Immigrant Stories: Books for Educators

Product Description: Americans by Heart examines the plight of undocumented Latino students as they navigate the educational and legal tightrope presented by their immigration status. Many of these students are accepted to attend some of our best colleges and universities but cannot afford the tuition to do so because they are not eligible for financial aid or employment. For the few that defy the odds and manage to graduate, their status continues to present insurmountable barriers to employment.

Product Description: Fleeing from political violence in Venezuela, Amina and her family have settled in the United States. Sarah, adopted, is desperate to know her Korean birth parents. Adrian's friends have some spooky — and hilarious — misconceptions about his Romanian origins. Whether their transition is from Mexico to the United States or from Palestine to New Mexico, the characters in this anthology have all ventured far and have faced countless challenges.

Product Description: New York Times bestselling author Steven V. Roberts follows the stories of thirteen immigrant families in From Every End of This Earth, a poignant and eye-opening look at immigration in America today. He captures the voices of those living the promise of a new land — and the difficulties of starting over among strangers whose suspicions increasingly outweigh their open-armed acceptance. As the political debate rages on, Roberts sheds light on the enormous contributions immigrants continue to make to the fabric and future of America.

Emily Francis' memoir tells her story through a series of letters she writes to eight immigrant students in whom she sees pieces of herself. She shares memories from her childhood in Guatemala, where she worked in her mother’s fruit-selling business and helped raise her four younger siblings, through her journey into the United States as an undocumented, unaccompanied minor, and to her experience fulfilling her dream of becoming an award-winning educator of immigrant students and English learners.

Product Description: One child in five in America is the child of immigrants, and their numbers increase each year. Very few will return to the country they barely remember. Who are they, and what America do they know? Based on an extraordinary interdisciplinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years, this book provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, and frustrations of these youngest immigrants.

Product Description: As the United States reexamines its borders and immigration policies, the debate over educating immigrant students in our public schools has divided Americans. What can teachers and immigrant students expect from each other? Laurie Olsen, co-director of Californians Together, describes what it looks and feels like to go to school and to teach in a culturally diverse environment. With a new introduction by Olsen, this timely reissue probes the challenges facing teachers and immigrant students in our public schools.

Product Description: This powerful book tells the story of one teacher's odyssey to understand the inner world of immigrant children, and to create a learning environment that is responsive to these students' feelings and their needs. Featuring the voices and artwork of many immigrant children, this text portrays the immigrant experience of uprooting, culture shock, and adjustment to a new world, and then describes cultural, academic, and psychological interventions that facilitate learning as immigrant students make the transition to a new language and culture.

In 2008, journalist Brooke Hauser wrote an article for The New York Times about the senior prom at a Brooklyn high school serving newcomer immigrant students. Hauser then decided to spend a year entrenched with teachers and students at the school, following students from their very first traumatic days of school all the way to their graduation ceremony.

Product Description: Third Culture Kids are children of expatriates, missionaries, military personnel and others who live and work abroad. With a significant part of their developmental years spent outside of their passport country, TCKs create their own, unique "third" cultures. Through interviews and personal writings, this new, expanded edition explores the challenges and benefits that TCKs encounter, and also widens the net to discuss the experiences of cross-cultural kids who are immigrants, international adoptees or the children of biracial or bicultural parents.

Product Description: In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what national identity means in an age of globalization, trans-nationalism, and dual citizenship. She reveals the little-known legislative history of bilingual education, its dizzying range of meanings in different schools, districts, and states, and the difficulty in proving or disproving whether it works — or defining it as a legal right.

Product Description: Understanding Your International Students surveys the school cultures of the many countries whose students top the international student enrollment lists in the U.S. educational institutions. For each country profiled, the following information is provided: a statistical profile; information related to school calendars, curricula, exams, grades, homework, and classroom set-up; and a section on educational policy, classroom behaviors and norms, and cultural considerations in school settings.

Product Description: The author has focused her research on 18 countries that contribute a majority of refugees and immigrants to the United States. Each country profile features statistics about the country, a historical synopsis, an overview of the county's official education policy, cultural perspectives, and a problem-solution section containing classroom strategies. The linguistic systems of the languages featured are also included for teacher reference.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he came here legally with his family. Together they left Santo Domingo behind, but when their visas lapsed, Dan-el's courageous mother was determined to make a better life for her bright sons. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city's homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el's only refuge was the meager library.

Product Description: A fusion of voices and deeply personal experiences from every corner of the globe, Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global presents a cultural mosaic of today's citizens of the world. Twenty stirring memoirs of childhoods spent packing, written by both world-famous and first-time authors, make the story of growing up displaced feel universal. Contributors include best-selling fiction and non-fiction authors Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Pat Conroy, Pico Iyer and Ariel Dorfman.

"Perez, a developmental psychologist and professor in Southern California, plumbs the stories of students living with the constant threat of deportation for an answer to the question, 'What does it mean to be an American?' Raised in this country by parents who gained access illegally, the 16 high school, college and post-graduate students profiled here (standing in for 65,000 nationwide) have each embraced our language, culture and collective dream, but are denied pathways to success.