In Jessica Lander’s classroom at Lowell High School, every student is a recent immigrant or refugee. They come from about 30 different countries, including the Republic of Congo and Cambodia. And she’s been exploring innovative teaching strategies to help best reach her diverse students.
Lander teaches history and civics at this large public school in Massachusetts, and she says one of the most important strategies is to find ways to bring out her students’ stories in the classroom. For instance, her students work on one project where they study stories of immigrants and then write about their own immigration stories, and another where they choose a favorite family recipe and together compile a cookbook that they publish to share with the broader community.
