Teaching about Immigration We the People: A Sound of Music

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1 Teaching about Immigration We the People: A Sound of Music by Annie Davis, NARA Boston 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! Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus In teaching about our country s immigrants, our nation is often characterized as a tapestry, a rainbow, and a bouquet. But I think we are a chorus! In this country, 315 million individual songs comprise a single national anthem, an anthem that is sometimes cacophonous, sometimes harmonious, but always uniquely American. And we hear these voices daily in our classrooms. We are not exactly the nation of immigrants that Sen. John F. Kennedy called it in Not all of us came here voluntarily, and others of us have been here for millennia. Regardless, of how long we have been here, few of us stay in place. Over time the migration continues, because we are certainly nation of migrants. When school groups come to the National Archives to learn about immigration, we also address the larger questions related to migration, the movements of people to, from, and within our continent. People did not stop moving when they landed on America s shores; they continued to move. The study of immigration and migration offers rich interdisciplinary opportunities to develop skills and deep reflection. How has human migration shaped our country and our continent? What is a family? What is a country? What is a citizen? Who am I? What do we mean by We the People? How can we better become the country described on the Statue of Liberty? Teaching about immigration and migration can be challenging. Some students are themselves immigrants or children of immigrants. Their experiences may still be fresh and sometimes painful. To accommodate this, some teachers use their own genealogy to teach about immigration. This can open many conversations with your students, and they will get to know you in an appropriately intimate new way. One teacher even brought in her grandfather, who had immigrated from China, to visit the class! Here are some activities to start your teaching about immigration and migration:

2 1. Conduct Original Research Discuss how everybody got their names. Your name is a clue to your past. It may reveal family, ethnicity, or popular culture. In class, you ll find many answers: a parent made it up; it was the name of a popular entertainer; it was a grandmother... I once had a student named Ariel Belle (her parents obviously loved Disney), and last week, I had a student with three middle names in honor of three great-aunts who perished in the Holocaust. 2. Construct Graphic Organizers: Draw a diagram of your family. A visual representation of family history helps make relationships obvious. Yet, a family tree may not work with your students: perhaps they are adopted, they have two dads, or they have only a grandma. I like using a Solar System model: that is, a series of concentric circles with the child in the center. They like being the center of their universe! Then, they can identify the number of planets and distance of orbits as they wish. In the closest circle, students might place a best friend, a sibling, or their teacher. Further away might be a neighbor or a non-custodial step-parent. It doesn t matter, for everybody s family is unique, and family means whatever one defines. 3. Read, Memorize, Create: Learn and create poetry, fine, and performing arts. Poetry and the arts express the feelings associated with events. Students can learn The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, illustrate it, or write their own poems, for example. 4. Write a Document-Based Narrative: Turn historic documents into a true story. The stories of the real people and events recorded in government documents can make history come alive. How to Analyze an Historical Document When examining historical documents, we teach our students to look at the text context subtext. Observe: What do I know? What are the facts contained therein? Interpret: What do I think I know? Drawing from my prior knowledge, what is this about? Question/research: What do I need to know? What is not there? Conclude: What is this and why does it matter? To teach about immigration/migration, I use a single passenger list showing an entire family coming to America to tell an entire story. Ship manifests were records created by the shipping company when a passenger boarded the ship. Working in pairs, students examine the passenger list to find factual information. Then, they construct the story told by the document. I provide a guiding worksheet as scaffolding, because I want to lead them to the narrative. Let s start at the very beginning...

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4 Observe: Describe the Document These passenger lists are charts: the vertical columns (the fields) list name, birth date, nationality, profession, and whom one is visiting. Observe: What is the title and date(s) of the document? This is a List or Manifest of Passengers. It shows the place and date of departure (Oslo, Norway, Sept 27, 1939) and arrival (New York, October 7, 1939.) Observe & Interpret: Describe the family based on the evidence. Here is a family of 12. The oldest male, a navy captain, is 59, and the oldest female is 34. The kids range in age from infant to 27. They seem to use both Italian and Germanic given names; for example, the navy captain is called both Georg and Georgio. Several of them list their profession as singer. The infant Giovanni/Johannes was born in Philadelphia earlier in the year; it s a clue that the family has been to the US before. Interpret: What is going on in Europe that a family from Austria would be coming to America? Drawing from prior knowledge or research, we learn that the family has departed after Germany s occupation of Austria and just 3 days before the invasion of Poland. Question/Research: Identify unanswered questions. Why isn t a military man at home fighting in the war? What about the huge age difference between the mother and father? Why are the kids so close in age to the mother? Who is the person at a Fifth Avenue address that they say they are visiting? Why are they staying at a fancy hotel in New York? What s with the singing? Conclude: Create the narrative. With guidance, even fourth-grade students can guess a story. It is full of perhapses, and we distinguish between educated well-founded conclusions and supposition. With guided conversation, we come up with this scenario: The navy captain might oppose Hitler; the family might be escaping war; with all those kids, they might be seeking safety away from war; the mother, Maria, might be the second wife and step-mother; they might have come to America to perform; they have been here before, and Maria seems very clever to have made sure her new baby was born here... Paired with the family s later naturalization records, we see the rest of the story: they will stay in America, eventually settle in to Stowe, VT, and they will perform as professional singers. Our kids don t know this story, but we do. It s the Sound of Music! With just one document it s easy to lead the students to the entire story of the von Trapp family. It s a great story and a typical story of a family coming to America for opportunity, refuge, and freedom. Some classes culminate their study of immigration by learning the songs, reading some books, putting on a play, or watching the movie.

5 Beginning with one s own song of myself and those of each other as well as those from history, we find unique themes, common motifs, and historical recapitulations. Our history really is a sound of music, although sometimes a very challenging one as we ever-evolve our understandings of what we mean by We the People. You can find the article Movie vs. Reality: The Real Story of the von Trapp Family and the resources described in this article at Further resources from the education team of the National Archives can be found at and at Annie Davis is the educator at the National Archives at Boston.