Immigration/Migration/Citizenship

Teaching While Undocumented

Two professors document the struggles of undocumented teachers and offer ways educators, schools, and policymakers can better support them.

“Our Folks Were Badass!”

Four Asian American middle school students connect and grow during the pandemic through a virtual book club focused on Asian American history and literature.

¡Sí, se puede!

From Chicago to Dallas, from Atlanta to Nebraska, from Maine to Los Angeles, and in small towns throughout the land, an outpouring of millions of Latinos and human rights supporters […]

Sin Fronteras Boy

Fourth-grade English language learners use wikis to study border issues and gain literacy skills.

Putting a Human Face on the Immigration Debate

For those of us working with immigrant populations, we have in our students living examples that we can use to bring the immigration issue to the forefront and teach all of our students.

Students Galvanize for Immigrant Rights

Viviana, who had only lived in the United States for two years, walked nervously to the speaker’s podium at a press conference on the steps of her high school. Although […]

Strawberry Fields Forever?

When I was a child, my mother couldn’t help us with our homework. She had gone to work as a maid in a Mexican hacienda at age 11 and hadn’t learned to […]

Children Deserve Classrooms, Not Cages

The same mid-February weekend that Trump declared his manufactured emergency, I traveled to El Paso on behalf of the Massachusetts Teachers Association to take part in a “Teach-In for Freedom” organized by Teachers Against Child Detention. This event, among other demands, “called on the U.S. government to end the detention and criminalization of immigrant children and their families.”

“We Did What Had to Be Done”

I worked with ArtXpress — a program for teens through the Milwaukee Art Museum — as an intern for three weeks over the summer. Our mission was to choose a […]

Welcome Poems Trump Hate

A teacher creates a welcome poems lesson to celebrate the diversity of students — and with students.

My First Year as a Teacher of Color

A teacher of color writes about obstacles he faced during his first year in the classroom and the support he received — and did not receive — from other teachers and administrators.

The Importance of Goodbye

A high school teacher explores how the dynamics of a classroom can change when a student leaves and what the effects can be on that student, the other students, and the teacher.

“Young Women Like Me”

Since 1993, the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez has been shaken by disappearances of teenage girls and young women. Officials say they have few leads. The murders in Juárez have received some international attention, primarily due to government inaction. Yet little has been done by the government to prevent violence against women and girls, as officials neglect to bring their perpetrators to justice.

Residents do not let these deaths go unnoticed as hundreds of pink crosses — a symbol of these missing women — dot the border. An increase in these deaths coincided with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). A treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, NAFTA sought to increase investment opportunities by eliminating tariffs and, like many other economic agreements, benefited the economic elites of the three countries while resulting in widespread unemployment, increased class stratification, and mass emigration. Most of the “disappeared” women work in assembly plants or maquiladoras, owned by the United States and transnational corporations that dashed to northern Mexico post-NAFTA to reap the benefits of lower wages and lax environmental regulation.

Editorial: Defending Immigrant Students — in the Streets and in Our Classrooms

It has always been an educator’s responsibility to act in solidarity with vulnerable students. But with President Donald Trump’s September declaration that he will end DACA, we are called on to be more audacious, more resolute, and more imaginative in our solidarity with the 800,000 undocumented young people who now face a frightening uncertainty about their future in the United States.