Introduction and rationale
Our cities as they grew were often shaped by the practices of their young immigrants. They were balancing a romance with their new geography and allegiance to the cultural practices of their sites of origin. They came from other countries or across this one. Some of my students come from Mexico; a few were transplanted in grade school after Hurricane Katrina. Some might trace their families' arrival in Oklahoma to the Trail of Tears following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. African American families may have been drawn to Tulsa by the economy and jobs in America's affluent Black Wall Street, the Greenwood district, or the appeal of the all-black towns before statehood in 1907. But some of them have never left Oklahoma, and some not even Tulsa. What universal themes and stories do they share?
Our seminar readings centered around three cities with significant immigrant/migrant histories: early-mid-nineteenth century New York, Chicago as it received the Great Migration in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, and 20 th century Los Angeles. In our readings I found stories that could have come straight from my students' lives. They surely would be able to see just as clearly as I could their connections to these stories and studies. As relative outsiders in our city, marginalized by race or class, they share many challenges and practices with the youth in our readings, including poverty, ostracization, unwelcome policy, and unfamiliar cultural practices that go along with being outsiders. Our seminar "Immigration and Migration and the Making of the American City," led by Mary Lui, exposed me to a greater understanding of this aspect of American history and story, as well as a wealth of resources with which to study them.
So that our students may see themselves as part of the fabric of our history and not just observers of it, it is our job as teachers to lead them to several connections. First, we want them to link their lives with those of the people who preceded them, whether similar or apparently very different. They live and learn vicariously from the stories of the challenges of others. We also want them to see what forces shape history and its participants' stories. In our seminar, we looked at such influences as geography, gender, race, class, policy, and perception. Finally, we want them to understand how stories can stimulate social change and that their own stories can do the same. A unifying and grounding theme—rites of passage—one that should be appealing to my students as teenagers—will control and bridge the immigration and migration narratives to my students' own. Research shows that a community's rites of passage connect them to the greater world around them, that theme reinforcing that same lesson they've hopefully learned in an academic setting. They, too, can be agents of social change through their rites of passage stories. Students now have the ability to share their stories through outreach projects and Internet and social media to reach peers and the larger community. The lessons they've learned through their struggles and reflection have real value.
This unit will be appropriate for middle school and high school classrooms in urban districts. The theme should be an interesting one, speaking directly to our students' personal experiences. The content is appropriate for most large cities with students from diverse backgrounds and with noticeable migrant or immigrant populations.
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