EXPLORING IMMIGRATION

Hauppauge Middle School students recently “became immigrants for a day” as they immersed themselves in the immigration process and took away thought-provoking details about the history of U.S. immigration during the school’s annual Immigration Day program.

Prior to the start of Immigration Day, the 8th grade students wrote individual immigrant profiles for their “passports” during their Social Studies classes. The middle schoolers then viewed Theatre 3’s Voices from the Fire, which described the Holocaust and demonstrated persecution as one reason for immigration. Next, the students were divided into 18 groups, each of which was led by a Hauppauge High School History Club member.

With the Middle School gymnasium transformed into the “Great Hall of Ellis Island,” the student groups then embarked on a journey to discover the reasons why people immigrated to the United States. They visited to the medical, mental and legal stations to determine their qualification for entry into the United States. Following this, they experienced different stations where they learned about other aspects of immigration, including: recent immigrants (ENL students and a teacher) who spoke about their experiences, the citizenship test; political cartoons; reader’s theatre; a virtual tour of Ellis Island; a virtual tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum; Steps to American Citizenship; political reasons for immigration (refugees and asylum); video clips on immigration; racism/segregation and immigration; ethnic foods; a memoir station; and the Statue of Liberty.

At the end of their “Great Hall” experience, the students wrote brief essays on the essential question: How has immigration impacted the United States? Immigration Day concluded with a lively debate where groups of students were assigned to take a stand for or against immigration.