Talking and Teaching about TPS

On January 8, 2018,  U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen announced a decision to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for El Salvador, a decision that will directly impact over 200,000 Salvadorans living in the United States with TPS and their 190,000 children who are U.S. citizens. According to the announcement, the decision will go into effect on September 9, 2019 “to allow for an orderly transition before the designation terminates.”

Since the fall of 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to end or revise TPS for Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and now El Salvador.

The decisions have raised several important legal, moral, and ethics questions about immigration and the U.S. role in providing protection for vulnerable migrants. While some argue that the TPS designation was always understood as temporary, hundreds of thousands of migrants who were offered protection built lives in the U.S., many of whom started families and raised children who are U.S. citizens.

Discussing current events and controversial issues is recognized as a proven practice in civic education by the Civic Mission of Schools. Below are a collection of resources for talking and teaching about TPS.

Before discussing TPS:

• Recognize that there could be strong opinions and strong emotion in the classroom and plan your lesson accordingly.
• Consider how you will contract for a civil discussion.
• Consider what you know about your student’s histories and experiences that will impact how they respond to the material. What might you do to take your student’s histories and experiences into account?
• Recognize your own biases about the decision to end TPS,  about your students, and, even, about your own colleagues. What might you do to make sure they do not interfere with your educational goals.