Debates over U.S. immigration policy, and the xenophobia that often accompanies such debates, are once again center stage. Policy debates are often dominated by statistics and stereotypes, both of which can dehumanize those under examination. This lesson brings the personal stories of migrants back into the debate. As a springboard for discussion, it uses clips from Voices of the Sea, a film about a Cuban family divided on whether or not to emigrate. After researching the history or current situation in a nation from which people have emigrated to the U.S. in large numbers, students will write an imagined dialogue between family members considering whether to make the journey. In the process, they'll consider what motivates people to leave their homes or stay.

After he retired from his career in opera, Jae-chang Kim relocated to the Indian city of Pune where he started the Banana Children's Choir for children living in the city's slums. Affectionately nicknamed Angry Bird by his students, Jae-chang Kim is not attempting to train his youth choir members to work as professional musicians; instead he wants to introduce them to the world beyond Pune through music and performance. But the children's parents, who are struggling in the economic margins, wonder if the time spent at choir practice could be better used studying and helping to earn money for the family.

The film Singing with Angry Bird follows Jae-chang Kim for a year as he attempts to involve the parents in the choir by inviting them to rehearse for and perform in a joint concert with their kids. As the project intersects with the choir families' daily challenges, Angry Bird and the singers must collaborate to find new strategies to make space for the singing they love while respecting the demanding economic and cultural responsibilities of Pune's community.

Through the following lesson for Singing with Angry Bird, students will understand the significance of cultural competence in cultural exchange projects like the Banana Children's Choir and assess its benefits and limitations. They will also explore the related concept of cultural humility and consider how they would integrate these approaches into theoretical cultural exchange projects of their own.

Students are typically exposed to historical or current events by reading expository or narrative texts written by journalists, historians or textbook authors. This lesson adds poetry, and the new dimensions of image and emotion that poetry evokes, to that list.

After reading a standard description of Mexico's National Pyrotechnic Festival and viewing clips from Brimstone & Glory, a documentary/visual poem about the event, students will write poems to describe the festival's main attractions. Because the event takes place in Mexico, this is an excellent lesson for multilingual classes or classes with Spanish speakers who are learning English.

Bill Nye is a man on a mission: to grow appreciation and excitement for scientific thinking across the world. The former star of the popular kids show Bill Nye the Science Guy is now advocating for the importance of science, research and discovery in public life. With intimate and exclusive access-as well as plenty of wonder and whimsy-this behind-the-scenes portrait of Nye follows him as he takes off his Science Guy lab coat and takes on those who deny climate change, evolution and a science-based world view. Directed by David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, the film features Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ann Druyan and many others.

As CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye leads the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to educating about space exploration. In this lesson, students will explore one of the promising innovations of space exploration, solar sail technology. Students will learn how solar sailing works, who is involved, how the technology has been tested and where it is headed in the future.

Bardach, Ann Louise. Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington. Scribner, 2014.

Since 1959, Fidel Castro has been the supreme leader of Cuba, deftly checkmating his foes, both from within and abroad; confronting eleven American presidents; and outfoxing dozens of assassination attempts, vanquished only by collapsing health. As night descends on Castro's extraordinary fifty-year reign, Miami, Havana, and Washington are abuzz with anxious questions: What led to the lightning-bolt purge of key Cuban officials in March 2009? Who will be Raúl's heir? Will the U.S. embargo end? Bardach offers profound and surprising answers to these questions as she meticulously chronicles Castro's protracted farewell and assesses his transformative impact on the world stage and the complex legacy that will long outlive him.

Eire, Carlos M.N. Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. Free Press, 2003.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth—with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas—becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by becoming a modern American man—even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.

Gott, Richard. Cuba: A New History. Yale University Press, 2004.

In this concise and up-to-date book, British journalist Richard Gott casts a fresh eye on the history of the Caribbean island from its pre-Columbian origins to the present day. He provides a European perspective on a country that is perhaps too frequently seen solely from the American point of view. The author emphasizes such little-known aspects of Cuba’s history as its tradition of racism and violence, its black rebellions, the survival of its Indian peoples, and the lasting influence of Spain. The book also offers an original look at aspects of the Revolution, including Castro’s relationship with the Soviet Union, military exploits in Africa, and his attempts to promote revolution in Latin America and among American blacks.

Machado, Eduardo. Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home. London: Penguin, 2009.

Born into a well-to-do family in Cuba in 1953, Eduardo Machado saw firsthand the effects of the rising Castro regime. When he and his brother were sent to the United States on one of the Peter Pan flights of 1961, they did not know if they would ever see their parents or their home again. From his experience living in exile in Los Angeles to becoming an actor, director, playwright and professor in New York, Machado explores what it means to say good-bye to the only home one’s ever known, and what it means to be a Latino in America today.

Murphy, Dervla. The Island that Dared. Eland, 2010.

Take a three-generation family holiday in Cuba in the company of Dervla Murphy, her daughter and three young granddaughters and you have a Swallows-and-Amazons-like adventure in the Caribbean as they trek into the hills and along the coast as a family, camping out on empty beaches beneath the stars and relishing the ubiquitous Cuban hospitality. But this is no more than the joyful start of a fully-fledged quest to understand the unique society created by the Cuban Revolution. For Dervla returns alone to explore the mountains, coastal swamps and decaying cities, investigating the experience of modern Cuba with her particular, candid curiosity.

Perez Jr., Louisa A. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture. University of North Carolina Press, 2008

Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources—from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures—Pérez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Pérez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution.

American middle and secondary students typically study a dozen or more wars, from ancient Greek and Roman military campaigns to the armed conflicts that shaped modern Europe and the United States. Despite these opportunities, few are asked to examine the decision-making process behind the choice to wage war. This lesson fills that gap.

Using clips from the documentary film Nowhere to Hide, which provides a portrait of civilian life in a volatile Iraqi province following the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, the lesson asks students to consider the questions they want their political representatives to ask before authorizing military action. As they think about their roles as citizens who elect representatives with the power to authorize force under the War Powers Act, they'll also look at concepts that permeated news coverage of the Iraq War, including "nation building" and "preemptive war," as well as "pacifism."

In this multidisciplinary lesson, students examine stereotypes about people with physical disabilities. Using clips from Still Tomorrow, a documentary about Chinese poet Yu Xiuhua, who has cerebral palsy, students will gain awareness of the clues they use to judge people. To better understand Yu's condition, they'll conduct research about cerebral palsy and write an "advice blog" addressing stereotypes about people with disabilities. As part of that research, students will consider how they choose what to click on when they do online searches.

In this climate of instantaneous thumbs up and thumbs down, students can easily lose sight of the difference between spontaneous judgments and informed opinion. This lesson lets students experience the distinction. After viewing clips from the film The War to Be Her, a profile of Pakistani athlete Maria Toorpakai, who beat the odds under Taliban rule to become an international squash champion, students will be guided through several steps of discussion, question generation and research. They'll compare their initial reactions to the film with their conclusions at the end of the lesson.

Because Toorpakai's story involves the Taliban, Islam (often misrepresented in U.S. media) and a female athlete (subject to gender stereotypes), students will be wading through "hot button" issues. Outside of class, discussions of such issues often devolve into unproductive Twitter wars or worse. Their goal will be to arrive at well-informed opinions about whether or not the Taliban is completely responsible for Toorpakai's challenges.

"You can't kill someone and then go home and wash dishes. It changes you from the inside out."
- Lindy Lou Wells Isonhood, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2

Upholding the rule of law is a fundamental principle of a democracy. Doing so protects the rights of citizens, maintains order and limits the power of the government over its citizens.

Twenty years ago, Lindy Lou Wells Isonhood believed she was upholding the rule of law by serving on a jury. At the conclusion of the trial, a capital murder case, the jury handed down a death sentence to Bobby Wilcher, a Mississippi man convicted of a double homicide. Since then, Lindy has lived with an unbearable feeling of guilt over her decision. Determined to understand her remorse, Lindy embarks on a road trip across Mississippi to find her fellow jurors. A conservative former federal police officer and religious woman from the South, Lindy manages to tackle this oft-politicized topic with humor, an open mind and sincere curiosity.

In this lesson, students will have the opportunity to analyze, consider and respectfully discuss different perspectives on the death penalty by listening to Lindy's conversations with her fellow jurors, conducting independent research and reflecting on their own beliefs. Students will consider the moral, ethical and constitutional arguments used by others to support or oppose the death penalty. Then, they will articulate their own view by writing a "This I Believe" essay.

Manne, Robert. Mind of the Islamic State: ISIS and the Ideology of the Caliphate. Prometheus Books, 2017.

In the ongoing conflict with ISIS, military observers and regional experts have noted that it is just as important to understand its motivating ideology as to win battles on the ground. This book traces the evolution of this ideology from its origins in the prison writings of the revolutionary jihadist Sayyid Qutb, through the thinking of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who planned the 9/11 terrorist attack, to today’s incendiary screeds that motivate terrorism via the Internet.

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. Feminist Press, 2005.

In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.

Hedges, Chris and Laila Al-Arian. Photographs by Eugene Richards. Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. Nation Books, 2009.

Collateral Damage brings together testimony from the largest number of on-the-record, named combat veterans who reveal the disturbing, daily reality of war and occupation in Iraq. Through their eyes, we learn how the mechanics of war lead to the abuse and frequent killing of innocents. They describe convoys of vehicles roaring down roads, smashing into cars, and hitting Iraqi civilians. They detail raids that leave families shot dead in the mayhem. And they describe a battle eld in which troops, untrained to distinguish between combatants and civilians, are authorized to shoot whenever they feel threatened.

McCarthy, Rory. Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq. Penguin Books, 2006.

In May 2003 journalist Rory McCarthy went to Iraq to cover what was claimed to be the triumphant rebuilding of the country after the American invasion. Two years later he left a place teetering on the brink of civil war, whose inhabitants longed for the Americans to leave but feared what would happen if they did. Throughout his stay, McCarthy was struck by how little the Iraqi point of view was represented in the media, drowned out by the message of the British and American occupying powers. This book is an attempt to rectify that.

Mikhail, Dunya. Translated by Max Weiss and Dunya Mikhail. The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq. New Directions, 2018.

Since 2014, Daesh (ISIS) has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of northern Iraq: sowing destruction, killing those who won’t convert to Islam, and enslaving young girls and women. The Beekeeper, by the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail, tells the harrowing stories of several women who managed to escape the clutches of Daesh. Mikhail extensively interviews these women—who’ve lost their families and loved ones, who’ve been repeatedly sold, raped, psychologically tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper.

Hong-Fincher, Leta. Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. Zed Books, 2014.

In the early years of the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party sought to transform gender relations, but those gains have been steadily eroded in recent decades during China’s transition to a post-socialist era. In fact, women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of rights and gains relative to men. In Leftover Women, journalist Leta Hong-Fincher exposes shocking levels of structural discrimination against women and highlights the broader damage this has caused to China’s economy, politics, and development.

Osnos, Evan. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy-or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes. As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.

Lake, Roseann. Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World’s Next Superpower.W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Part critique of China’s paternalistic ideals, part playful portrait of the romantic travails of China’s trailblazing women and their well-meaning parents who are anxious to see their daughters snuggled into traditional wedlock, Roseann Lake’s Leftover in China focuses on the lives of four individual women against a backdrop of colorful anecdotes, hundreds of interviews and rigorous historical and demographic research to show how these “leftovers” are the linchpin to China’s future.

Hockx, Michel. Internet Literature in China. Columbia University Press, 2015.

Since the 1990s, Chinese literary enthusiasts have explored new spaces for creative expression online, giving rise to a modern genre that has transformed Chinese culture and society. Ranging from the self-consciously avant-garde to the pornographic, web-based writing has introduced innovative forms, themes, and practices into Chinese literature and its aesthetic traditions. Conducting the first comprehensive survey in English of this phenomenon, Michel Hockx describes in detail the types of Chinese literature taking shape right now online and their novel aesthetic, political and ideological challenges.

Yang, Guobin, Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, editors. The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China. The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

The Internet and social media are pervasive and transformative forces in contemporary China. Nearly half of China’s 1.3 billion citizens use the Internet, and tens of millions use Sina Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter or Facebook. Recently, Weixin/Wechat has become another major form of social media. While these services have allowed regular people to share information and opinions as never before, they also have changed the ways in which the Chinese authorities communicate with the people they rule.

Edwards, Louise and Elaine Jeffreys, editors. Celebrity in China. Hong Kong University Press, 2010.

Celebrity is a pervasive aspect of everyday life and a growing field of academic inquiry. While there is now a substantial body of literature on celebrity culture in Australia, Europe and the Americas, this is the first book-length exploration of celebrity in China. It examines how international norms of celebrity production interact with those operating in China.

Macilvey, Fran. Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.

Fran was born with cerebral palsy. Growing up with her siblings in Africa, Fran always felt different. When everyone else was playing and having fun, she would watch and wish she could join in. After the family moved to Scotland and Fran grew older, her hurt turned into anger, self-hatred, and suicidal depression. Then one day, someone looked at her and saw a woman to love, and that was the start of her journey to self-acceptance.

Zimring, Franklin E. When Police Kill. Harvard University Press, 2017.

Franklin Zimring compiles data from federal records, crowdsourced research, and investigative journalism to provide a comprehensive, fact-based picture of how, when, where, and why police resort to deadly force. Of the 1,100 killings by police in the United States in 2015, he shows, 85 percent were fatal shootings and 95 percent of victims were male. The death rates for African Americans and Native Americans are twice their share of the population.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: an American Lyric. Graywolf Press, 2014.

Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty- first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive.

Chang, Je . We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Re- segregation. Picador, 2016.

Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon’ Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity”, the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.

Lowery, Wesley. They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

A behind-the-scenes account of the #BlackLivesMatter movement shares insights into the young men and women behind it, citing the racially charged controversies that have motivated members and the economic, political and personal histories that inform its purpose.

McSpadden, Lezley. Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown. Regan Arts, 2016.

When Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown was born, he was adored and doted on by his aunts, uncles, grandparents, his father and most of all by his sixteen-year-old mother, who nicknamed him Mike Mike. McSpadden never imagined that her son’s name would inspire the resounding chants of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and ignite the global conversation about the disparities in the American policing system. In Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil, McSpadden picks up the pieces of the tragedy that shook her life and the country to their core and reveals the unforgettable story of her life, her son and their truth.