During the Spring 2020 semester, I taught this wonderful group of ESL learners in the classroom and on Zoom after the pandemic hit. This OER is a collection of resources, teaching ideas, and student artifacts about that experience. I hope it helps you. If you have questions, or just want to brainstorm, feel free to email me at <mike.mutschelknaus@rctc.edu>. 

This phonics program was developed to serve students with diverse educational backgrounds, with a specific focus on refugees. One of the challenges in working with refugees is that, unlike international students, they come to English classes with huge variation in educational experience. Some students may have finished high school or have a college degree, while others may not have ever picked up a pencil before. The goal of this program is to provide a bridge for those students with limited literacy skills so that they are able to move on to a more traditional beginning ESL class. There are a number of assumptions about academic skills made in most English language classrooms, even at a beginning level. As a result, teachers and students alike become frustrated when those expectations are confounded.

The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools supports the good health of children and adolescents by working with parents, teachers, health professionals and school administrators to strengthen successful health programs at school.This web site combines information on key school health issues with guidance on organizational and financing challenges. High-quality school health programs are the most direct, efficient ways to assure that all children get the help they need to lead healthy and productive lives.

In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust storms began. As the "Dust Bowl" photograph shows, crops literally blew away in "black blizzards" as years of poor farming practices and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain. By 1934, 75% of the United States was severely affected by this terrible drought.The one-two punch of economic depression and bad weather put many farmers out of business. In the early 1930s, thousands of Dust Bowl refugees ? mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico ? packed up their families and migrated west, hoping to find work. Entire families migrated together (such as the men shown in "Three generations of Texans now Drought Refugees") in search of a better life. Images such as "Midcontinent ? Family Standing on the Road with Car," "Drought Refugees," and "Untitled, ca. 1935 (Worn-Down Family in Front of Tent)" offer a glimpse into their experience on the road, and show that cars provided many families both transportation and shelter on the road. About 200,000 of the migrants headed for California. The state needed to figure out how to absorb the thousands of destitute people crossing its borders daily. One of their tactics was to document the plight of the refugees. In 1935, photographer Dorothea Lange joined the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the California State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA), a section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. She was assigned the job of using her camera to document the growing number of homeless Dust Bowl refugees migrating to California. She worked with Paul S. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was researching conditions of rural poverty in order to make recommendations on how to improve the workers' conditions. The work by Taylor and Lange played an important role in helping to raise public awareness of the crisis. The reports they made for the government included both data and striking images that revealed the desperate conditions in which the migrants lived and confirmed the need for government intervention. Stark images such as "Home of Oklahoma Drought Refugees" resonated with the public, and portraits of drought refugees like "Ruby from Arkansas" and others shown in this topic humanized the migrants for more fortunate citizens. In March 1936, Lange took what became one of her most famous images, "Migrant Mother." This image of a 32-year-old woman became an icon for the suffering of ordinary people during Great Depression.

This series of four e-courses available through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction will help you plan and implement practices that create welcoming environments, learning engagement and success for immigrant and refugee students in Wisconsin schools. All four interactive modules are designed to support educators, educational staff and leaders at all levels to enhance their understanding by working in the e-course modules individually or in groups. Within each module you links to supplementary resources and templates to support your learning.

1 Day Lesson to introduce students to push and pull factors as to why people migrate. 

Students will go through a series of activities using primary and secondary sources in order to answer the following question. "Is immigration a good thing?"

Meet Shaesta Waiz. She's a young, female pilot who's making a solo trip around the world. Find out what inspires her and what advice she has for middle school students.

This workshop presents selected primary sources from the
Rockefeller Foundation holdings at the Rockefeller Archive
Center. This collection is intended for use in facilitating a
classroom exercise on the Rockefeller Foundation’s
1933-1945 refugee scholar program. The exercise asks
students to consider what foundations can do in times
of global crisis by placing them in the role of Rockefeller
Foundation (RF) program officers during World War II. As
were the real program officers, students will be tasked with
selecting a limited number of scholar applicants for aid in a
life-threatening situation. Working in groups, students will
read documents related to ten scholars who represent
a variety of nationalities, backgrounds, and scholarly
disciplines. Students will then select four candidates, and
must be prepared to articulate the reasoning behind their
decisions. This exercise enables students to imagine and
grapple with the difficult choices RF officials had to make in
one historical example of how foundation philanthropy has
responded to humanitarian crisis. Students are encouraged
to use this exercise as a springboard for further research
into current scholar rescue initiatives, and/or policies
and practices pertaining to refugees today.