Our Changing Voices

Teacher's Guide
These lessons can be amended to focus on any region of the United States.
This project is divided into three lessons. They may be done individually or as a unit.

Lesson One: Text and Internet Research (2 - 3 days)

Introductory Activity

Begin by asking a variety of questions to assist students in thinking about their own cultural heritage.

1. What is the origin of your last name?
2. What is your mother's maiden name?
3. When did your family come to Nebraska?
4. Where did they first settle?
5. What were your grandparents' occupations?

Assign students a preliminary family interview.

1. Have students interview a parent or grandparent using the Family Story Assignment from the Learning About Immigration Through Oral History lesson (AMF 1997) as a guide.
2. After the interview, have students share information with one another and begin to understand their own family journeys.

Discuss general facts about immigration to the United States.

1. Immigration brainstorm
1. What do we know about immigration?
2. What are the reasons people come to the United States?
3. Identify these terms and discuss how these issues affect immigrants:
• quotas
• refugee
• alien
• undesirable
• inclusion
• naturalization
• xenophobia
• emigration


2. Laws and immigration waves
   
1. What laws have been passed that have influenced the flow of immigration?
2. What are the areas where immigration laws have had the most impact?
3. Various resources to help you prepare for discussion include:


• American Immigration Center
• Amnesty International
• Immigration and Naturalization Service
• U.S. Committee for Refugees

Research

• Allow students to choose an ethnic group to research, either based on their own ethnic heritage or interest level.
• Have students complete the Text and Internet Research guide.

Lesson Two: Searching American Memory (2 - 3 days)

Discuss the Works Progress Administration project which resulted in the interviews found in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940

1. What is the brief history of the WPA project?
2. Why was the project funded?
3. Look at the questions of the interviewers. Why were those questions important?
4. How descriptive were the answers?
5. What ideas were supposed to be gathered or taken from these interviews?

Students research and analyze primary sources from American Memory about selected immigrant groups.

1. Pass out the Searching American Memory handout and review with students.
2. Have students complete the handout by researching their selected immigrant groups chosen in Lesson One.

• America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945
• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940
• The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections
• Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941

Lesson Three: Our Voices (up to 5 days)

Reflecting on Others/Reflecting on Ourselves

Students read and use personal narratives to make connections between immigration past and immigration present.

1. Pass out the Our Voices handout and review with students.
2. Have each student chose a personal narrative from the reading list on the Our Voices handout or from those found in your school media center.
3. Students read and analyze the personal narratives.
4. Next, students look at their own family's immigrant experience.
5. Students interview members of their family, preferably from different generations, using the questions in the Reflecting on Ourselves section of the Our Voices handout.

Resources

• Using Primary Sources in the Classroom
• Identifying Open/Closed Questions from the Learning About Immigration Through Oral History lesson (AMF 1997)
• Iowa Folklore Education Institute on Understanding Communities

Evaluation

1. Final Project: Portfolio/notebook collection of journals and written assignments based on the readings from American Memory and books