnadvocates.org