This lesson uses a series of drama exercises in combination with text from Janet Bode's book New Kids in Town: Oral Histories of Immigrant Teens (Scholastic, 1991) as a way to get students thinking about the experiences of immigrants who cam to the US in the aftermath of the federal immigration reforms of 1965. Developed by Dr. David Montgomery with assistance from Rachel Mattson and Terri Ruyter.
Explain to students the purpose of the lesson and how it links to what they have been learning in this unit so far.
"So far in our study of immigration, we have learned that.... Today, we are going to read an oral history and engage in some drama exercises that will help us consider the challenges and successes real families face when they immigrate to the United States. In this drama, you will need to use all that you have learned about immigration so far, and maybe draw upon some ideas you have inferred from our study so far."
Hand out section of oral history of Amitabh. The class reads the following passage aloud, with each participant taking one sentence. Note that each segment of text is broken into chunks on the handout for easier reading. (5 minutes)
"I couldn't always understand why we had come here. Why would my parents leave a country where they had been born, where their children had been born? Bhaunagar was a modernized city on the northwest side of India. It had a lot of factories, apartment houses, and private homes. Our home was three stories high and we lived together with my uncle, my aunt, and my grandparents. My grandparents had another house in a small city called Mehsana. Every summer and during other vacations we'd go there."
"The weather was very warm. In the winters it would get cool enough to wear sweaters, but that was it. No snow. It also used to rain quite a bit. There was a dry and rainy season, with monsoons that occurred every year at a certain time. We had a good life there."
"I know that people think that in India everybody is poor, that everything is backward. It's not that backward, and probably improved since I've been here. We had electricity and running water and traffic jams. I went to a good school. They taught the same subjects as over here, like art, general science, and math and also some of the different languages of India. I think there are fifteen or sixteen languages. At home we spoke Gujarati and I learned how to speak Hindi too. I was happy. I knew the way things were done in India. I knew the food. I loved cooked okra, the vegetable, and pouri, the bread. I had a favorite kind of curry. I knew my future. My parents said, though, that we were going to move to America because..."
"My parents said that we were going to move to America because us kids would have more opportunities for the future. This was a long time planning."
Pairs are grouped with two other pairs to form a group of six. Because each pair has discussed possible reasons why the family left India, they should have enough information to improvise the following scene:
Groups improvise the moment Amitabh's parents tell him and the rest of the family they are going to move to America. In a group of six, there will be the mother, the father, Amitabh, and three more siblings or other family members. Groups improvise simultaneously for 3 minutes. Stop. Decide on 10 to 30 seconds of the improvisation you just did to share with the rest of the class. Each group shares their 10 to 30 seconds. This entire section should last no more than 7 minutes.Give a second hand-out which will be read aloud with the following bit of information from Amitabh on it:
"It was really bad for us in the beginning. We were six in a two room apartment. Every day my parents would get up and go out to look for jobs. They knew they had to start all the way at the bottom, that people here didn't count experience from India. But my father had been a biologist. My mother was a chemistry professor at a university. In India they were both making good money. Now, though, they would come home every evening and they wouldn't have found anything. They would be very, very sad. They didn't know the bus systems or the subway systems here. They'd get lost. They'd get to some place and it would be too late. The job would be gone. They'd go another place and the answer would be no. One day my parents said, "This is a dead end. We can't find jobs. We don't have any more money. Nothing. We're going to have to jump into the river." I want to think that they were not being serious, but I still would feel so sad for us." (5 minutes)
The participants receive a third hand-out and read about what really happened to Amitabh's family (5 minutes):
"My father worked as a messenger, more a job for a boy than a man. He delivered letters and carried packages all over the city. Again, he would get lost the way he had when he was looking for work. He lasted about three or four months doing that until he found another job and another job. All small jobs. Then he met an Indian man who owned a laboratory who hired him. Now he's sort of back in the area of biology, where he used to work. My mothers started working at a store. She had to fold clothes, mostly. Then she got a better job watching patients at a senior citizens' home. Eventually, she became the dietician there. Now we live in a house with four bedrooms. I have my own bedroom and my middle brother and I have a computer. I'm in the tenth grade, and my older brother is in college the University of Maryland. He wants to be a surgeon. My father wants to become a U.S. citizen. My mother wants to stay Indian. Still, we are all changing...."
Afterwards, facilitator hands out a fourth and final passage to read aloud (5 minutes):
"Still, we are all changing. When we lived in Bhaunagar, my mother wore a sari. She used to put a bindi, that little dot, on her forehead. Now only when we go to some festival, like every August 15 is Indian Independence Day and there's a big parade, then she will wear her sari and have a bindi. Mostly, she just wears pants and a blouse. I'm more Americanized than my parents. I still speak Gujarati at home, but now there's English mixed in a lot. I'm trying to get out of my accent as much as possible. And now I have what I guess you could call an American mouth. I have braces. I'd never seen braces in India. I hate wearing them!!! Just like American kids."
Listen in to student conversations for evidence that students:
Students can draw or create a written comparison chart of how Amitabh's family changed as a result of their immigration to the US and how they held on to their traditions.