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.

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In "The Middle of Everywhere," Mary Pipher talks about the difficulty of being an immigrant to the United States, like Kek in Katherine Applegate’s "Home of the Brave." The smallest details of the daily life we take for granted can be formidable obstacles to finding your way, to belonging, making a home. Her experience has been with Sudanese newcomers to Lincoln, Neb. Consider a few: using escalators, crossing streets with traffic lights, understanding signs and signals, how to bake a frozen pizza, deal with telephone solicitors, overdue library books, job interviews, asparagus and rhubarb, dry cleaning … the meaning of “homesick.” What are those stairs for? How do you drink from a water fountain? From the sublime to the ridiculous – but sometimes our ridiculous can be someone else’s sublime. Kek has never seen snow, which is “like claws on [his] skin.” He misses his cattle back home. Will he ever feel like he belongs here?

Todd R. Nelson

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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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A new immigrant needs “cultural brokers,” and the most important cultural brokers are schoolteachers,” Ms. Pipher writes. “Schools are the frontline institution for acculturation, where children receive solid information about their new world … I have met many heroic teachers who, among their other responsibilities, become the antidotes to media and ads. One ELL teacher told me, “We’re all there is between them and Howard Stern and Eminem.” Kek says, “Things are very different here.”

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A few teachers could do a good job as cultural brokers for the shrill political culture we’re exposing kids to. Insofar as all children are emigrating to adulthood and citizenship, they need to have the stories of their own ancestors in mind, which informs a willingness to help others write new stories. In any child’s journey, they must learn to navigate perplexing institutions and social conventions, language barriers, and literal and figurative road signs that locate them, slow them down, and warn of upcoming hazards.

What are those stares for? What’s wrong with “foreign?” What is an American? With Project Acceptance, we invited students to join some significant conversations leading to the land of maturity and fulfillment and diversity – where, we hope, they will feel they belong.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs.Todd R. Nelson is Head of School at The School in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania.