See our beginning gallery of student work: “HOME?”: Teen refugees and immigrants explore their Tucson through photos and essays “The Immigrant’s Song”: San Francisco students capture the immigrant experience through monologues they create and perform

PROVIDENCE, RI—Immigration issues dominate the news just now, and they present a perfect opportunity for a curriculum or service project. Your students can bring back wonderful interviews if they venture into their communities to talk to the immigrants they know about their experiences.

WKCD learned this, when we coached and then published such work by New York City students in our compact and absorbing book Forty-Cent Tip: Stories of New York City Immigrant Workers.

Now we are offering you a look at our coaching guidelines—and a chance to be published—in the hope that you will try the project, too!

Work like this sparks students’ learning in many ways:

• They practice their communication and literacy skills. You’ll coach students to come up with good questions, teach them how to transcribe their interviews carefully, and then shape them into compelling first-person essays. If they can take photographs as well, the arts add another dimension.
• Their understanding grows about the historical, political, and cultural issues behind immigration issues. Linking real people’s stories with the debate on policy makes it come alive, as they think the issues through for themselves.
• Their active, hands-on work forges connections with the community. Respect grows on both sides as youth and adults witness each other’s strengths.
• They see their work published for a larger audience. Send their best work to WKCD, and we will make it public on our website, whatkidscando.org. For an example of how this might look, click here to see a feature story WKCD recently published of immigrant interviews and photos from students in Casco, Maine.

WKCD offers the following resources to help with your project:

Download our manual for teachers and  students.

Request a complimentary copy of the WKCD book Forty-Cent Tip: Stories of New York City Immigrant Workers—or a classroom set, which we make available at our publisher’s cost ($3.75 in quantities of 10 or more),  as long as supplies last. Please be sure to include your full mailing address in your email.

Read a review of Forty-Cent Tip in News Photographer, the magazine of the National Press Photographers Association.

Contact us if you have additional questions about how to make this project happen in your school or community.

We look forward to hearing from you, and to publishing the inspiring work produced by your students, wherever you may be. If you already have immigrant stories collected by your students that you’d like us to see and perhaps publish online, please send them to info@whatkidscando.org.

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