How Teachers Are Helping Kids Connect Past and Present

How Teachers Are Helping Kids Connect Past and Present

Shanna Johnson, a middle-school language arts teacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan, had just begun teaching the historical-fiction novel Dragonwings when it took on added relevance during the 2016 presidential election.

The book follows a young Chinese boy at the turn of the 20th century as he migrates to the United States to live with his father. The context of the story and its setting in San Francisco is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major piece of U.S. legislation that restricted immigration and which, in targeting an ethnic group, set the precedent for subsequent restrictive immigration laws. As Johnson pointed out, the book touches on themes of “racism, discrimination, and the anti-immigration attitude of the nation” that uncannily reflect the hostility and divisiveness of the recent election.

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