Curriculum teaches children about immigration

Minneapolis, MN (August 29, 2012): The Advocates for Human Rights proudly announces the publication of Energy of a Nation: Immigrants in America, 3rd Edition. The curriculum is a distinctive, comprehensive guide to teaching students about immigration in the United States.

The Advocates is releasing the curriculum ahead of the 2012 – 2013 school year and in the wake of the recent hate-motivated shootings at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. Sarah Herder, director of The Advocates’ human rights education program, says, “Students need to acquire the knowledge to understand immigration topics, but also the skills and values to process events such as the shootings in Wisconsin. Through this curriculum, students have the opportunity to understand themselves and the United States as actors in a global, fluid movement of people and to see the human beings that make up these mass flows as individuals – each with a story, a life, and the same human rights.”

The entire curriculum will be available to school and community educators online, free of charge. In addition, staff will respond to teacher requests to demonstrate lessons in K-12 classrooms and provide trainings to teachers and other school staff on immigration and human rights through professional development workshops.

Designed for 8th grade to adult audiences, with a module for upper elementary and middle level students, the curriculum provides important fundamental concepts, including definitions of key terms, informational background summaries, admission categories and processes, and statistics and trends of immigrants over time.


Students learn by exploring their own immigrant history; role-playing a refugee’s journey; deciding under what conditions they might risk being undocumented; playing games to understand the immigration system; rehearsing deliberative dialogue; constructing a gallery of nativism over the centuries; and creating a service learning project for their classroom or school.

The Advocates also recently published its summer 2012 Rights Sites Newsletter on the rights of refugees. The newsletter is available online at www.discoverhumanrights.org.