The two-week curriculum unit that I designed on immigration was a good opportunity to incorporate a family interview assignment.  We read from different sources to learn the variety of reasons why people leave home, some aspects of which I anticipated my students’ families could relate to.  We discussed the concept of push-pull factors and what makes a good home.  We talked about Syrian refugees and learned about internal migration, through the art and poetry of The Great Migration. We listened to a guest speaker from a local organization talk about unaccompanied youth from Central America.  We also learned how animal migration and human migration might be similar and dissimilar from one another.  My hope was that the family interviews would reinforce some of the questions and concepts that were already raised in the unit. 

​

A Jacob Lawrence painting that we looked at in our study of The Great Migration

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

"In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry"

1940-1941
 

Classroom Anchor Charts that I hung as I taught lessons in my unit:

​

​

​

​

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A poster that I hung in the classroom after a shared reading of an adapted William Penn letter from 1683:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A poster created by a team of students during a study of immigrant primary sources. The students read about how the Nigerian woman depicted in the poster came to America for medical treatment.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

The unit lent itself well to an interview assignment because one goal of the unit was to learn to work with primary sources.  I was already incorporating many primary sources into my unit: letters and diary entries from immigrants; art and photography from historical periods; a recording of an NPR StoryCorps interview.  The family interview assignment would elevate my use of primary sources.  A friend of mine had told me that she interviewed her grandmother in elementary school and remembered it well.  And my husband had had a similar experience interviewing his grandparents in elementary school.  This input encouraged me that the family interview would be a powerful and authentic way for the kids to learn. 

​

Penn Alexander was a good school environment to investigate my questions about family and community.  Diversity is such a striking asset in my classroom.  The students represent a number of backgrounds and their families come from French West Africa, Eastern Europe, Bangladesh, China, Mexico, Thailand, among other places.  I expected that the students would be excited to collect their families’ stories and share them with the rest of the class.  And I anticipated that parents would be willing to engage.   Parent involvement at Penn Alexander is very strong.  For both quarters that I’ve student-taught here, all of my students have had at least one caregiver (if not two) attend their report card conference.  There’s also an active School Advisory Council that is comprised of staff members, parent members, and community members and that meets regularly to discuss student achievement and school improvement.  Because parents are already so invested in student achievement at Penn Alexander, I knew that they would make themselves available for the project and that the students (and I) would have sufficient material to work with.

​

​

                                                                                                                       Next Pg.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​