Culturally Relevant Teaching
Culturally Relevant Lesson
At my school, almost 60% of the student body identifies as Latino. During a unit on Latin America, I developed a curriculum that focused on immigration from Latin American countries, both legal and illegal. Students gathered information throughout the unit, and used it in a fishbowl discussion to argue whether the United States needs undocumented (illegal) workers or not. Many of my students shared stories about relatives or friends that did not have documentation. A lot of my non-Latino students also immigrated or have family members who recently immigrated, and some of the documents students analyzed had statistics about immigrants from other countries. I found that students exceeded standards on this specific fishbowl prompt, and I believe that it is because the topic was relevant to them.
 One of the Upfront Magazine articles about illegal immigration that students read to gather information for their fishbowl argument. |  A feature from an Upfront Magazine article about illegal immigrants in Chicago applying for Obama's new citizenship program. Several of the people highlighted were high school students. |
