Teaching the Path Home Video Screening Guide
Goals:
● Screen excerpts of the Path Home’s stories told by formerly undocumented immigrants to foster a discussion about the impact of living undocumented and how their lives change after they received their green cards and could apply for lawful permanent residence and citizenship
● Discuss the importance of oral history and how it sheds light on the positive and negative experiences that individuals go through as they pursue legalization, in this case during an unprecedented moment in American policy history.
● Connect the themes of the Path Home’s oral history stories to current issues in immigration.
Before Screening the Path Home Video:
Introduction (10 min)
● Depending on how much time you have, ask students to journal answers to one or more of the following questions:
○ What do you know about current/past issues in immigration?
○ What do you think about when you hear the word immigrant?
○ How has immigration played a part in your family’s history?
○ Can you share a little about your family’s own immigration or migration story?
● Students share out their answers
Introduce students to the Path Home project as an oral history project (10 min)
● The Path Home is an oral history project about a 1986 immigration law called the Immigration Reform and Control Act that gave 2.7 undocumented people an opportunity to become legal residents and citizens
■ Ask students if they know what oral history is
■ “Oral history is a method of research that seeks to preserve the memories of individuals who shaped or participated in the events of the past.” (National Endowment for the Humanities)
○ The Path Home focuses on the oral histories of formerly undocumented people who were able to apply for legalization after the IRCA law was passed
● Provide students with the context and background of IRCA
■ For your reference, use Path Home educator resources: Overview and Background on IRCA and Immigration Timeline
■ Ask:
○ What does it mean when someone is undocumented?
○ Do you know how many undocumented people live in the U.S. today? (an estimated 11-12 million)
■ Provide Background:
○ The first time that a large number of undocumented people began coming to work in the U.S. was in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, there were an estimated 4 million undocumented people living in the U.S.
○ In 1986, the U.S. government created an immigration law called IRCA to help the people who were undocumented and try to stop future illegal immigratio
○ Go over some key terms:
Papers
Green card
Amnesty
Legalization
“Immigration” – this is what people called the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) and the agents who enforced immigration laws and patrolled the border, now it is called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Screen the Path Home oral histories video (15 min)
Screening guide questions and prompts (25-30 minutes)
1. Why did the Path Home narrators come to the U.S.?
○ What were the narrators’ reasonings/motivations for coming?
○ What were their expectations for once they arrived?
○ Do you see any similarities or differences between what brings people to the U.S. today?
2. What are some of the challenges that the Path Home narrators faced being undocumented?
○ What ways did they cope with this adversity?
3. What were some of the positive or happy memories during that time?
4. How did the lives of the Path Home narrators change after they received amnesty? What ways did their lives remain the same?
○ Did anything surprise you about what happened after they received amnesty? Why?
■ Julian, for example (did not feel a difference)
5. When did the narrators feel they were “fitting in” or belonged in the U.S.? When did they feel they different?
6. According to the narrators and in your own experience, what does it mean to an American? To be a citizen?
○ Is there a difference? How so?
○ Did receiving amnesty help them feel like they belonged in the U.S.?
7. How do oral histories help us understand the how laws and policies impact every-day lives?
8. Recall that there are 11-12 million undocumented people living in the U.S. today. After having seen the Path Home project narrators tell their stories, what connections do you see between the 1980s and today? What does listening to the oral histories teach us that we can apply to our situation today?