Diversity

Project #2

Grappling with Immigration Issues

Summary: Richard Jankowski's American History survey course looks at public policy issues for each era of our nation's development. The unit described focuses on immigration laws of the "reform era" but also reflects on current immigration bills in terms of the pros and cons of diversity. During this unit, students completed 15 different activities, including--

	viewing a video that compares and contrasts former waves of immigrants with current patterns of immigration and a CNN special report on current trends in U.S. immigration
	readings were coordinated with English and social studies teachers the students currently had
	writing of various kinds: nonfiction narrative and fictional description, poetry, a letter to an editor, a speech
	making a stamp
	interviewing a family member and 4 recent immigrants (in the school's daytime adult ESL program)
	graphing data on computers (after learning to do so from two math teachers)
	class discussions, including "four corner" debate, as well as open discussion of a reading on Protestant and Catholic hostilities in 19th-Century Philadelphia that was preceded and followed by a vote (a lively and informed debate reduced the number of "unsure" votes from a majority to only 4)
	presentations
	observing 50 Americans' citizenship ceremony

Adapt it for yourself: The activities in this unit mostly sound like learning activities that might be used in a college classroom. The fact that this was an eighth-grade class, therefore, is hardly relevant to whether such a unit might be adapted to a college classroom. The complexity of the discussions suggests that in-class time must be used extensively; for one reason, the instructor must monitor comments in order to be sure opinions are backed by facts drawn from course readings and students' independent reading.

Source: This project is described in a .pdf online file (requiring Adobe Acrobat Reader) at http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/FW/teach_learn.pdf Scroll down to pages 21-24. Page 3 at this site lists the four standards for "authentic instruction" that serve as background for the glosses that appear on each of the 5 project reports in this document. Page 5 lists questions for discussion, in case you decide to confer with colleagues about any of the five "vignettes" included in the document.

You may be able to access an html version of the report at this link, which was provided by Google (www.google.com), a search engine:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ZLwAnAP56Os:www.remc11.k12.mi.us/FW
/teach_learn.pdf+teaching+vignettes&hl=en

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