Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Schools And Businesses Brace For 'Day Without Immigrants', 04/28/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/boycott_4-28.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is a boycott?

2. What is an immigrant?

3. How does an immigrant come legally to the U.S.?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is expected to happen on May 1?

Organizers are calling the May 1 nationwide boycott "a day without an immigrant." They are asking that immigrants skip work or school and avoid spending money.

2. What is the purpose of the event?

Organizers say they want immigration reforms that work to provide a path to citizenship for illegal workers.

"We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here," Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who organized earlier marches, told Reuters.

3. Which businesses are especially dependent on immigrant labor? How are they preparing for the event?

Some businesses that rely heavily on immigrant labor, such as restaurants, hotels, construction sites and farms, are making plans to close or operate with fewer employees.

4. Not all Latino leaders think the May 1 event is a good idea. Why?

Some Latino leaders think the May Day boycott could lead to further anti-immigration backlash among politicians and Americans in general.

"We support [a boycott], but not right now because we believe right now the ball is in the hands of the Senate," Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA de Maryland, told the Chicago Tribune.

The Senate plans to take up the immigration reform debate again after failing to pass legislation prior to its spring vacation.

5. Some leaders have suggested an alternative to the planned events. What are they?

Some groups have suggested alternatives to a day-long boycott.

"We can make May 1st a 'win-win' day here in Southern California … go to work, go to school, and then join thousands of us at a major rally afterward," Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Catholic archdiocese said in a statement, according to Reuters.

6. How do some anti-immigration groups feel about the planned events on May 1?

Anti-immigration groups are not happy with the planned boycott.

"It's intimidation when a million people march down main streets in our major cities under the Mexican flag," Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman volunteer border patrol group, told Reuters.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. There are various opinions within the Latino immigrant community about whether this boycott is a good idea? What do you think? Why do you think this? Explain your reasoning.

2. The leaders of "a day without an immigrant" want Americans to imagine the United States without immigrants. What do you think would happen if all immigrants to this country were not here anymore? How would your life be different? Would your life be better, worse or the same? Explain your answer.

3. Research the history of May Day. Where else is this day celebrated now and why? Why do you think the immigrant community chose this day for their boycott?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.