How Newly Arrived Immigrants are Adjusting to America Via the Classroom – Jessica Lander, Teacher at Lowell High School and Author of Making Americans

On the 42nd episode of Immigration Today!, Angeline Chen welcomes Jessica Lander. Jessica Lander is an award-winning teacher, author, and advocate. She is currently a teacher at Lowell High School in Lowell, Massachusetts. She teaches history and civics to recent immigrant students and has won several teaching awards, including being named a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2021, a 2023 MA Teacher of the Year Finalist, and the 2023 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year. She offers a unique perspective on the role that public schools have in helping newcomer immigrant students succeed in America. Previously, she has taught students in middle school, high school, and universities in the United States, Thailand, and Cambodia. Jessica is also an advocate serving as a district-wide family engagement coach, a mentor teacher, and an education consultant for national and state education policy organizations. Besides teaching, she is also the author of Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education, a comprehensive book that looks at immigrant education as told through key historical moments and court decisions, a book that shares current experiments to improve immigrant education and profiles of immigrant youth and schools across the country. She is also the winner of the 2024 George Orwell Awardfor Making Americans, which was presented by the National Council of the Teachers of English to, "writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse".

In this episode, Jessica shares her journey in writing Making Americans. Jessica was able to take a year to step out of the classroom to delve into the research for writing this book. First, she tells us about stories from the past with cases such as Mendez v. Westminster School District and Plyler v. Doe, landmark cases for what immigrant education is today. She also talks to us about the present through examples of classrooms like her own or Las Americas in Texas which have taken the experiences of students and their varying backgrounds to build innovative and transformative education for their students. Jessica also delves into personal stories of students and educators in order to reimagine what the future of American education might look like.

Angeline Chen

(213) 417-5169

achen@clarkhill.com

Jessica Lander



Teacher and Author

"We need stories of our young people and their experiences as young immigrants and their experiences at our schools. If we are serious about reimagining what immigrant education looks like, we need to be asking the young people what they are experiencing. This is the best way to be able to imagine what’s possible in immigrant education." - Jessica Lander

Keep up with Jessica via their website, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can purchase a copy of Making Americans onBarnes and Noble, Harvard Bookstore, Amazon, or your preferred retailer. Immigration Today! is always releasing new content. Please subscribe to our immigration newsletter to stay up to date with any new episodes.