On September 4, 1907, anti-immigrant backlash erupted into riots in the city of Bellingham, Washington. The resultant violence drove more than 100 South Asian immigrants from the city and, ultimately, the United States. The Sikh Coalition has created a lesson plan and teacher talking points to help you explore this historical event with your students.

In the spring of 2018, James Madison Memorial High School in Madison embarked on an all school read of Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from a Minneapolis High Schools. Over 2,000 students read immigration stories written by authors of their own age, and were introduced to the authentic and diverse stories of Minneapolis immigrants from thirteen countries. The book inspired a more empathetic understanding of immigrants, and showcased the need for a similar publication featuring student immigrants from Wisconsin. As Green Card Voices planned the production of a book featuring stories from a Madison high school, they were contacted by the College Possible Milwaukee team, who hoped to collaborate and highlight the stories of immigrant students at Milwaukee high schools. Through this connection, the idea of a book featuring student immigrants from both cities was developed.

This is an image of the retractable banners that were created that feature the stories of the Wisconsin immigrant students who shared their stories in the book Green Card Youth Voices - Madison and Milwaukee.

This resource is a template that was used at the September 18, 20219, Using Storytelling as a Tool to Educate, Empower, and Build Empathy event hosted at Madison Technical College,  to think about next steps for supporting immigrant and migrant students. 

This simulation game has students determine if individuals are eligible for legal U.S residence. In the game, travelers will enter Immigration Bay in boats and the student will have to process them and determine if they meet eligibility requirements or not.

Instructor Notes: Teachers can assign this content to their students in iCivics account and then Clicking the Assign button on this activity. Teachers will then have the option to add a Class into iCivics OR Sync a roster from Google Classroom. This will allow teachers to see student's responses. There are also Downloadable Resources available to support this learning activity.

In this lesson, students will explore the history and experiences of Sikhs in the UnitedStates. Through media and historical archives, students will study how the communityhas been impacted by anti-Sikh hate incidents from the early 1900s to the present day.More importantly, however, students will analyze how the Sikh community responded tothese incidents.