For generations, American
schoolchildren have learned that the United States is a nation of immigrants -
melting pot, tossed salad, destination for the “huddled masses yearning to
breathe free” welcomed by the Statue of Liberty.
The issue of immigration is now
fraught with controversy and polarizing politics, but it remains a worthy subject
to challenge student thinking and writing. In fact, the American Immigration
Council is sponsoring its 19th annual Celebrate America 5th Grade Creative Writing Contest. Students are asked to write 500
words on “Why I am glad America is a nation of immigrants.” Essays are due
February 29, 2016. In Maryland, D.C. and
Virginia, contest questions may be directed to essaycontestATsilversimmigration.com.
The Friends of the Library in
Montgomery County, MD, also sponsors an essay contest on“Celebrating Diversity” with a January 29 deadline. This contest invites middle school students to
submit an essay, short story or poem that is an expression of their culture. It
is appropriately called “Mosaic.” With or without a contest, these writing
prompts about immigration and culture can be adapted to any grade level.
Use the contest guidelines
directly or simply ask students to find out when they or their families came to
the United States and why.
Some families came willingly, some
not and some were here long before immigration became a fact of American
life. The question should prompt
discussion at home and interesting stories or essays at school. If the question
is too sensitive for some children to discuss publicly, they could talk to a
neighbor or a school staff member instead.
There is a variety of books
to inform the discussion and stimulate writing.
The Institute for Humane Education lists 14 picture and chapter books about refugee children from Vietnam and Cambodia,
Somalia, Mali, Pakistan and more. For
older students, Kem Knapp Sawyer has just published Grace Akallo and the Pursuit of
Justice for Child Soldiers. Akallo escaped the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army
in Uganda and is now raising her family in Massachusetts while she advocates
for peace and justice. Sawyer’s message in the book, as she explains in an interview with Deborah Kalb, is that Grace Akallo – after a tragic and
frightening childhood - became an American immigrant with a “remarkable vision,
who believes she was given a purpose in life, not to mourn for herself but to
help others who have suffered as she has.”
Last
year, fifth grader Anya Frazier of Raleigh, NC, included these thoughts in the poem
that won the American Immigration Council contest:
On each ship,
A flicker of hope,
A flash blinding my endless
waters,
But then it’s gone.
Like a burnt out fire,
Trying to reignite.
But as they catch sight of the
golden land,
That fire begins to glow.
It spreads out wide like a seed to
soil,
Its timid shoots poking out of the
ground.
Promise.
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