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GUEST SPEAKERS
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As part of my summer enrichment course, guest speakers from a variety of organizations spoke to my students and helped them gain a deeper understanding of the obstacles facing immigrants and refugees in Houston. Students were able to hear from and ask questions of representatives from different organizations and backgrounds, and these conversations helped inform the projects they presented at the end of the summer. 

 

Please use the Table of Contents below to navigate this section of my website. Clicking on each underlined subtitle will bring you back to the top of this section.  

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Course Background

Securing Speakers

Student Reflections

Teacher Reflection

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COURSE BACKGROUND

In April of 2017, I was selected to teach a summer enrichment course for incoming fifth graders at my school. The only requirements for this summer course were that it was a project-based course and that it incorporated technology. Along with a colleague who was teaching this course for incoming fourth graders, I designed and implemented a curriculum that focused on the experiences of immigrants and refugees throughout history. Because our school is 95% Hispanic, many of our students have parents who are immigrants or are immigrants themselves, and they have been understandably nervous as the federal and state governments make decisions that could impact their family's stability. I decided to channel this uncertainty into a learning opportunity for my students, and the summer course "Face of America: An Immigrant Experience" was born. 

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This handout explains the summer course focus areas and goals. This was shared with school administration, students and parents who participated in the course, and guest speakers. 

In addition to finding guest speakers for students, I also created four weeks of lesson plans that simultaneously built students' background knowledge about these topics and gave them time to explore their own research interests and create a group project. Lesson plans for the summer course included "traditional" classroom aspects, such as a class novel study, and also provided students with experiences that helped them understand what it would be like to be an immigrant or refugee. For example, during the week focused on obstacles that immigrants and refugees face once arriving in America, students participated in challenges, such as navigating a foreign grocery store or budgeting with foreign money, each morning. Including these types of activities and combining this experiential learning with the guest speakers helped make this large topic easier for students to understand. 

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The PDF above includes all four weeks of lesson plans for the summer course. Because the summer course was self-contained, I included community-building elements such as a daily morning and afternoon meeting. In addition, because students worked in groups to create their projects, it was important for them to get along well, and class meetings helped accomplish that. 

SECURING SPEAKERS

Because Houston is the fourth-largest and most diverse city in the country, I knew that we had a wealth of immigration experts at our fingertips. I wanted to supplement the research that my students would be conducting with conversations with those experts. I visualized these guest speakers as giving my students another perspective on these complicated issues, and being able to answer their questions in a way that was on-level and age-appropriate. 

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I started my search for these guest speakers by posting on my personal Facebook page to see what connections my friends had. I was overwhelmed by the positive response, and ultimately three guest speakers came from this initial Facebook post. Three more speakers came from reaching out to contacts suggested by family and friends, and the remaining speakers came from reaching out to Houston-area organizations like the Houston Holocaust Museum and the African Law Center. 

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My Facebook post was shared by others and many friends left organization suggestions in the comments. This post connected us with three of our thirteen guest speakers. 

By posting on Facebook, I was able to tap into my friends' networks. This contact was recommended by a Teach for America connection. 

I also leveraged personal connections to reach out to immigrant-centered organizations throughout Houston. This speaker was able to talk with our students about how his organization offers English classes and other services to recent immigrants throughout Houston. 

Ultimately, thirteen guest speakers presented to our students, including:

Above is a photo gallery of our guest speakers. Some brought presentations and discussed specific topics, while others shared their personal stories and allowed students to drive the conversation with their questions. 

Judy Le, a refugee who came to Houston on a raft from Vietnam, shared her family's story with our students. She was the first guest speaker and set the tone for the rest of the course. 

Skype allowed us to connect with guest speakers who didn't live in Houston. Mark Curley, an immigration attorney in Omaha, Nebraska, was able to talk about his job with students and make comparisons about how the immigration landscape is different in Omaha and Houston. 

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

The purpose of the guest speakers was to give students another source of information that they could consider and use when developing their final projects. Students completed an online reflection after listening to each of the guest speakers to capture their thoughts, reactions, and questions. By hosting these reflections online using Padlet, students were able to refer back to their reflections and learnings as they summer progressed. It also allowed me to check for student understanding and identified key takeaways and any misconceptions. 

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Included above are two sets of speaker reflections. Because the summer enrichment course included a heterogeneous group of students, students varied in their writing abilities and comfort level with English. However, all responses were able to convey what students had learned from listening to the guest speakers. 

TEACHER REFLECTION

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Bringing in guest speakers was a meaningful and authentic way to enrich my students' learning experience over the course of this course. Hearing from immigrants and refugees themselves, in addition to the individuals who work to support immigrants and refugees in various capacities, made the learning more personally relevant to my students. In addition, because they were able to ask the guest speakers questions, students were able to tailor the learning experience to fit their interests and needs. Ultimately, these guest speakers enhanced the final projects that my students presented at the end of the summer course. For example, after hearing several speakers touch on how difficult getting around the city is for immigrants, one group of students created a translation game that focused on transportation, grocery stores, and schools.

 

Looking ahead to my instruction during the regular school year, I would like to start identifying guest speakers who could speak to some of the issues that the characters in our class novels experience. For example, I could bring in a Hurricane Katrina survivor while we are reading our first class novel, Zane and the Hurricane, to provide another personal account of the storm. Taking advantage of the resources that Houston has to offer and bringing them to my students will provide them with an increased level of access to people, stories, and experiences that they otherwise would not have. 

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