By Elizabeth Bernardi

The Somerville Museum hosted a conversation about incorporating immigration issues into city classrooms Saturday as part of the “Immigrant City: Then and Now” exhibit currently on display.

“Exploring the Immigrant Experience in the Classroom” consisted of presentations by five Tufts University students, along with comments by Somerville High School teacher Adda Santos and Director of English Language Programs and Services Sarah Davila.

“In the discussion about immigrant groups in our country, there is this big disconnect between people’s real lives and the dialogue . . . that turns them into faceless immigrants,” said Warren Goldstein-Gelb, introducing the program. Goldstein-Gelb is the director of the Welcome Project, a 20-year-old organization dedicated to easing the transition for new immigrants who reside in Somerville.

Saturday’s conversation originated in Tufts University’s Urban Borderlands course, a yearly anthropology department offering that trains students in research methods. In past years, students have gathered ethnographic research in the field such as conducting interviews with Somerville’s immigrant population.

In preparing for this year’s seminar, said professor Jennifer Burtner, Tufts wanted to
give back, “repatriating” the research to the community from which it came.

“The community owns this research,” said Burtner, a lecturer in the anthropology department, adding that the goal should be “not to have it archived in boxes, but to take it back to the schools.”

With the support of the Welcome Project, the students designed the “Immigrant City” exhibit and organized several of the events in the series. Using the stored research, along with photographs and work contributed by Somerville High School history students, the exhibit came together.

At Saturday’s event, five of the 15 Urban Borderlands students presented their midterm projects to the public. Their job was to develop eighth-grade curriculum materials that would encourage empathy among a young teenage target audience while educating them about larger political, historical, and socioeconomic issues.

Somerville High School history teacher Adda Santos’s classroom is a model for just such work. Originally born in Brazil, Santos has throughout her career taught in bilingual and mainstream programs. Now she teaches students who are working toward English proficiency, and last year in her class of nine students, each had a different country of origin.

“We felt a connection,” she said of her relationship with the students, “because we are all
immigrants.”

To engage the students in their own American history, she assigned them to collect interviews – in both their native languages and in English – from family members or neighbors with stories of immigration. The final product was put on display for Somerville High School along with a multicultural reception that gave students a chance to showcase native cuisine. Now her students’ work is part of the “Immigrant City” exhibit.

Santos briefly introduced her students’ work before passing the stage to the Tufts students. Over the next hour, each of the five students – some children of immigrants themselves – presented a five-day curriculum on the “Immigrant Experience.” Student Diana Cornwall, herself the daughter of Panamanian immigrants, said that the students hoped to “address the problem of dehumanizing the ‘immigrant’ in the United States. Our goal is to listen to the people, not just the issues.”

The five students offered background information, support materials, and 30 minutes of activity plans for each class meeting. The curriculum covered the process of immigrating and acclimating to a new land. The lesson called “Homeland and the Journey,” for instance, addresses the factors immigrants consider before they come to the country, while “Culture and Identity” examines complicated dilemma of keeping one’s own traditions versus embracing new ones.

To ensure they were on the right track, the students consulted with teachers in the school district, particularly at the Kennedy School.

“One of the best resources we could get was the teachers who deal with this everyday,” said student Jarren Kanze. “We didn’t expect them to be as responsive as they were. But they definitely want to see our finished project.”

The immediate national political and social relevance of this curriculum is evident, said Burtner, who cited a recent weeklong series on National Public Radio as one example of how the
public eye is trained on immigration issues.

On a local level, though, the relevance is even more obvious. After the students spoke, Sarah Davila took the podium.

Davila was impressed, she said, by the students’ work. She had just one piece of constructive criticism for their weeklong curriculum.

“I think it may take more than five days to have true understanding of this material,” she offered with a smile, indicating the broad scope of the students’ undertaking. Then she launched into a presentation that related their work to the district itself, placing Somerville’s students in the national context.

“Nationally,” she said, “one out of every five children is a child of immigrants.”

In Somerville, there are 51 home languages represented in the schools and fifty percent of students speak a language other than English at home. Language struggles alone can set students back academically and socially, said the experts on Saturday.

And then there are the stresses of immigrating. Among immigrant children nationally, 35 percent have been separated from their fathers for more than five years during the process of moving. Teachers in school districts like Somerville’s need to be especially aware of the unique issues these children face.

On the bright side, said Davila, children in immigrant families tend to have particularly strong family units, with many two-parent households, and tight-knit extended families that offer plenty of support and encourage hard work.

There is one exhibit-related event remaining at the Somerville Museum: “Just Off the Boat,” which will be held at the museum at 6 p.m. on Nov. 29. The evening’s activity is a panel of children (youth and adults) of non-English speaking immigrant parents.

But Welcome Project Director Warren Goldstein-Gelb said that the goal of “Immigrant City” is not to end when the display comes down in late December.

“What happens to the exhibit when it ends?” asked Goldstein-Gelb of the audience. “Is there some way we can continue the life of the stories we’ve gathered?”

Luckily, the Tufts students’ syllabus has one plan to make that happen. Saturday’s presentations determined the students’ midterm grades, but their final project will be to polish their presentations, then design a CD with the full set of curriculum materials, including scanned images from the exhibit. That CD will be available for educators through the Welcome Project.

The day’s discussion ended with a dialogue between the students, educators and the audience. When the audience was asked if they would like to see similar programs in the future, one woman volunteered to respond.

“I teach immigrant students, ages 18-24,” she said, “and I think it would benefit them greatly to know that you, students about their age, are working on this.”