The resource is intended to raise student awareness of the immigrant / refugee experience. It does this by having students investigate five stories that illustrate the experience of selected immigrants. Personalizing issues such as the current mass migration is effective in getting student attention. The use of questions that focus on how the student "feel" about the experience of the people involved is also effective. This approach, however, fails to address the complexity of the issue. Students can only become aware of the competing perspectives on the issue if they understand the difference between immigrants and refugees; explore the reasons why people are arriving at the U.S. border and the merits of the policies adopted by the U.S government.

The resource, therefore, may be effective in engaging student interest but should be followed by other lessons that identify the competing interests and the reasons attached to those perspectives. 

The resource has students examine the experience of migrants arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum. In order to satisfy the multi-dimensional requirements demanded of resources, students would need to explore the reasons why they were at the border. This is only dealt with peripherally. Teachers, therefore, should follow this lesson with one that looks at the environmental, economic and social factors that are causing this vast movement of peoples in search of a better life.

The limited goal of the resource - to consider what it is like to be an immigrant separated from your family - does not explore the complexity of the issue of mass migration. To do so, the teacher needs to have students consider why peoples are migrating in the numbers we are witnessing and the reaction of the people and governments in those countries that are the destination of this mass movement. 

By engaging student interest in the topic, this resource may serve to initiate further investigation of the larger questions - why are people migrating and why are other countries responding to this migration in the manner they are.

The resource includes reference to "how people are helping" by raising awareness in the media and by supporting direct legal services for immigrants. Students are invited to write their own poem that might imaginatively convey some of the experiences of the families separated at the border, or convey students' own response to the situation. These poems may serve to alert others about the issue.

The lesson offers the opportunity to discuss a variety of questions that are value laden.

• What obligations do we have individually and collectively to assist others whose well being is threatened?                         
• Where does the immigration/refugee debate fit within the broader debate over human rights?                                       
• Is support for immigrant/refuges and act of charity or justice?

Creating empathy and respect for other humans is at the core of this resource. Students are expected to build empathy and respect for refugees and immigrants by learning about the experience of some of the families separated at the southern border of the U.S. in 2018.

Many communities in Canada have responded to crisis elsewhere by assisting in efforts to relocate refugees. Teachers can bring a local focus to the topic of this resource by having students examine what is being done in their community to assist in the re-settlement of refugees.

The current movement of peoples has considerable precedents that students and teachers may explore. These include Jewish refugees prior to and during WW2, Europeans displaced by that war, Hungarian refugees from the 1956 uprising, and Irish who emigrated to Canada during the potato famine. 

The lesson also allows for the possibility of teacher/student exploration about what any future Canadian immigration policy might look like.

The lesson is designed to engage student emotions. The stories of the five families separated at the U.S. southern border may be expected to raise the students sense of injustice and encourage a feeling of empathy for the plight of refugees but it does not investigate the complexity of the situation. This would require that students understand the push-pull factors behind this mass movement of peoples and why some people in the host countries react as they do to the arrival of these people at their border. In defense of this approach, it may be argued that once we have engaged the heart, we can then engage the mind.

The immigration refugees issue may engage a number of subject areas. History requires that we look at the push-pull factors that have caused mass migrations in the past. An examination of the resource base of the immigrants country of origin is the stuff of geography, while an investigation of factors such as employment rates and GST in these same countries is the realm of economics. Civics ask that we look at our responsibility as global citizens in considering how we might respond to people on the move; a response that may also be shaped by ethical and religious considerations.

While the above issues are the domain of the Humanities, the fact that many of these refugees are environmental refugees means that students might explore topics normally associated with Environmental Science. Finally, the lessons use of a poem to engage student's interests and the use of student poems to express their reactions to the issue leads the students and teachers into the realm of English Language Arts.

The use of family stories to explore the issue of families separated by migration may be described as inductive learning. Students start with the raw material of these stories in an inquiry exercise aimed at raising their awareness of and understanding of the migrant experience. Students are asked to discuss with others their reaction to each story and questions are provided to guide that discussion. At the conclusion of the exercise, teachers are provided with a set of questions they may use to have students examine the common elements in the family stories. 

The lesson plan requires students to participate in small group discussion of the individual immigrant experience to large group discussion of the common denominators in the migrant study; to respond to a poem that is a powerful telling of the experience of those seeking asylum; to write and share a poem that expresses their reaction to what they have learned and felt after hearing the migrant's stories.

Reading the stories of the migrant experience allows students to "experience" at a visceral level the struggles of those seeking asylum. It may be expected to engage the student in a way that a more detached report cannot achieve. Once engaged, however, teachers and students should then explore the issue in further depth in order to appreciate the complexity of the issue. 

Small group discussion of the experiences of the migrant families and the sharing of their reactions with the larger class allows students to learn from the insights and perspectives of their classmates. 

Teacher monitoring of discussions among students and the resulting presentations allows for a considerable measure of formative evaluation that indicate the level of student understanding of and emotional response to the migrant experience. The poems that students create as a concluding exercise will also offer insights into the students mindfulness.

The sharing among students of their response to the stories they are hearing will help broaden their understanding of the migrant's struggles and with teacher encouragement something of the competing perspectives on the position taken by the people in the "host" country.

The strength of the lesson plan is the use of case studies - the migrant family stories - to engage the student. This is a good place to start but should be regarded as just that - a start to a deeper examination of the larger issue of the mass movement of peoples that we are witnessing today.

The lesson plan is an exercise in guided inquiry. The teacher supplies the data and some questions to guide the student exploration of that data. Students work in small groups to mine that data and report their findings to the class.