Content Objectives
Introduction
Immigration has a long and complicated role in American history. America prides itself in being an “immigrant nation” or a mixing bowl of races, religions, and cultures. The nation ingrained language of equality and opportunity into its founding documents. National symbols, like the Statue of Liberty have long stood as a welcoming beacon to anyone looking to pursue their ‘American Dream’ within this democracy. And yet, the United States has a long list of policies and practices making acceptance easier for some immigrants, while others struggle. My students were first exposed to the unequal treatment and selective acceptance of immigrants through our novel study of Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.
While reading Esperanza Rising, it was clear my students lacked the historical background knowledge of immigration in America. However, they were able to empathize with the characters by connecting the story’s events to other periods of inequality in America, such as the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, as well as their personal experiences while living through riots, peaceful protests, incidences of police brutality, and the removal of the Confederate monuments during the Black Lives Matters movement in the summer of 2020.
I was inspired by my students' thoughtful discussions on racism in the past and present. My goal in this unit is to broaden my students' historical knowledge of immigration in America, and the role race has played in the acceptance of immigrants. In my unit, students will read the novel Esperanza Rising, and pair significant events in the stories to historical moments when race played a key role in America’s immigration policies and practices.
Rationale
Too often schools with struggling reading scores pour extensive amounts of time and effort into the teaching of targeted reading skills. However, very little evidence supports that placing an emphasis on teaching these skills has any effect on shrinking the achievement gaps. In the 1990s, “no excuses” charter schools saw an increase in their end of the year reading assessments through this skill-focused approach to reading instruction. However, the long-term data showed that these schools found it more difficult “to get their students through high school and college.”1 The long-term data indicated that the emphasis on skill-based instruction creates test-ready students, but not life-long, college and career ready readers. In response, many teachers and education researchers are looking for a more authentic approach to reading instruction, which takes the emphasis off the idea of “learning to read,” and instead focuses on developing readers that “read to learn.”
Over the past five years, my school district has underperformed in reading and writing scores. The district’s average 5th grader proficiency scores in reading dropped to “below proficient” during middle school. This shows that Richmond is not unlike other school systems that have fallen into the trap of increasing reading instruction of skills, rather than providing students with authentic reading opportunities. In addition, science and social studies instruction is being marginalized or disappearing altogether from elementary classrooms.
Rather than teach this curriculum within a nonexistent or limited history block, I plan on implementing this unit during my reading and writing block. I intend to provide my students with opportunities to “read to learn” about immigration in America. The historical background presented in this unit is designed to provide a more rounded look at how America became an immigrant nation. The historical knowledge will prepare my students in their comprehension, interpretation, and analysis of the events that inspired the novel Esperanza Rising.
Comments: