American Global Power from Empire to Superpower

Classroom Strategies

Evaluating Texts: “Looking Beyond the Logo Map”

This unit blends skills related to history and literacy. Education historian Sam Wineburg argues that teaching historical thinking involves helping students evaluate the bias, perspective, and reliability of source documents.⁵⁵ To understand the United States’ relation to Latin America, students will explore a variety of maps that reflect different perspectives of the United States. Historian Daniel Immerwahr explains if the boundaries of the United States were a logo design, the U.S. boundary would include the continental U.S. and possibly Hawaii and Alaska. This map excludes territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.⁵⁶ Comparing maps that reflect competing claims between European powers, the exclusion of tribal nations, and the expanding boundaries of the United States across different periods will prepare students to think about the different perspectives of the United States along with the United States’ relation to Latin America. The map activity will help students contemplate how the United States affects population shifts. This idea will be explored further while reading Voces Sin Fronteras and evaluating causes for immigration. Direct instruction will be used to provide students with some background knowledge, but encouraging students to make sense of documents with different perspectives will help students develop critical thinking skills around the role of the U.S. as a global power in relation to Latin America.

Assessing Contemporary Immigration Debates

Voces Sin Fronteras provides a voice to people directly impacted by the United States’ immigration policy. Students can use these stories to help them evaluate immigration policy and public discourse around immigration. Beyond examining immigration policy through these narratives, students will evaluate immigration to the United States through policy, data, and public sentiment. Looking at population shifts and immigration laws before and after the initiation of restrictive quotas will help students assess the reliability of claims of the United States being “flooded” by immigrants.

Answers Beyond Google

The unit also seeks to encourage students to question what factors contributed to the growth of a Latino population in the United States. If students searched what causes people from El Salvador or another country in Latin America to immigrate to the United States, the results would list reasons such as poverty and violence. Voces Sin Fronteras illustrates these reasons through personal narratives. Although a Google search or personal narrative provides an answer to the question, it lacks deeper historical roots. In addition to reading the novel and using their own background knowledge, students will synthesize information from other texts to develop their understanding of historical complexity.