Crossing Borders: Building Empathy Through Storytelling

This text set explores human migration, one of the most pressing global trends today and one of the more controversial issues dividing opinions not only in North America but also within countries in South and Central America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, where elected leaders and individuals debate who belongs and who does not. Family reunification, economics, war, persecution, climate change, and the desire for opportunity and freedom of expression in a new place are just some of the reasons prompting hundreds of millions of people around the world to move. 

Students in your classroom may come to this text set with different and possibly opposing opinions about immigration policy that they have formed from the news, social media, their families, and their peer groups. For this reason, we recommend that you proceed proactively by creating a foundation for reflective and respectful discussion in the classroom. Students need to understand that derogatory language toward people who migrate causes harm and has no place in your classroom, school, or community. We believe that creating a classroom contract is among the best ways to do this work. Even if you already incorporate contracting into your practice, we recommend taking a moment to review Facing History’s approach to this strategy and building in time to revisit your classroom contract at the outset and over the course of the text set. 

Finally, you should be mindful that hearing about changing immigration policies in the news may cause some students to feel fear or stress, especially if they, their loved ones, or members of their communities are impacted by these changes. It is important to provide time for students to reflect privately and to understand that some of them will not feel comfortable sharing their stories with you or their peers. With this framing in mind, you may need to adjust some of the texts and activities in this text set for your context. 

Our Borders & Belonging introductory lessons, What Is Belonging? and How Do Borders Shape Belonging?, help prepare students to engage with the resources in this text set. Taken together, they develop students’ conceptual understanding of the ways in which the tangible and intangible borders we encounter in our lives can shape our sense of belonging in the world. If you have not taught these two 50-minute lessons, consider doing so before teaching this text set so that your students have a schema and vocabulary to support their analysis and discussions of the themes and texts they will encounter.

The three Facing History learning objectives at the heart of any ELA unit address students’ cognitive, emotional, and moral growth. ​​Aligned to each learning objective are specific learning outcomes, which describe the observable and measurable knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students develop over the course of the unit.

Learning Objective 1: Explore the Complexity of Identity 

Learning Outcomes: In order to deepen their understanding of the text, themselves, each other, and the world, students will . . .

• Examine the many factors that can shape an individual’s identity.
• Engage with real and imagined stories that help them understand their own experiences and how others experience the world.

Learning Objective 2: Process Texts Through a Critical and Ethical Lens

Learning Outcomes: In order to deepen their understanding of the text, themselves, each other, and the world, students will . . .

• Critically and ethically analyze thematic development and literary craft in order to draw connections between the text and their lives.
• Practice perspective-taking in order to develop empathy and recognize the limits of any one person’s point of view.
• Evaluate a text for the ways in which it upholds and/or challenges stereotypes of individuals and groups.
• Make real-world connections that explore historical and contemporary contexts in literature.

Learning Objective 3: Develop a Sense of Civic Agency

Learning Outcomes: In order to deepen their understanding of the text, themselves, each other, and the world, students will . . .

• Recognize the power that comes with telling their own story and engaging with the stories of others. 
• Recognize that their decisions matter, impact others, and shape their communities and the world.

Use this text set to introduce or supplement a literature or book club unit or as a standalone mini-unit to explore the topic of human migration. The lessons are intended to be taught in the order they are presented over the course of two to three weeks, depending on the length of your class periods and whether or not students complete some of the reading for homework. Each lesson is aligned to guiding questions and Facing History learning outcomes, with activities to help students engage with the texts critically, emotionally, and ethically. While the activities are deliberately sequenced to bring students with care into and out of conversations about belonging and the borders that can shape it, you may need to adapt these activities, as well as the summative assessment, for your unique context.

At Facing History, we understand that before students can engage with challenging topics, they need to feel confident that they are part of a brave and reflective community where they are known, valued, and supported by their teachers and peers. This ongoing process starts with personal reflection on the part of the teacher and invites students to help establish and uphold norms for how everyone will treat one another. 

The following resources and activities can support you and your students in cultivating a brave and reflective community. While we understand that you may not be able to make time to incorporate all of them as you teach this text set, contracting and journaling are core to any Facing History experience, so if you need to prioritize, those are the two to start with.

• Build the Foundation: Learn about the importance of engaging in your own personal reflection before teaching this text set by exploring the resources and teacher-facing activities in Section 1: Start with Yourself of Facing History’s ELA Unit Planning Guide.
• Create a Classroom Contract: Prepare students to engage, take risks, and support one another by creating a classroom contract with agreed-upon norms and behaviors that allow every student to feel seen, heard, and valued. If you have already created a contract, set aside time to revisit it at the outset of this unit to recommit to your group’s agreed-upon norms and behaviors.
• Incorporate Daily Journaling: In addition to creating and upholding the classroom contract, journaling is an instrumental tool for helping students develop their ability to process what they are learning, practice perspective-taking, and make informed judgments about what they see and hear. Providing students with time and space to reflect on complex issues and questions allows them to formulate their ideas before sharing those ideas with their peers. 
• Write Alongside Your Students: When teachers write along with their students and share their writing, no matter how messy or scattered, it sends a powerful message that writing matters, writing is hard, and even teachers don’t get it right the first time. You will create a stronger community of thinkers and writers if you participate in the learning process. If you don’t do so already, consider starting your own journal and joining your students in this exploration of power, agency, and voice.

Differentiation is an approach to teaching and learning that involves purposeful planning and instruction that is responsive to students’ identities and needs as individual learners and members of a larger classroom community. It starts with creating a welcoming environment and includes a high-quality curriculum that all students can access in order to engage with the targeted concepts and skills.

After reviewing the materials in this text set, we recommend that you incorporate some or all of the following differentiation strategies to help ensure that the content and concepts are accessible to all of your students:

• Use a strategy like Think Aloud to make your process visible when reading and annotating texts. Start by modeling the process for your class, naming the invisible literacy moves that you are making and your reasoning behind each annotation. Then have students practice these moves in pairs before asking them to work alone.
• Provide students with models to help them understand your expectations for annotating texts, responding to discussion questions, and completing assessments.
• Create a Word Wall to help students keep track of key terms. Encourage students to sketch the terms, perhaps using a teaching strategy like Sketch to Stretch, and to incorporate the terms into their conversations and writing. 
• Use adapted versions of readings when available. In this text set, we provide adapted versions of two informational texts with reduced text complexity, definitions of key terms, sentence stems, and embedded graphic organizers. 
• Create purposeful groupings of students where possible, perhaps pairing English Learners with students who share their home language, to work through new material before creating heterogeneous language groups for discussions. For Jigsaw or similar activities, consider the text complexity, length, and relevance of each reading when creating groups. Some students may have the schema to tackle a more challenging reading if it connects to an interest or aspect of their identity.