Greenwich students experience real-life lessons in immigration
GREENWICH — With a pillow case of belongings slung over his shoulder, little Max Lanson shuffled up to the first station and handed over his immigration papers.
“You’re quite a risk-taker to travel by yourself when you are 14,” Whitby School teacher Diana Ljepoja told him in the stern voice of an Ellis Island immigration official. She looked the fourth-grader up and down.
Dressed in a blue blazer, red tie and blue slacks tucked into argyle socks, Max was Munio Szpirt for the day. Nearby, more than a dozen fourth-graders dressed in jackets, hats and tunics of many cultures waited for their chance to navigate Whitby’s “Ellis Island.”
Ljepoja read over of Munio’s papers: a native Ukrainian, he was fleeing violence between Poland and Russia. The boy was traveling to America alone.
She made a few marks on his sheet before sending him on to the next station.
As Washington politicians debate border walls and DACA deals, teachers are faced with the sometimes challenging task of educating their students about the hot-button topic of immigration.
At most Greenwich schools, aspects of American immigration history are woven through the curriculum in many grades.
Elementary students, as young as kindergartners, discuss the movement of people and ideas around the globe, including the factors that might draw immigrants to a new country or force them to leave home. Both Whitby and Greenwich Country Day conduct Ellis Island simulations for their students.
Middle school students may learn to distinguish assimilation versus acculturation and the effect of these processes on individual and cultural identities. In upper grades, students discuss waves of immigration to the U.S.
Meanwhile, civics classes at Greenwich High introduce students to Democratic and Republican immigration platforms. Many classes also hold discussions of current events, some related to immigration.
“The history of immigration and resistance to immigration are prominent themes in American history and other classes,” said Kristen Erickson, Greenwich Academy history department chair. “A lot of the issues we study historically are still present, are still being resolved.”
And though immigration priorities and rhetoric have shifted from one presidential administration to the next, educators must teach the topic while keeping their own political views out of the classroom.
“I want to be very mindful about all of the political parties in the room,” said Whitby School sixth grade teacher Lindsay Sudeikis. “That is something I have really checked myself on even more so since 2016.”
Chris Hughes, a Stanwich School seventh grade history and AP Government teacher, said students often try to guess his political stances as he teaches.
“It’s a challenge,” he said. “I give them a variety of perspectives and let them make up their own minds.”
“Fourteen and you’ve never worked?” Alexis Ryan, Whitby school librarian and former fourth grade teacher, asked as she interogated Munio Szpirt.
Calls of “Lice! Lice!” echoed from another part of the room, but Munio stayed focused. He shook his newsboy-capped head and explained that he was a “scholar” with a Hebrew education.
Moving from station to station, he was questioned about his skills, his references, his religion and his motivation for coming to America.
“Have you ever been to jail?” one teacher/immigration official pressed. “Have you ever been married or divorced?”
Munio shook his head furiously. So he progressed.
Next was a health inspection by an efficient doctor (teacher) in scrubs. She listened to Munio’s lungs, tested his eyes and checked his arms for rashes. She made the small boy pick up and hold large yellow kettle weights to measure his strength. Then she sent him along.
At the last station between Munio and citizenship, a final teacher made Munio repeat his story about leaving Ukraine before lobbing her own questions.
“You’re not a communist are you, sir?”
“No,” Munio responded.
“You’re not an anarchist are you?”
She puzzled for a moment before making her decision. Munio was in. But new name was in order, something more American.
“Milton Szpirt,” she pronounced.
Many Greenwich history teachers are seizing two strategies in their lessons to help students comprehend America’s complicated, contentious relationship with immigration: debunking myths and personal connections.
Each year at the beginning of the unit on immigration, Whitby’s sixth grade “individuals and societies” teacher Sudeikis covers the walls of her classroom with 10 pieces of large white chart paper. On each she scrawls a myth about immigration, such as “most immigrants are here illegally,” “undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes and burden the U.S. economy,” and “refugees are not screened before entering the U.S.”
Then Sudeikis and her students use statistics to discuss why is the myth untrue, who benefits from it and how it originated. They keep the myths up around the room as they dive into various historical aspects of immigration such as indentured servitude or Chinese exclusion.
“It’s very powerful and very inspiring how they refer back to it,” she said.
Stanwich’s Hughes attacks some of these same myths. In his courses, they talk about the number of immigrants coming to U.S. and where they are coming from, the number of jobs they create and the rate of crime among immigrants.
“I think adults would benefit from that, too,” he said. “When they see the numbers, they get a better sense of the big picture.”
The best conversations about immigration come as students connect to their own families’ stories, several teachers said.
From 1990 to 2014, the number of foreign-born people living in Fairfield County increased by 90,300, or 89 percent, and reflected a recent uptick in immigration nationwide, according to a 2016 Fairfield County community well-being index. By 2014, a fifth of the county-wide population, or 191,300 individuals, were immigrants.
In total, 43 percent of immigrants living in Fairfield County are naturalized U.S. citizens. Of the county’s 109,300 non-citizen residents, more than half are legal U.S. residents, while an estimated 47,400 are undocumented immigrants.
Greenwich’s strong representation of international families enhances discussions of and activities around immigration, many teachers said.
“Our students’ understanding from their lived experience being an immigrant makes the unit that much more fabulous,” Sudeikis said.
At Greenwich Academy, students covered a world map with color dots representing where their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came from. The result was a mosaic of heritage.
“You go back one or two generations and people are from all over the place,” said Erickson.
After five stations of questioning, poking and prodding — not to mention a name change, Milton Szpirt lugged his pillowcase to a last table where an American flag was hanging.
He put his right hand over his heart to repeat the loyalty oath.
“I hearby declare on faith that I absolutely and fully renounce all allegiance to any foreign states to whom I’ve been subject,” he said. “I also absolutely and entirely renounce all allegiance to any state or country in which I’ve been a citizen. I will, with all my power and might, support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
Then, the boy signed his new name and walked over to the seats where clusters of other new Americans — or rather his classmates -- sat.
Milton Szpirt, Max’s persona for the day, was in fact his great-grandfather. Max’s father told his son the stories that allowed the boy to re-create Milton’s immigrant experience in the school exercise.
Max enthusiastically rattled off facts about Milton’s real journey to the U.S., including how he bribed border patrols with money sewn into his clothes in order to escape Ukraine. He actually passed through Ellis Island, Max said.
“I don’t remember him because he died when I was 3,” said Max. “But I have pictures with him.”
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