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Transnational Migration in the Era of Big Business

Kerry Gallagher Reading Public Schools May 2012 Grades 9-12

Abstract: This 4 day lesson plan will ask students to study migration to and from the United States in the late 19th century. Students will have learned about the technological and cultural advancements achieved in the post-Reconstruction United States. Many Americans felt a sense of superiority as a result of these advancements and, as a result, immigrants faced significant challenges as they attempted to carve out new lives in their new country. Students will analyze photographs, maps, statistics, primary sources, and secondary sources through a variety of activities in order to develop a deeper understanding from the perspective of the migrant. Some of these sources come directly from the February 2012 school-day seminar entitled Transnational Migration since the Late-Nineteenth Century (see http://historyconnected.wikispaces.com/TransnationalMigrationsincetheLateNineteenthCentury). On day 1, students will learn about where migrants came from and where they were going to. They will analyze both annotated photographs and maps directly from the History Connected program. On day 2, students will learn about the process of getting through customs through a case study of Ellis Island and some primary and secondary sources. Several of the photographs used in this lesson are from the History Connected program. On day 3, students will learn about the jobs migrants took once inside the United States. They will mark up a text and annotate photographs using skills discussed in the History Connected program. The text includes primary and secondary sources and the photographs are compelling images of migrant and children workers. On day 4, students will analyze the difficult decision many migrants faced over whether to remain in the United States or return to their country of origin. This discussion is largely based on the lecture from the History Connected program and some of the evidence and primary sources used to frame the discussion are also from that seminar. For all lesson materials see http://transnationalmigration.weebly.com/index.html

Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Frameworks Standard:


USII.3 Describe the causes of immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describe the major roles of these immigrants in the industrialization of America.

Standards in Historical Thinking Addressed:


2. Historical Comprehension 3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation

Standards for Literacy in Social Studies Addressed:


6. Evaluate authors differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors claims, reasoning, and evidence. 9. Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

Essential Questions:
1. Based on your analysis of primary and secondary sources, how did the American perception of migration differ from the world view of migration? 2. Describe the conditions and treatment migrants endured as they arrived in the United States and within their new employment in the United States. 3. Why did some migrants to the United States stay in their new home, while others returned to their nation of origin?

Learning Objectives:
1. Students will evaluate primary source texts and images using various strategies to gain a coherent understanding of the migrant perspective of American industry and culture in the late 19th century. 2. Students will be able to give examples of ill treatment endured by migrants at Ellis Island as they attempted to enter the United States. 3. Students will be able to describe working conditions in sweat shops and factories where migrants worked. 4. Students will be able to explain the different reasons why migrants came to the United States and why many of them returned to their nations of origin.

Learning Activities:
Day 1: Flows of Migration Start by reading the introduction at the top of the web page and have a brief discussion with students to make sure they understand the context of the material. Part 1: Picture This! Divide the class into 4 groups, one for each of the 4 images. Print out one copy of the assigned photograph for each group member. Also, provide each student with a copy of the photographs question sheet. Encourage small groups to analyze their assigned image by filling in the question sheet together.

As groups finish the question sheet, go to them individually and distribute the writing prompts handout to each student. Students should choose one of the prompts and write a response based on their assigned photograph. Ask students to read through their writings in their small groups and then choose one of the writings to read aloud to the class. Show the image that goes with the students writing on the screen at the front of the room. Ask students to explain the reasons behind what they wrote and make clear connections to the experiences of the people in the photograph. Share the information from the photograph annotations with the students at this point as well. Part 2: Map Analysis Click on the maps to enlarge them on screen at the front of the room. Ask the students the questions provided to help them come to the conclusion that the American view of migration was self-centered and self-serving. It assumed that migrants were coming the United States, and not leaving. It focused mostly on European migration while avoiding discussion of migrants of other races and from other parts of the world. Connect this back to the philosophy of Social Darwinism that bubbled up during the Era of Big Business in the United States. Day 2: Frequent Scenes of Misery Start by reading the introduction at the top of the web page and have a brief discussion with students to make sure they understand the context of the material. Part 1: Ellis Island Download and show the Power Point to the students. Analyze the images and what they tell us about the migrant experience at Ellis Island by discussing the questions on the slides in a large group discussion. Be sure to note that the images go from being VERY inspiring, to disturbing. Also note that the disturbing images are, perhaps, a more realistic representation of the experience of the migrant at Ellis Island. Part 2: Tableau Activity Put the enlarged photograph on screen and ask the students to follow these instructions: You are going to recreate the taking of the photo as a group which means you are also going to include people who might be just outside the scope of the current photo. Be sure to include all of the different people who would were there (e.g. immigrants - men, women, children; customs officials; security guards; photographers; government officials; etc.). Get up from your seat and take on the roles, positions, and stances of whomever you choose. You will need to relocate or move desks and different students will take on the roles of the people both in and out of the picture. Once you are settled, stand quietly while your teacher guides you to articulate, one by one, what you are thinking from the perspective of the character you are portraying. Your teacher will go around and tap each student who will then share his/her thoughts out loud with the group. How did you feel while we carried out this activity? Did it give you a new perspective on the experience of a person passing through Ellis Island? Part 3: Through Their Eyes Download and copy the Through Their Eyes handout for each student in the room. Assign each student one of the five people. Explain to the students that these were real people and these were their real experiences. Ask them to choose one of the options and draw the migrants perspective. This activity might be homework since the two previous activities are likely to take up the majority of a typical class period.

When students are done with their drawings (this might be the next day) facilitate a discussion in which students share their drawings and explain their overall impressions of the treatment endured by migrants. Ask them whether the treatment was justified. Ask them why Americans may have thought this kind of treatment was OK based on the prevailing philosophy of Social Darwinism at the time. Day 3: Factories and Sweatshops Start by reading the introduction at the top of the web page and have a brief discussion with students to make sure they understand the context of the material. Part 1: America is work, work, work. First, handout the instructions to mark up a packet. Read through the pedagogy behind marking up a text instead of highlighting. Ask students to read through the material with the instructions on how to mark up a text next to them on their desk so that they can remember how to react to what they are reading. Allow them time to do this in class silently. As you walk around and observe the students, be sure to indicate to students who are not making enough marks or who are marking too much. Encourage them to use all the different marking strategies. When students are done ask them what they marked and why they marked it. Be sure to discuss the over-arching themes of hazardous working conditions and poor treatment. Also, child labor is an important topic to relate to the struggles of immigrants. Part 2: Annotating Images First, handout the annotating an image instructions. Read through it with the students and explain that photographs are primary sources just like a text can be. They show the experiences of people with images instead of words. Therefore, it is important to annotate them to help people understand their significance in the same way that we annotate text sources when we do research. Then, give each student a copy of one of the photographs. Ask them to incorporate the background information they learned from the America is work, work, work activity to provide historical context. Then they should analyze the particulars of their assigned image. You may want student to do this writing individually or in groups. When they are done, display the photographs on the screen at the front of the room and ask students to share their annotations. Be sure to add information they may have left out and ask them about their own personal and emotional reactions to the images. Day 4: New Home or Go Home? Start by reading the introduction at the top of the web page and have a brief discussion with students to make sure they understand the context of the material. Part 1: Going/Staying Home Display the table on the screen at the front of the room. Facilitate a class discussion based on the questions provided on the web page. Encourage students to make a personal connection to the statistics based on their own families immigrant stories, if they know them. Ask them why people might come to the United States if they had no intention of leaving. Part 2: Mary Anderson and Sadie Frowne Give half of the students the text from Anderson and half from Frowne. Ask them to read, mark up the text based on the skills they learned in Day 3, and then answer the Questions for Analysis from the link on the web page. When they are done ask them to share the story of either Mary or Sadie and encourage them to share the answers to their questions. This should deepen their understanding of the immigrant perception of the United States, as compared to the American

elitist attitude that came out of the technological and economic advancements of the late 19th century.

Performance Assessment:
Rather than focusing on one cumulative assessment, there are different performance assessments on each day of this 4-day lesson plan. Day 1: Flows of Migration Student historic photograph analysis skills will be assessed based on their response to the writing prompts. They should integrate their observations and evaluations of the images into their writing with as much detail as possible. Day 2: Frequent Scenes of Misery Students ability to take on an unfamiliar perspective and understand a new point of view will be evaluated based on their pictorial representations and accompanying captions from the Through Their Eyes activity. Day 3: Factories and Sweatshops Students ability to mark up, understand, and apply evidence from a text will be evaluated based on their photograph annotation responses in which they are supposed to integrate the information from the background readings. Day 4: Stay Home or Go Home? Student contributions to class discussion will help evaluate their understanding of how the United States fit into world migration as a whole. From the two primary source accounts, students will use evidence in the discussion to demonstrate that while some migrants did stay in the United States, others did not. This perspective is contrary to the perception from the first map we analyzed on Day 1.

Annotated Bibliography
Any information not noted in the bibliography below can be found on the History Connected wiki page related to the school day seminar that served as the basis for this lesson. It can be found at: http://historyconnected.wikispaces.com/TransnationalMigrationsincetheLateNineteenthCentury. Anderson, Mary. Letter from Mary Anderson to her mother. October 20, 1884. Public Records Office, Northern Ireland, T3258/4/5. Photocopied from Blower, Brooke. The Life of Mary Anderson: An Intimate Response to the Turn-of-the-Century World of Transatlantic Migration. Prospects, 29 (2005): 185-217. Mary Anderson is a migrant in the late nineteenth century from Ireland. Her intention is to come to the United States to seek opportunity and economic gain, but return to Ireland permanently soon thereafter. She and her family find themselves in Wichita, Kansas for a longer period of time than they had originally planned. In this letter she expresses disdain for Americans, their culture, and manners. This letter, addressed to Andersons mother, serves as primary source evidence that many migrants did not come to the United States with the intentions of staying permanently. It also serves to counteract the concept of American exceptionalism and Social Darwinism which were the prevailing modes of thought in the United States at the time. Students will compare this migrant account of the United States with the account from Sadie Frowne.

Cannato, Vincent J. American Passage: The History of Ellis Island. New York: Harper, 2009. Cannato is associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He received his BA with honors in Political Science from Williams College and his PhD in History from Columbia University. At UMASS-Boston, Prof. Cannato teaches courses on New York City history, Boston history, immigration history, and twentieth-century American history. His book is engaging and compelling with smooth integration of secondary narrative and primary accounts. Sometimes the stories are heart-warming, while at other times they are heart-wrenching. He traces the history of the American immigration debate through Ellis Island. Excerpts from Cannatos book are used on Day 2. Students take on the point of view of an immigrant from the passage they are assigned and create a pictorial interpretation. Students learn that some immigrants were turned away, even after sacrificing everything. Others found great success in their new surroundings.

Edwards, Rebecca. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865-1905. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Edwards is an associate professor at Vassar College and author of the 1997 book Angels in the Machinery. Her book offers a fresh, sweeping narrative of the Guilded Age, the Progressive Era, and twentieth-century history. It is an easy, smooth read with engaging stories of both triumph and tragedy. The excerpt used from this text is on page 63 in the chapter entitled Work. Here, Emma Goldman describes the differences between the intense work regimen in the United States and the seemingly more reasonable expectations of workers in her country of origin, Russia. Students learn from this excerpt that American industry had unreasonable expectations for their immigrant laborers.

Frowne, Sadie. "The Story of a Sweatshop Girl: Sadie Frowne." September 25, 1902. Digital History. Accessed May 02, 2012. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/social_history/5sweatshop_girl.cfm. The Digital History website was designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools and colleges and is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston. This particular resource is a first-hand account of immigration and factory work from a Polish girl at the turn of the twentieth century. It is valuable because it explains her reasons for migration, her experiences in an unfamiliar place, and her life as a factory worker. She seems to have a favorable view of Americans and her life in the United States. Students use this document as a comparison piece to Mary Andersons overall negative impressions of Americans.

Greenwood, Barbara. Factory Girl. Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2007. Greenwood is a young adult author who weaves together fiction and non-fiction to help illuminate the past for children. This book could serve as a good introduction to the factory life of child laborers for young teenage students. While it might not be ideal as a scholarly source for in depth research, the photographs provide a rich backdrop. Many of them are from famed social advocate and photographer Lewis Hines. Several photographs from this book were used for the Factories and Sweatshops activities. Students will use background information from text resources to evaluate and analyze the situations presented in each photograph.

Hearings on the Strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, House Document No. 671, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. Reprinted in Joyce L. Kornbluh, ed. Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 181184. Found online at Camella Teoli Testifies about the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. March 1912. History Matters. Accessed May 02, 2012. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/61/ Camella Teoli was a young Italian immigrant who worked in a textile factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts at the turn of the century. Her father was approached by a man who forged papers to make Camella seem older so she could work. She subsequently, and tragically, was scalped by the machines. Her Congressional testimony gained national headlines and eventually helped secure a strike victory. Students will read an excerpt of the testimony to help them understand the daily lives of immigrant child laborers in the Factories and Sweatshops portion of the website.

"The Human Meaning of Migration." Digital History. Accessed May 03, 2012. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=435. The Digital History website was designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools and colleges and is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston. This particular excerpt is from the Hypertext History online American history text book offered by the website. It suggests that teachers use primary sources to teach students about migrations human meaning. The questions provided on the page will be used by students to analyze the primary source excerpts by Mary Anderson and Sadie Frowne. Keeley, Meg. "Annotated Text Example." The Basics of Effective Learning. May 10, 2011. Accessed April 26, 2012. http://faculty.bucks.edu/specpop/annotate-ex.htm. Bucks County Community College is located in Pennsylvania. This tutorial on how to mark up a text comes from Meg Keeley in their Student Services office. This is an example of a text book page that has been read and marked up, or annotated, by a student to increase understanding. It will be used as a model to show students what a marked up page of reading might look like when they are done using the strategy.

Pennington, M. "How Margin Notes Are Better than the Yellow Highlighter." Pennington Publishing Blog. January 17, 2009. Accessed April 26, 2012. http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/how-margin-notes-are-better-than-the-yellowhighlighter/. Mark Pennington is an educational author, presenter, reading specialist, and middle school teacher. Marks English-language arts/reading resources help teachers differentiate instruction for the diverse needs of their students. This particular blog post is an explanation of how to mark up a text and the philosophy behind the practice. Excerpts from the blog post will be discussed with students before they read through and mark up a mix of primary and secondary sources about factory and sweatshop work for migrants in the United States. Students will gain and understanding of the content and practice a valuable reading skill through the strategies gleaned from this source.

Von Drehle David. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. Von Drehle is a journalist for The Washington Post. His account of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire disaster is compelling and tragic. For the purposes of this lesson plan, context information from the beginning of the book on pages 40 through 48 was utilized to help students understand working conditions faced by immigrants and their children in sweatshops and factories in the late 19th century. Von Drehles narrative is descriptive and harrowing. It will certainly maintain student attention while informing their understanding of the daily lives of migrants.

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