Immigration and Migration and the Making of a Modern American City

Strategies

Students will employ a model that analyzes visual text through the viewing technique "Visual Thinking Strategy" (VTS) This technique avoids "frontloading" or the process of well-meaning teachers offering a predigested version of the answer. I have noticed that when I have employed the VTS technique students become engaged and excited about the image we are analyzing. It is also valuable because students have to employ observation and analysis, and be able to articulate their thoughts. Then they need to back their ideas up with specific supporting evidence from the piece. This fosters listening among classmates. All of this encourages student development and confidence in student analytical and articulation skills.

The learning strategy that would best facilitate student engagement and interest as well as better utilizing valuable classroom instruction time is the flipped classroom. In the flipped classroom or flip learning, students study the topic by themselves at home by watching a lecture or reading text. In class, students apply the knowledge by solving problems or doing other practical work. The teacher then tutors the students when they become stuck, rather than delivering the lesson themselves. Students learn by doing and asking questions, a process whereby they help each other which benefits both advanced and less advanced learners. Finally, a teacher's time is allocated differently. Teachers tend to engage with students who ask questions, however quieter students may be even more likely to need help. Teachers can target those learners rather than the more confident ones. The teacher becomes the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage allowing the teacher to work with individuals or groups of students. ⁴² Students will be assigned selected portions of El Norte and Dirty Pretty Things to analyze at home. They will take notes on an organizer around film techniques such as lighting, special effects, setting, and symbols that point to character, theme and the perspective of filmmaker. Back in the classroom, they will work in small groups to prepare for a Socratic Seminar discussion that addresses the essential questions.

The learning strategy that will be utilized for discussion of student analysis of the global city through film will be the Socratic Seminar technique. This involves students first examining a text, in one case, the visual "text" of the films, and generating open-ended, higher-level questions for discussion. Open-ended questions include "How?" and "Why?" and allow students to think critically, analyze multiple meanings in the text, and express their ideas and opinions with clarity and confidence. During the seminar, students listen attentively and respond to one another with respect. Before agreeing or disagreeing with a classmate, students summarize that classmate's ideas/opinions, and then express their own with clarity and supporting evidence from the text. Students will also read selected excerpts from S. Sassen's The Global City, G. Gray's The Anthropology of Cinema, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 and Eric Avila's Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Chapter 3 for a second Socratic Seminar.

Classroom Activities – The following lessons are meant as a sample of possible activities; they also present the basic arc of the unit.

Lesson One – What economic, social and political processes are involved in globalization, immigration and migration? What is the role of the global city in these processes?

Students will be guided through a series of activities that will make explicit the global assembly line and the global city.

Anticipatory Set: Using mini-post-its, have pairs of students record the countries where most of their clothing is made. Have students come up to a large world map to post these at the front of the room. The result will be a large pile of post-its in a handful of countries, thus illustrating visually where most of our clothing is made.

Next, explain that a political map is not the only representation of the global assembly line. Students will examine an art work by Wendy Osher called "Continental Drift" that depicts actual clothing tags collected from people which is displayed on a sheer piece of fabric. (See www.wendyosher.net) Students then discuss and write responses to following questions:

Why are some countries larger on this map than they are on a "typical" political map of the world (like the one in your textbook)?

What is the artist trying to convey? What do you think this work of art says about globalization? Do you think the artist has a positive or negative view of it? Why?

Background: Note that students will have already studied prior historical moments of globalization. They will also have read in their textbook by R.W. Strayer, Ways of the World, Chapter 23 "Capitalism and Culture: A New Phase of Global Interaction since 1945" which not only summarizes globalization processes but distinguishes twentieth century and early twenty-first century globalization. They will be encouraged to utilize this knowledge as they complete the activity below.

In groups students will examine images of garment manufacturing, high-tech work places, and read oral interviews with recent immigrants to LA and London. (Irby; Post Gazette; Strayer, p.1140 & 1182 (brianafrica/Alamy) Through this analysis students will identify and define immigration, migration, the dual labor market, and note that capital follows labor and labor follows capital.

Lesson Two — What form of economy — post -industrial, service, finance — is evident in the films? How do immigrants connect to this economy? What gender differences are evident? How is the border represented?

Anticipatory Set – View excerpts from Hollywood films such as Titanic and discuss the portrayal of immigration as a linear progression involving upward social mobility.

El Norte, Modern Family, Dirty Pretty Things, and Call the Midwife are the unit's primary source for the analysis of how popular culture has represented these processes of globalization migration and immigration. Students will observe, interpret and then evaluate these films at home using visual thinking strategies.

Using flipped learning, students read selected excerpts from S. Sassen's The Global City, G. Gray's The Anthropology of Cinema, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 and Eric Avila's Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Chapter 3 and generate open-ended, higher-level questions for discussion including "How?" and "Why?"

Back in the classroom, they will work in small groups to prepare for a Socratic Seminar discussion that addresses the essential questions and themes of home conditions, role of geography and colonialism for immigration, representations of the border, work and living conditions in the global city, gentrification, and the perspective of the filmmakers. Student groups will present these themes highlighted by Sassen, Gray and Avila with key representative scenes from the films.

Lesson Three – Students write a summative essay:

To what extent do the most recent circuits of immigration and migration to global cities represent both continuity and change in the process of globalization in world history?

And/or

Compare and contrast how immigration, migration and globalization processes played out in the global cities of Los Angeles and London?

Writing continuity versus change as well as comparative essays, are key skills required in student academic development as historical thinkers and writers. AP World History specifically focuses on this type of writing. These skills are also embedded in the Social Studies PA and Common Core Standards. (see the appendix).

Future Lessons – How have the global processes of immigration and migration been expressed in your city?

Students research, design and create a film about the experience of immigration and migration grounded in a city setting such as a neighborhood or work place. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette's online archive (www.post-gazette/odysseys) of recent immigrant interviews will serve as a beginning point for student research and exploration. An article by Mark Hofer, Kathy Swan and Sharon Zuber outlines the process of documentary filmmaking in "Teaching Social Studies Students to 'Write with Light': Using the Documentary Filmmaking Process". ⁴³

The authors provide a template that sets out a four-phase documentary production process that includes 1) research of the topic using guiding questions that challenges students to incorporate analysis that builds toward a point of view 2) documentary treatment or thesis with scene-by-scene outline of essential concepts and appropriate evidence 3) storyboard that fleshes out all the elements in the movie frame including visuals, sound, narration, effects and 4) film production when filmmakers assemble their film and bring the vision of the storyboard to the screen. The article helpfully provides rubrics for each stage of the documentary making process and a document analysis sheet.