Customer Reviews

The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I approached few subjects with more trepidation than Mexican immigration, because every conversation with my students unleashed a torrent of emotions reflecting the everyday stereotypes, fear-mongering and downright bigotry towards immigrants that I hated but felt powerless to address. This book gave me the confidence to teach my 9th grade Comparative Cultures & Geography students about "the line between us".

Author Bill Bigelow's intentions are to break down the `us' versus `them' perceptions that I feared in my students precisely because I could not address them. And he is very successful. His book is chock full of ideas, lesson plans and reproducibles backed up by real-life teaching experience grounded in progressive ideals.

The book covers the historical roots of the border, NAFTA's impact, the drama of border crossing, life in border towns and provides a wealth of additional resources for fun, creative teaching.

This is a rich, thought-provoking, sophisticated teaching resource to use in the classroom. It offers perspectives that are missing in the public debate about inmigration today. I highly recommend The Line Between Us.
Anahi Walton-Schafer

I created a 4-week course on Mexican Immigration with the help of this book - I love the poetry, the essays, and the interactive historical lesson plans. For a small group of interested high schoolers, these activities were a success! I highly recommend this book as a teacher's guide for creating a short course or unit on this compelling and very current issue.

Bill Bigelow wrote a set of comprehensive lessons on the American-Mexican boarder. Detailed and well written lessons ready to be implemented.

When my 3rd graders, half of whom are immigrants, started asking about illegal immigration, I thought I would find in this book useful and politically balanced ways in which to answer the kids' questions. The summary on the back of the book did not suggest otherwise.

What disappointed me was that the curriculum in this book is so narrowly focused and so high-level (11th or 12th grade) that is really useless for elementary teachers who deal with immigration issues in their classrooms.

Yes, if I had thumbed through this book and read a few pages, I could probably have figured this out before buying it, but the front and back covers in my opinion ought to at least hint that this was specifically secondary curriculum, and they did not.

The other thing that left me dissatisfied (and again, I could have found this out, say if I had researched the author's background beforehand) is the incredible political slant to this book. Bigelow is clearly strongly pro-immigration, to the point of portraying anyone wanting to deport illegal immigrants, build more border fencing, or strengthen enforcement of immigration laws, as cold, heartless, and unrealistic. Personally, I am quite sympathetic to the plight of undocumented Mexicans in the US, but as a teacher I feel an obligation to expose students to all sides of controversial issues such as this one. Bigelow makes no effort to be fair or objective.

In short, I was hoping for a politically balanced book about immigration with suggestions that could be modified or made accessible for most age levels. That, I did not get, so I will continue looking for a resource to help me accurately and age-appropriately answer my 3rd graders' questions.

I had to write a paper about Mexican immigration, so I bought this book. I was disappointed to find that the book was just a one-sided narrative about a teacher with a chip on his shoulder. The book could have been more accurately titled, "I hate any American who doesn't love Mexican immigrants". I would not recommend this book to anyone who is looking for information, but it could be useful to someone who is equally as closed minded to Mr. Bigelow or someone who ran out of toilet paper.