Chinese migrant workers give insight into their status, lack of power and vulnerability in the new economic order in this video from Wide Angle.

Not all farm families who became migrants during the Great Depression did so because of drought, and not all went to California. Many families lost their land when agricultural prices dropped, and the mechanization of agriculture left many agricultural laborers without work. These members of a South Texas family, photographed by the Farm Security Administration's Dorothea Lange in August 1936, were traveling to the Arkansas Delta to pick cotton.

This site offers suggestions for projects that use the Archives' photographs, letters, drawings, and it highlights economic, social, and political factors that prompted thousands to migrate to Alaska.

This course covers the analysis and design at a molecular scale of materials used in contact with biological systems, including biotechnology and biomedical engineering. Topics include molecular interactions between bio- and synthetic molecules and surfaces; design, synthesis, and processing approaches for materials that control cell functions; and application of state-of-the-art materials science to problems in tissue engineering, drug delivery, vaccines, and cell-guiding surfaces.

Author: Ned Dorff, Teacher, Aldo Leopold Community School, Green Bay Area Public SchoolsUnit Title: Monarch MathGrade Level: 2nd gradeContent Areas: Mathematics, Science, Social StudiesContext: Second grade students engaged in a seven-lesson integrated math, science, and social studies unit of study of monarch butterflies, migration, life cycles, and habitat needs. The unit concluded with students proposing environmental actions to help protect and support the endangered Monarch butterfly.

Their worldly possessions piled on two rundown vehicles, a migrant family paused en route to California in February, 1936. They joined 400,000 people who left western and southwestern agricultural areas for California during the Great Depression, fleeing drought, dust storms, and a dramatic drop in agricultural prices. From 1929 to 1932, wheat prices dropped 50 percent and cotton fell more than two-thirds. The income of many farm families was too low to meet mortgage payments, repay loans, or pay taxes. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their farms. Drought made a bad situation worse, as dust storms tore across the Great Plains, carrying walls of dirt 8,000 feet high and destroying crops, livestock, and a whole way of life.

Examines the history of the United States as a "nation of immigrants" within a broader global context. Considers migration from the mid-19th century to the present through case studies of such places as New York's Lower East Side, South Texas, Florida, and San Francisco's Chinatown. Examines the role of memory, media, and popular culture in shaping ideas about migration. Includes optional field trip to New York City.

Examines alternative economic, political, and social perspectives of property rights and their policy and planning implications. Focuses on institutional and governance structures, power and control mechanisms, distributional consequences of different property rights arrangements, and problems of incomplete contracts as presented in theory and practice. Deals with property-rights issues related to two or more of the following: land, natural resources, infrastructure, or industrial organization.

This collection uses primary sources to explore Puerto Rican migration to the US. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students are introduced to the basic biology behind Pacific salmon migration and the many engineered Columbia River dam structures that aid in their passage through the river's hydroelectric dams. Students apply what they learn about the salmon life cycle as they think of devices and modifications that might be implemented at dams to aid in the natural cycle of fish migration, and as they make (hypothetical) Splash Engineering presentations about their proposed fish mitigation solutions for Birdseye River's dam in Thirsty County.

This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when it’s time to release your classroom monarchs in the fall. If your class isn’t studying monarchs, but the monarch migration is observed in your area, this is a lesson that could be used to find out more.The pursuits addressed are skills and intellectualism. The skills in this case are reading a map and gathering details from a text. Intellect is the practice of using skills to increase the understanding of the world around you, the practice of reflecting on how one uses a skill. According to Gholdy Muhammad in Cultivating Genius, Intellectualism is knowledge of people, places, things and concepts and the ability to put this knowledge into action. As learning takes place, one asks, “What am I becoming smarter about?” The students are using the pursuit of intellectualism to discover how science research works to discover new things about the world around them. 

Details: This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when the children are learning about monarch migration. It is suggested to use this lesson after Monarch Butterflies Lesson 1. Pursuits: Identity is questioning who you are, how others see you and who you want to become. Students will learn about each other and further define their own identities in relation to their culture, their families and their culture. Skills are writing, collaborating with others, and reading informational texts Criticality: Students are deepening their understanding of the intersections of a group's culture with the economic and land-use expectations of the economic powers of the world. In this case the people in the lesson chose to follow their traditions and culture  over these expectations and found an alternative path to support themselves economically. 

This assessment measures students' ability to contextualize and periodize two historical documents by placing them on a timeline. The first document is a 1942 letter from the U.S. secretary of state to the American ambassador in Mexico, and the second is an excerpt from a newspaper published in Brownsville, Texas, in 1931. This HAT draws on students' historical knowledge, but in a way that requires more than the simple recall of information. Students must understand how and why the United States' policies on Mexican migration changed from the Great Depression to World War II and use their understanding to place historical sources in time.

Match a variety of vehicles with their destinations and time periods to learn how much transportation in America has changed over time. See how much you know about the history of transportation with the interactive games in this online collection. You can find information, artifacts and photographs in the collection as well.

Students are introduced to the concept of a dam and its potential benefits, which include water supply, electricity generation, flood control, recreation and irrigation. This lesson begins an ongoing classroom scenario in which student engineering teams working for the Splash Engineering firm design dams for a fictitious client, Thirsty County.