Experience of Ellis Island Expected to Enrich Curriculum

Summer workshops for teachers put debate on immigration into broader historical context.

Ellis Island

The fragile lace shawl that has been in her family for four generations took on greater meaning as Patricia Bilby learned more about the experience her great-grandmother may have had when she arrived here from Germany with the garment more than a century ago.

At the culmination of a two-week workshop on Ellis Island, the New Jersey English teacher was misty-eyed holding the hand-knit heirloom as she outlined her plans to use her family’s story to engage her students in a discussion of immigration past and present.

As part of a professional-development program organized by the Save Ellis Island Foundation, the exhibits, databases, photo archives, and recorded interviews at this museum helped put the nation’s current debate over immigration policies and processes into a broader historical context for the teacher at Bishop George Ahr High School in Edison, N.J. She and the two dozen other participants expect that deeper perspective will enrich class lessons across the curriculum for students newly arrived in this country, as well as those whose ancestors...