Immigration and Migration and the Making of a Modern American City

Introduction

There you are perhaps isolated sitting at a table in the middle of a crowded café with the world at your illuminated fingertips, searching back in time for a leaf that connects you somehow to your past, your family's personal story of immigration or migration to help you better understand who you are and how you fit into this world. What has taken place before you, and what are the stories of your family's collective past? The complex concept of history as change over time is compelling and alive because it teaches us a multitude of facts shaping our understanding of who we are and how we engage and interact in the world.

We all have a family history to discover, understand, and embrace as we make an impact in this world leaving behind our own legacy for better or worse. It is my hope to empower students to strive for the former, and make a difference in their life for the better, dynamically building up "community cultural wealth". ¹ According to Tara Yosso, "community cultural wealth involves a commitment to conduct research, teach and develop schools that serve a larger purpose of struggling toward social and racial justice." ²

Perhaps you have found as I have that there is much more we can teach students in the area of history in addition to what is in our elementary curriculum. For example, all of the activity and controversy at the border seems to have given the term "immigration" a negative connotation about unresolved political, social, economic, and ethical conflict specifically with the movement of people through and from Mexico into the U.S. This is a "hot topic" that fuels debate, and more importantly, it is our global reality and responsibility to seek understanding beneath the "what is happening" and delve into the "why is this happening" realm of thinking. There are always significant reasons for a population to move from their established home, especially in the large numbers we are seeing coming through and from Mexico into the U.S. The issues occurring at the border of our two nations highly affect my students' families, whether they have themselves experienced being processed through the border or whether they are supporting others in their journey. Discovering why friends, family, and those in our community needed to uproot their lives, move, and settle into a new land is a story with richness and depth, leading to a better understanding with better compassion.

In this unit, I have taken these high-level understandings of immigration and migration histories and development of cities, and targeted concepts important and appropriate for young students. I have pulled out key concepts to introduce specifically to my first grade class that also align with our grade level standards. This unit helps teachers to direct students in considering family history, and the cultural stories in the historical spaces of their community. It is designed with background information, strategies, and activity examples to help teachers bring history and social science to life through the topic of immigration and migration, and the building up of our city. This unit will also provide details specifically about San Jose, California and our East San Jose community. There is much history within the city of San Jose. Students will discover different ways to find history throughout this unit such as family and buddy interviews, neighborhood tours and mapping illustrations, and meet and greets with our school alumni or community residents.