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What Does It Mean To Be An American? Session 1

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What Does It Mean To Be An American? video 

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What Does It Mean To Be An American? video 

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x Moving Stories Question Short 22Sept2020.docx

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Outline your project using materials and information from session 1 & these resources.

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Download this document or save it so you have all of the dates along with information about the sessions.

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Everett Course-What Does It Mean To Be An American_ 

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Re-Imagining Migration - Belonging Begins in School

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Strengthening communities by leveraging schools and other learning communities to ensure all young people can thrive in a world on the move.

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Youth from our partnered schools have created and posted the stories. Many of our young storytellers are new to English. Consequently, some of the texts may not be grammatically perfect. Unfiltered, unedited, raw and from the heart, they are that much closer to the students. LISTEN, LEARN and CARE.

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One High School, One School Year, Five New Americans

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The We Are America Project is working with teachers and young people across the country to define what it means to be American - and to spark a new national conversation about American identity today led by the next generation.

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You should all have access to the folders. Find yours and use it to include all of your materials.

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The face of America is changing. Explore this free and interactive curriculum designed to engage future leaders by sparking conversations about American identity and history.

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Emma Lazarus's 1883 poem The New Colossus has come to symbolize a particular vision of the United States as a home for immigrants. While many people can quote the poem, few know the entire sonnet, fewer know the story behind her famous words.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Re-imagining Migration is proud to be working with the American Jewish Historical Society and Facing History and Ourselves on the Emma Lazarus Project. The Emma Lazarus Project explores the story of Emma Lazarus, a fifth-generation American Jew caught in an important turning point in American History. The initiative-including the exhibit, curriculum and poetry contest-uses primary sources straight from the archive to encourage students to piece together Emma's fascinating story, and to join the ongoing conversation about American identity.

Use this link to learn more about the project.

The Curriculum

The Emma Lazarus Project curriculum, designed in partnership with the American Jewish Historical Society draws on their remarkable collections. This curriculum provides students with the opportunity to analyze and engage with primary source materials in order to gain a deeper understanding of the United State's long struggle with nativism, prejudice, and antisemitism.

Throughout this curriculum, students will explore how Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus" not only influenced the world's perspective of the Statue of Liberty, but went on to shape American identity.

The curriculum, designed to adapt to the needs of teachers and their students, explores immigration, Emma's complex identities, her influences, her writing and advocacy work, and the story of how she came to write her most famous poem. Through looking closely at the story of Emma Lazarus in the context of her time, students will explore how America both welcomed, but restricted immigration. Throughout this curriculum, students will explore how Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus" not only influenced the world's perspective of the Statue of Liberty, but went on to shape American identity.

Emma's story shows how even in complicated times, people can engage civically. Through engaging with this history, students will be prepared to develop their own voices on issues of the day. The culminating activity of The Emma Lazarus Project curriculum is to provide students with their own pedestal to share their thoughts and beliefs.

In addition, The American Jewish Historical Society is also hosting a National Poetry Contest, which asks students to imagine themselves as 21st century Emma, following the prompt: "If you could write a poem for the Statue of Liberty today, what would it say?"

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The Emma Lazarus Project - Re-imagining Migration

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Emma Lazarus's 1883 poem The New Colossus has come to symbolize a particular vision of the United States as a home for immigrants. While many people can quote the poem, few know the entire sonnet, fewer know the story behind her famous words. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"

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Belonging has civic consequences. In this final lesson, we share excerpts from recent publications that highlight the connection between belonging, immigration, and the health of individuals and communities. We recognize that many of the excerpts might need scaffolding for many learners. We have included them in their current form to show that belonging is not simply a nice idea, it is something that people study, and is important. You may choose to modify the sources we have included, read them aloud, rewrite your own summaries, or create your own collection. These were chosen because they suggest the varied consequences of exclusion on individual health and society.

Guiding Questions:

What are the civic consequences of belonging?

How does belonging impact both individuals and communities?

How can we as individuals and in groups contribute to creating a feeling of belonging among immigrants?

Why Care About Immigrant Belonging?

Belonging involves both identification with and feelings of attachment to a social community. While many people are able to take national belonging for granted, this is often less straightforward for immigrants and even for their children born in the new country. A critical question is whether it is actually important that immigrants feel belonging to the nation. While many can function well without feeling a strong sense of national attachment-and belonging to a new nation is not necessarily at odds with feeling attachment to one's origin country-scholars recognize belonging can confer important benefits for both the individual immigrant and the immigrant-receiving society.

Belonging to a social community is found to enhance individuals' sense of meaning in life, while experiences of social exclusion lead to lower self-worth, and even meaninglessness. Scholars argue that the nation is a particularly central contemporary community because it gives form to our everyday lives, even without most of us realizing it: News is communicated through a national lens and in the national language; we learn about the nation's history, culture, and institutions in school; we support "our" national sports teams, and so on...National attachment... provides people with a basic sense of safety. In addition, being recognized by others as someone who belongs involves feelings of worth, legitimacy, and status; in short, the immigrant and the national-majority individual become equal partners for social interaction.

At the societal level, a common national identity has been found to contribute to community cohesion and encourage cooperation and societal engagement. Given the negative individual-level effects of social exclusion, some theorists also hypothesize the development of counter-cultures in response to blocked identity aspirations, such as when immigrants experience being denied recognition as fellow nationals.

[I]mmigration is a transition and the U.S. should structure federal, state, and local policies to facilitate this transition. Policies of inclusion welcome immigrants with community-based resource centers and individuals to help them navigate their new environments. Policies of inclusion provide resources to assist immigrants with learning English while maintaining proficiency in other languages. Policies of inclusion provide immigrants with the same access to health and human services provided to U.S. citizens. Ultimately, policies of inclusion establish a foundation for mutual understanding, learning, and trust.

Yet over the past two decades, the U.S. federal government and many state governments have increasingly adopted policies of exclusion. These policies have restricted access to public assistance benefits, post-secondary public education, and employment opportunities. They have increased detentions and deportations of both lawfully present and undocumented/unauthorized immigrants and made it increasingly difficult for immigrants to obtain legal permanent residency even when they have U.S.-born citizen spouses and children.

Although these policies target immigrants, they have widespread consequences for all U.S. citizens, especially those from racial/ethnic or religious minority populations. They stigmatize immigrant workers and those who employ them. They perpetuate fear and create a sense of threat for anyone whose skin color is not white, who speaks with an accent, or who fails to conform to the dominant behavioral and phenotypical expectations of "American." They force separation between spouses with mixed-status, between grandparents, parents, and their U.S.-born citizen children, and between brothers and sisters born with differing citizenships.

....The negative health consequences of our current policies begin during pregnancy with inadequate prenatal care and increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, especially among foreign-born noncitizen Hispanic/Latino women. The negative health consequences continue into early childhood and adolescence with increased risk of internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, especially among children forcibly separated from a detained or deported parent. They also continue into adulthood with increased psychosocial stress, prevalence of self-reported mental health problems, poor general health, and poor cardiovascular health among racialized immigrants threatened by deportation....

Source 3: Minoff, Elisa et al. "The Lasting Legacy of Exclusion: How the Law that Brought Us Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Excluded Immigrant Families & Institutionalized Racism in our Social Support System." Center for the Study of Social Policy and Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality Economic Security & Opportunity Initiative, August, 2021.

Immigrants participate in the labor force at high rates-indeed, the labor force participation rate of immigrants was 64.5 percent in 2020, three percentage points higher than people born in the U.S. They are also more likely to be essential workers than non-immigrants-working disproportionately in critical industries including food service, agriculture, maintenance and janitorial, and caregiving. Despite being more likely to work, and work in critical industries, immigrant families are also more likely to experience poverty and related hardships than non-immigrant families.

In 2019, 14 percent of immigrants had incomes below the artificially-low official poverty threshold, compared to 12 percent of people born in the U.S., and this gap has persisted for decades. In 2020, more than one in four immigrant families with children reported difficulty paying for housing costs, and more than half of these families reported fears about being able to pay utility bills. Immigrant families, particularly immigrant families with children, also have traditionally experienced higher rates of food insecurity than non-immigrant families. These hardships are a direct product of discrimination and structural exclusion, which are disproportionately experienced by immigrants of color. Black, Latinx, and southeast Asian immigrants report experiencing discrimination throughout their lives, including in employment. Black, Latinx and female immigrant workers experience among the highest rates of workplace violations by employers, such as being paid less than the minimum wage. Immigrant families also frequently experience both emotional and material hardship when a loved one and financial provider is detained or deported. Black and Latinx immigrants are more likely to experience these harms because they are disproportionately targeted by enforcement and are more likely to be subject to mandatory detention once involved in the immigration enforcement system. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, immigrant families are excluded from supports and services that can lift families out of poverty and promote well-being. Some families are not only ineligible for certain supports and services because of their immigration status or the length of time they have lived in the United States, and even families who are technically eligible for supports can be excluded in practice by the complexity of the eligibility rules, misinformation and fearmongering, and programs that are not responsive to their needs. The result is that time and again, supports and services fall short for immigrant families.

D. Williams (2009) theorized that chronic social exclusion would inescapably lead to a detrimental stage of resignation, characterized by depression, alienation, unworthiness, and helplessness. However, few studies empirically addressed this assumption. Considering immigrants as a population at risk of persistent exclusion, we investigated how social connections with the native-born majority and other immigrant minorities moderate the exclusion-resignation link. In Study 1 (N = 112 asylum seekers), participants mainly connected with other immigrants showed a significant association between chronic exclusion and resignation. Crucially, this link vanished for people with social connections mainly composed of native people....This work, suggesting that the exclusion-resignation link can be moderated by social factors, highlighted the relevance of immigrants' connections with the native majority for counteracting the risk of segregation when tackling the social issue of immigrants' everyday exclusion.

Teaching Notes and Ideas:

Recognizing that these are difficult sources, you might ask students to work in groups to support each other's understanding. In addition, it could be helpful to encourage students to look up words that they do not understand. This is a practice that will serve them well beyond the classroom when they are researching something on their own. Although the sources are short, consider creating "expert" groups who are responsible for understanding the content of each source and translating the ideas into language that their peers can understand.

After experts are prepared to share their texts, consider using a "jigsaw" to allow students to discuss the different sources in small groups. Once they have introduced each text, ask students to work together using the three whys Project Zero thinking-routine. The structure encourages students to consider the significance of an idea by relating it to themselves, their communities, and the larger world.

Bring the groups back together to allow classmates to hear the way their peers described the significance of these studies. To conclude the activity revisit the guiding questions that we have considered in each of our lessons on belonging.

What is belonging?

How does it feel to be included/excluded?

What are the consequences of being excluded?

You can share responses out loud, use sticky notes for students to post individual responses, or create silent conversations using chart paper. All of these ideas can be easily adapted for digital classrooms whether they are synchronous or asynchronous.

To conclude this lesson encourage students to thinking about the ways that they can impact immigrant belonging. Project Zero's Thinking Routine Circle of Action provides structure to help students identify ways that they can make a positive contribution.

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Belonging has civic consequences. In this final lesson, we share excerpts from recent publications that highlight the connection between belonging, immigration, and the health of individuals and communities. We recognize that many of the excerpts might need scaffolding for many learners.

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Shifting Ideas of Citizenship: Citizenship Status and American Identity

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Shifting Ideas of Citizenship: Citizenship Status and American Identity

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What does it mean to be an American? And, what role does citizenship status play?

Author and former Wall Street Executive Julissa Arce describes her evolving understanding of American identity and describes the way her former undocumented status impacted her understanding of herself and the country.

Reflection Questions

What does it mean to be an American? What role does citizenship status play in that answer?

Consider using the Connect-Extend-Challenge Project Zero thinking-routine to discuss the video:

How does Julissa's story connect with what you already think about what it means to be an American?

How does it extend your thinking about what it means to be an American?

How does it challenge your thinking about what it means to be an American?

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Shifting Ideas of Citizenship: Citizenship Status and American Identity

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What does it mean to be an American? And, what role does citizenship status play? Author and former Wall Street Executive Julissa Arce describes her evolving understanding of American identity and describes the way her former undocumented status impacted her understanding of herself and the country.

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Civic Issue: Citizenship in the United States is granted not solely by ancestral lineage, but by jus soli, or birthright citizenship, as well. In other words, if you are born in the United States, you have a legal right to citizenship regardless of your parents, and their citizenship status. That right was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of The United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. and had traveled to China several times. In 1894, when he was returning from one of those visits, he was denied entry to the U.S. on the grounds that he was not a citizen. Ruling in his favor, Justice Gray explained, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Connection to the Re-Imagining Migration Learning Arc:
Adjustment:

What messages about migration are people hearing through the media and thought leaders?

How do stories of migration influence how people think and (re)act?

In what ways do particular cases connect to human migration over time and around the globe?

What can we learn from other narratives about migration to help inform our perspective?

What can we learn from individuals and groups who have addressed migration in the past?

Suggested Discussion/Activities:

-Ask students to consider the definition of citizen. What is the difference between a resident of a country and a citizen?

-Have students use Project Zero's: True for Who? activity to create a debate to answer the questions: What is the message a country sends about its identity when citizenship is granted not from identity but from birth within national borders? How does this idea help a nation?

Consider the differences between and Jus Sanguinis notions of citizenship.

What do they say about the identity and values of a nation?

-Have students watch the short video about Wong Kim Ark . Have students use Project Zero's Options Diamond activity to analyze the impact of this case.

-Present the primary source document of the court ruling to your students. Have them analyze the document using the National Archives Analyze a Written Document .

Have students underline key phrases of the text that explain the court's decision.

Ask students which phrases most resonate with them?

Which do they see as most important?

What would students want to ask Justice Gray, the author of the opinion?

-Asking students to reflect on the changes and continuities between 1898, when the ruling was issued, and today.

What similarities do they notice?

What differences feel most important?

-Conclude the discussion by using Project Zero's Three Why's Thinking Routine to allow students to take a deeper dive into the topic of citizenship and how the case of Wong Kim Ark still resonates in our society today.

Resource Links:

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Civic Action: Wong Kim Ark and Birthright Citizenship - Re-imagining Migration

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Civic Issue: Citizenship in the United States is granted not solely by ancestral lineage, but by jus soli, or birthright citizenship, as well. In other words, if you are born in the United States, you have a legal right to citizenship regardless of your parents, and their citizenship status.

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Telling Stories: The Children of African Immigrants 

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Telling Stories: The Children of African Immigrants 

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By Zhaoyang Liu

It is common for immigrants, and in particular, their children, to face questions of identity as they become acclimated to their new country. This is no different for the steadily growing African immigrant population in the United States . Michael Rain, a child of African immigrants, struggled with uncertainties about his heritage and identity while growing up as a young boy in New York. Today, he collects the stories of newcomers to the U.S. through his project, which highlights the lives of first-generation African immigrants. In the following presentation, he speaks about his childhood experiences, while addressing how African immigrants are perceived in America.
Reflection Questions:
1. Use Bronfenbrenner's ecological identity model, to chart Michael Rain's identity as when he first attended school in the Un

2. Rain describes an instance in his childhood where he was embarrassed by a traditional Ghanaian meal that his mother packed for his lunch. What might cause the children of immigrants to feel shame regarding the culture of their parents? How can these experiences influence the way in which those children perceive their identities?

3. What do you think Rain wants people to know about the experiences of African immigrants in the U.S.? How are their stories similar to other immigrants? What differences does he highlight?

4. Rain tells a story about black identity from his childhood:

"Junior high school was the first time I went to school with a large number of black American students, and many of them couldn't understand why I sounded differently than they did or why my parents seemed different than theirs. "Are you even black?" a student asked. I mean, I thought I was black. I thought my skin complexion settled that. I asked my father about it, and he shared his own confusion over the significance of that when he first came to the US. He explained to me that, when he was in Ghana, everyone was black, so he never thought about it. But in the US, it's a thing."

As you listen to his story, what did it mean to be black to his peers in the U.S.? Why do you think he was asked if he was black? What does the story expose about the way that skin color is often linked to identity and experience in the United States?

5. Consider using the Moving Stories storytellin g project to encourage your students to explore their migration stories.

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Telling Stories: the Children of African Immigrants

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By Zhaoyang Liu It is common for immigrants, and in particular, their children, to face questions of identity as they become acclimated to their new country. This is no different for the steadily growing African immigrant population in the United States. Michael Rain, a child of African immigrants, struggled with uncertainties about his heritage and [...]

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Enodi: Stories about people from immigrant backgrounds 

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Enodi: Stories about people from immigrant backgrounds 

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ENODI is a media and research company focused on all people with immigrant backgrounds. We have a specific interest in people of African, Caribbean, and African descent who identify as Black. We call those folks Enodi (lowercase).

Through storytelling and technology, we expand perceptions of diverse communities.

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ENODI is a media and research company focused on all people with immigrant backgrounds. We have a specific interest in people of African, Caribbean, and African descent who identify as Black. We call those folks Enodi (lowercase). Through storytelling and technology, we expand perceptions of diverse communities.

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 Who are the young people we are educating?

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 Who are the young people we are educating?

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How should we teach about immigration/migration? 

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How should we teach about immigration/migration? 