Immigration reform: Teaching kids about the “pathway to citizenship”
As immigration reform and the pathway to citizenship are moving forward, an educator tells his idea for teaching kids about what's really American.
Immigration reform, like the plan outlined by this group of bipartisan senators Jan. 28, tends to start a divisive debate about who is a real American and who is an outsider. But really, everyone in America was once an outsider, an educator tells his kids.
Reuters
Why is "foreign" such a problematic word? In the recent presidential campaign, it was a negative label used by Mitt Romney to tar and feather Barack Obama. President Obama has foreign ideas, he said. It was already a worn out trope that Mr. Obama's not American. “He’s different!” True – just like the rest of us. Which means, we shouldn't be so schizophrenic about what's foreign and what's American. Obama seems to be getting it right now, stressing the talents and skills that immigrants offer the American talent pool – talents we should enfranchise, not deport.
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Correspondent
Todd R. Nelson is head of school at The School in Rose Valley outside Philadelphia. He has been a Monitor contributor of Home Forum essays, poems, Op-Ed commentaries and feature articles since 1989. He writes a monthly column for Teachers.net. He and his wife, Lesley, have three adult children.
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It’s a commonplace to say, “We are a nation of immigrants.” We can all tell a family story whose arc originates somewhere else on the planet. Many of us are several generations away from the actual immigrant experience; some of us are new arrivals. We forget the strength of our history and how to embrace it. After all, what is an American?
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It’s an engaging complication that even school children can investigate with greater vigor and clarity than the pundits and fulminators and bloviators of the news cycle. At one of my past schools we called this Project Acceptance, in which 5th- to 8th-graders focused on the experience of immigrants, or new Americans. For several weeks, our students even used an online forum to share their opinions about a common set of readings. I recommend author Margy Burns Knight who wrote, "Who Belongs Here?" the story of a young Cambodian boy refugee living in the US. International students from GSA joined us. I recommend Katherine Applegate’s book, "Home of the Brave," the story of a Sudanese refugee boy in Minnesota. I recommend Allen Say’s "Grandfather’s Journey," to name but a few.
Which is to say we shouldn’t stray too far from story telling, a format that each one of us could use to tell our family history – showing how we belong here. “Who Am I?” I asked my students to get started and then presented the following facts about two mystery people.
I’m an American. I belong here.
I was born in Tokyo. My father was born in Tonawanda, my mother in Pittsburgh. My great-great grandparents came from Germany and from Glasgow, Scotland. My German great-great-grandfather sold flour from a wheelbarrow in Pittsburgh. They all arrived in America in the late 19th century. My other great-great-grandparents lived in Moose River, Maine and, after the Civil War, went to Michigan and then Nebraska in a covered wagon. Their ancestors had arrived here almost 400 years ago from England.
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