Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience

Description

As our neighborhoods grow more diverse, a variety of cultures, values and traditions become an important part of our classrooms and schools. In Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience, twenty-six personal narratives celebrate the experiences of young people making new homes in unfamiliar communities-finding common ground as they make new friends, learn different languages, and share their unique cultural identities. Kids Like Me personalizes the important themes of cultures and customs, immigration and citizenship, and learning to appreciate differences.While written to help youth understand their classmates and friends, Kids Like Me also includes discussion questions, self-directed activities and research ideas for teachers and families that can be used in classrooms, clubs and community settings. Richly illustrated with photos and maps of each home country, the text presents countless opportunities to explore and understand new cultures and new friends.Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience provides a valuable resource for educators, volunteers, staff of youth organizations and parents of young people attending schools with the kids whose profiles are so sensitively shared. Globalization's young faces and voices come alive in Kids Like Me.-Frances Hesselbein, former National Executive Director of the Girl Scouts of the USA and Chairman of Leader to Leader Institute Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience is at once a delightful, timely, and very serious contribution to intercultural relations by two of the field's most experienced practitioners. Judee Blohm and Terri Lapinsky offer a creative, compassionate, informative, and ultimately very practical treatment of a topic that is already huge in its implications and only continues to grow in significance. Teachers, students, and interculturalists alike will benefit from this fine book.-David J. Bachner, Ph.D., Scholar-in-Residence and Director, Intercultural Management Institute, School of International Service, American University This book is about understanding from the heart, understanding how being 'the other' feels, and helping people who have never experienced that 'otherness' to feel what being different feels like - to feel the pain of being ostracized or being made to feel different, as well as the gratitude and wonderment of coming to a new place and being welcomed, accepted, and loved. Your book gives teachers meaningful and accessible ways to help them explore these complex themes with their students, to help them recognize the pain inflicted by racism as well as recognize opportunities for kindness, and valuing diversity.-Elizabeth Macdonald, Director of the Writing Enhancement Program, Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management.The key to the success of the book is the guidance it offers us about encountering real people, and working our way through the inevitable stereotypes and myths that surround difference.-Dr George F. Simons, www.diversophy.comhttp://www.diversophy.com/gsi/reviews/Kids Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience offers the reader rich and easy access to immigrant youths' encounters with the United States. Educators and the general public can gain enormous insights from reading the book and from the straightforward questions at the end of each essay. Classroom teachers can benefit from the broad range of activities that follow the 26 narratives. I strongly recommend this book for all-especially those working directly with youth in our schools and other organizations.-Barbara Kappler, Ph.D, Assistant Director-International Student & Scholar Services, University of MinnesotaInternational/cross-cultural educators Judith M. Blohm and Terri Lapinsky have written a very timely, interesting and helpful 'two-books-in-one' resource for middle and high school students and teachers, as well as parents and mentors, living in any part of the United States...Kids Like Me is easily and inexpensively available.-Angene H. Wilson, Global Teachnet Newsletter, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Association Kids Like Me is an NEA recommended resource for culturally-responsive teaching featured in the November issue of NEA Today online.ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionNotes to Teachers, Parents, and Other MentorsPart 1: Their Stories1 Annie, 10- Moldova2 Raoul, 18- India3 Eunji, 13- South Korea4 Kim, 14- The Netherlands5 Natalia, 14- Brazil6 Manuel, 16- Peru7 Hewan, 16- Ethiopia8 Jorge, 18- El Salvador9 Na'ama, 16- Israel10 Naomi, 18- Jamaica11 Jennie, 16- China12 Ramon, 18- Mexico13 Noemy, 16- Mexico14 Adib, 13- Iraq15 Pushpanjali, 18- Nepal16 Liban, 15- Somalia17 Romina, 18- Uzbekistan18 Inayet, 21- Afghanistan19 Anne Rose, 19- Haiti/French Guyana20 Sanuse, 13- Sierra Leone21 Pang Houa, 21- Hmong22 Tim, mid-20s- Kosovo23 Roya, 30s- Iran24 Jina, mid-20s- China25 Jacque, late-20s- Mexico26 Jeff, mid-20s- PhilippinesPart 2: Activities and ResourcesCultures and CustomsImmigration and CitizenshipStereotypes, Tolerance, and DiversityLinking the Classroom to the CommunityResourcesReferences