Estamos Aqui: We Are Here

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Suggested Teaching Instructions

 

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Estamos Aquí: Poems by Migrant Farmworkers, by Bob Holman, Sylvia Kelly, Janine Pommy Vega greatly aids this lesson, but is not a necessity

 

Overview: This lesson is adapted from Annenberg Learner’s The Expanding Canon video series (Program 1, Part I), where a teacher uses a reader-response approach to explore the poetry of Pat Mora. In this lesson, students will explore the poetry of migrant farm workers from migrant camps in upstate New York. The poems were written by migrant farm workers during a summer workshop sponsored by the GENESEO Migrant Center and led by renowned Beat poet Janine Pommy Vega in 2006. The collection of poems titled Estamos Aqui, appear in both English and Spanish. Students will then be asked to create poems of their own by responding to an image they choose from Consider the Source to focus on their own writing.

 

Goal: Students learn to value their own personal experiences with the past and how this informs their learning by using the reader response framework to “transact” and interpret texts they are reading. 

 

Objectives: At the end of this activity, students will:

Have learned about the reader response model for reading texts.

Learn about the migrant farm worker experiences in New York State over time.

Understand the diversity of migrant farm work experiences.

Gain a deeper understanding of different cultures.

Understand the importance of reader context in reading texts.

Create their own works of poetry.

 

Investigative (Compelling) Questions: What do you really know about the past? Or, “What do you really know about a person?” (*teacher can select one or the other).

 

Time Required: 2-3 class periods (30-45 minutes each)

 

Recommended Grade Range: upper Middle to High School

 

Subject: Can be connected to curriculum areas of Art, ELA, Library, Social Studies.

 

Standards: The specific NYS and Next Gen standards that this lesson is designed to meet.

New York State Grades 9-12 Social Studies Framework

 

Credits: Heidi Ziemer

 

PREPARATION 

 

Materials Used: 

Depending on available resources, students can work on computers or use paper to record their work.

 

Resources Used: 

Estamos Aquí: Poems by Migrant Farmworkers, by Bob Holman, Sylvia Kelly, Janine Pommy Vega

ISBN-13: 9780979097232

Publisher: YBK Publishers

Publication date: 08/15/2007

Bilingual

Pages: 116

(Books can be purchased online from several sources if not available in local libraries)

 

Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo

• Geneseo Migrant Center Photos from Digital Commons: (https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/migrant_center/

• Research article: How Licensing Restrictions Affect Immigrant Farmworkers

https://www.geneseo.edu/news/how-licensing-restrictions-affect-immigrant-farmworkers

 

Library of Congress images and texts

• OWI/FSA images of migrant family from Virginia working in Albion and Batavia, NY (1942): https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=partof:lot+63

• Patricia Beyer and Douglas Moser interview conducted by Hannah Harvester, 2013-04-03, part of the Dairy Farm Workers in New York's North Country: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2012 to 2013 (27) Pages 17-20 of the interview refer to the Hispanic workers.

 

Consider the Source, New York

• Article "Haitian Farmworkers," by Kay Embrey, Cornell Migrant Program, 1983

• Minimum Wage Order for Farm Workers, New York State Department of Labor, English and Spanish, 1984

• Mexican Workers for United States Agriculture," 1953

• Chart Showing Interstate Agricultural Workers: Crops and Worker Ethnicity, 1971

• New York State Senate and Assembly Report, Separate & Unequal: New York's Farmworkers, 1995

• Warwick Township Celery Grower Leading Producer in East; Here's How He Does It

 

Other resources that may be used, depending on time and grade level:

• Immigrant Farm Workers, the Hidden Part of New York's Local Food Movement 

https://www.wnyc.org/story/252235-upstate-new-york-immigrant-farmworkers-are-hidden-part-locally-grown-food-movement/

 

• A Census of Migrants in Eight Western New York Counties in 1968 (NYS Center for Migrant Studies)

 

• Agricultural Exceptionalism: A History of Discrimination against Farmworkers in Labor Laws Results in Poverty for Farmworkers

https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/blog-post/agricultural-exceptionalism-a-history-of-discrimination-against-farmworkers-in-labor-laws-results-in-poverty-for-farmworkers/

 

• The Rise of Migrant Militancy (By Immanuel Ness found in Dollars & Sense online at: https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0906ness.html

 

• US Visa Law & Policy (US State Department): https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0.html

 

• Rural Migrant Health from the Rural Health Information Hub

https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/migrant-health

 

Procedure: 

• Connect: 

  • Students are introduced to the book, Estamos Aqui, by the teacher, with basic information about the book and how it came to be published (including providing images from the Migrant Center collection at the Milne Library. Students are next asked to read silently from the text for 10-15 minutes. Students can read any of the poems they want to and in any order. 

  • From the selected poems, students are asked to write down 2-3 lines from one poem they connected with. The students should also describe and/or write down why they chose these lines.

 

• Wonder: 

  • At this point, the teacher can either pair or group students who select the same poems to work in small groups – or mix the groups with different poems selected – or continue to have students work independently.

  • Students are asked to discuss (in groups or whole class) what they think the poems literally mean, what they interpret it to mean, and how it relates to their own lives.

• Investigate: 

  • Students are then provided with several research resources that provides additional information to students about the history and lives of migrant farm workers in New York State, including resources from the Library of Congress, Consider the Source, and The Milne Library.

  • Students explore the resources (images and texts) and are asked to record 5 pieces of information from their research (for example, an image or line of text they reacted to) and when they are done, they are asked to select one image or line of text from their research to focus on.

• Construct: 

  •  Students use the one image or line of text from their research for their writing — and asked to respond to the poem they selected from Estamos Aqui, by creating poems of their own.

• Express: 

  • Students share their poems and have them “published” as a class book.

 

Reflect: 

Students return to the compelling question(s), “What do you really know about the past?” and “What do you really know about a person?” They are asked to think about:

Why did/do people become migrant workers?

How can we improve the lives of migrant workers in New York?

How is the issue of migrant workers important today in New York?

Has migrant farmwork changed over the years?

What do you know now about migrant farm workers that you did not know before?

 

Extensions:

• This lesson can be used in conjunction with Social Studies units on the Great Depression, California migrant farm workers and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Immigration, Human Rights, Social Justice and Economics.

• This lesson can be used in conjunction with ELA units on Multi-cultural literature, Poetry, individual titles such as Esperanza Rising (Pam Muñoz Rya), A Seventh Man (John Berger), Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Nomadland (Jessica Bruder), and many others found here: https://www.colorincolorado.org/booklist/migrant-farmworker-families-books-kids

• This lesson can be used in conjunction with Science units on Climate, Health, Pesticides in Agriculture.

 

Evaluation: 

Teachers can assess how students interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension. 

Students complete the assignments outlined in the steps provided.