Immigration to the United States

Prior to our Immigration Unit, our mentor teachers co-taught a unit about the Civil Rights Movement with a particular theme/focus on “Justice For All”. We felt the new unit of Immigration could be related to this “Justice For All” focus by taking into account the many injustices immigrants face in their home countries, as they travel out of their countries, and once they have arrived to attempt and live a new life the United States. When thinking about introducing our Immigration Unit, we first wanted to get a better perspective as to how familiar students were with the topic, and some of the misconceptions they may have. In planning our unit, we were very intentional in the content we included and presented to our students. We tried our best to include various points of views, people of different backgrounds/cultures, different lived experiences, and different learning experiences. The multiple perspectives were especially important as the word “immigrant/ immigration” have continuously been given a negative connotation, many times the media clumping and stereotyping all immigrants as a whole/ one group of people. We wanted our students to learn about the people behind these movements and the importance of always seeking individual truths. This was especially important to us because most of our students came from immigrant backgrounds, whether it was themselves, their parents, and/or their grandparents.

Our unit allowed students to brainstorm and think about what they thought immigration was, who they thought immigrants were, and why they thought immigrants left their home countries. These ideas were some we carried throughout the whole unit as we attempted to answer them in our learning. Our overall unit focused on the following two questions: “How has immigration shaped us as individuals and/or as a country?” and “How does immigration shapes our present and will affect our future?” In doing so, we wanted students to understand the reasons why people decide to immigrate, their journey to the United States, and treatment they receive once they arrive. Our unit was organized into three main subcategories in which we explored reasons why people have left their home countries and immigrated, learned about some of the experiences and journeys individuals have faced, and what immigrants face once arriving and living in the United States.