Action Plans

The Goal of Action Plans: To create your desired impact in your communities/classroom utilizing the Re-Imganining Migration framework, resources, and support. Your action plans can be curriculum-based: an in-class activity, lesson, or unit. They can be community-based: a whole school activity, decoration, event, book read, presentation, club, reflection, home outreach/inclusion, or a curriculum action plan done in every classroom. They could also be a Teacher Learning plan where you share your learnings/ resources with fellow teachers/committees/departments or even a parent or community event.

What is your driving idea or question? What are you curious about?  Is there anything you have noticed in your classrooms/schools that you want to amplify? Anything you want to change?

What will you do? Based on what interests you and what you have noticed. What type of action are you interested in taking that could help support your immigrant-origin students and understanding of migration for all learners? Are you interested in a curriculum, community, or teacher learning action?

For whom? What groups, students, and community members are you hoping to reach/serve?

To change what and why? What challenges have you identified?  And why are you developing an action plan to change them?

• If you notice something powerful in your community that you are hoping to amplify, what you are seeking to “change” would then be the “scale” of that behavior.

Where will you start? Will you start with research on the challenge you are facing? Will you start with one lesson or activity? How will you introduce your Action Plant to your community?

What is the connection to the framework? Reflecting on the Re-Imagining Migration Framework, what question does your action project address?

• Curriculum: Student Poetry Inspired by Poems from Angel Island
  • Ms. Lander’s poetry activity is an example of a curriculum-based action project. First, her class studies the stories of immigrants from over a hundred years ago. They read Emma Lazarus’s poem and discussed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. Together, they read the poems of immigrants detained at Angel Island. Then, her students share slices of their journeys, their arrivals, and their first days in school through their own poetry.

• Community: Sandy Mendoza’s International Cafe
  • Ms. Mendoza started an International Cafe group where she meets students who have been in the US for one year or less. They talk about procedures in school, their thoughts, experiences in their journey, and many other topics. Ms. Mendoza created a community activity where her International Cafe students greet the whole student body in the languages of their choice. This has become a school ritual in which her students are empowered leaders and greeters of joy welcoming their peers.

• Teacher Learning: NYC Public Schools Division of Multilingual Learners
  • Mr. Troge and the Multilingual Learners Division of Teaching and Learning first developed a curriculum based on the Re-Imagining Migrations Framework for high school and have since developed a 3rd/4th-grade curriculum. In this 12-lesson unit, Mr. Troge’s curriculum empowers students to explore and uplift their migration story, creates an introduction component for new students throughout the year, and is grounded in culturally reflective resources and thinking routines.