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Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in the "Calm Corner" of her classroom, which includes butterflies she made, representing migration. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

From left, Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander talks to students Kelby Tacuri and Andrei Silva, who were representing Serbia in a class exercise, "How World War I Began." (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in the "Calm Corner" of her classroom, which includes butterflies she made, representing migration. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in her classroom. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

From left, Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander talks to students Tuyen Doan, Lyna Son and Meas Meiling, who were to be Russia in a class exercise, "How World War I Began." (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander's book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – From left, Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander talks to students Alexis Hernandez Gomez and Moise Owudo, who were representing England in a class exercise, "How World War I Began." Lander's book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander at one of the decorated doors to her classroom. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in her classroom. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander has a social justice lending library in her classroom. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in the "Calm Corner" of her classroom, which includes butterflies she made, representing migration. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

Nov. 17, 2022 – Lowell High history teacher Jessica Lander in the "Calm Corner" of her classroom, which includes butterflies she made, representing migration. Her book, "Making Americans," about immigrant education, has just been published. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

LOWELL — It’s said that students at Lowell High School speak more than 70 different languages. Many of those students are likely in Jessica Lander’s classroom.
Lander teaches history and civics to immigrants and refugees from about 30 countries around the world, she said. While the class learns about immigration of centuries past, they also share their own immigration journeys.
“I’m just so inspired by my students and all of the strengths they bring to our classroom, into our community,” Lander said. “At the start of the year, we begin by studying immigration from the early 1900s, but no study of immigration is complete without also studying their stories, because they’re experts.”
Motivated by her students’ resilience and diversity, Lander set out to write a nonfiction account of immigration of “the past, the present and the personal,” combining historical legislation that impacted schools with current “innovative” educational policies and curriculums. The “personal” side comes from her own former students who started their lives outside the United States.
The process of writing her book, titled “Making Americans,” began when Lander earned an Emerson Collective Fellowship in 2019. She traveled to different schools around the U.S., including Texas, North Carolina and North Dakota, to learn about their unique approaches to supporting first-generation Americans.
The book was published Oct. 4.
After establishing a welcoming classroom of her own, Lander said she wished to look nationally and understand ways schools across the country can help students thrive and feel included.
“So often, teaching can be really isolated, and too often, teachers have few opportunities to learn from each other and to sit in the classrooms of others,” Lander said. “It was also so exhilarating for me to do this as a teacher and every day having all of these ideas about how I could take what I was seeing back into my own classroom.”
Lander visited Las Américas Newcomer School in Houston, Texas, where students who have lived in the country for a short time can receive the education and proper adjustment they need.
What struck Lander was how the school uses a “trauma-sensitive approach,” recognizing its students have traumatic migration experiences or problems reunifying with their families. Las Américas has a garden where students can find peace during a hard day and talk things through.
Lander has since implemented her own garden in her classroom, and she said she hopes to use her findings from the book to better help her students.
“When students are having a harder day or just need a quiet moment, I still want them to be able to be in our classroom, to be present, to feel that they can come here and sit amongst these herbs,” Lander said. “Smelling the thyme or the mint can be calming, and having that space that’s slightly removed from their classmates but they’re still present with their classmates (is important).”
When the pandemic hit and Lander was forced back home to Massachusetts, she delved into the past portion of the book — research she called “historical sleuthing.” She discovered the story of a teacher in rural Nebraska who taught a student the Bible in German at a time when many states forbade the teaching of foreign languages. Lander also learned about a Mexican-American family in the 1940s who fought to end segregated schools in California.
Today, one in four children in the U.S. live in immigrant families, which makes the need for comprehensive programs and support all the more necessary, Lander said.
“We should be thinking intentionally, thoughtfully about how our schools are nurturing a strong sense of belonging for our students,” Lander said, “how they are valuing the voices of many identities of our students and how they are really helping our students thrive as they build new communities and new homes here.”
Each chapter in the book is focused on one of eight “essential elements of belonging,” the last of which recommends changes that can be made in the classroom and in communities, Lander said.
Julian, a former student of Lander’s who graduated in 2019, is originally from Columbia, immigrating to Lowell in 2015. Upon arrival, he entered Lowell High’s English language learners program and enrolled in Lander’s class that year.
It was difficult finding his place here after leaving his family behind, and he “basically had to start from scratch,” he said, but Lander’s encouragement made the transition a success. He now studies journalism at UMass Lowell, having been inspired to write because of Lander.
“She’s an incredible teacher,” Julian said. “She was always someone that we could go to if we needed any help, even academically or personally.”
Safiya, who also had Lander as a teacher, switched her college major to education after she began working as a teaching assistant for Lander.
Lander created an environment that helped Safiya through the immense “culture shock” she encountered after she emigrated from Iraq and Turkey. She was also the first teacher to talk to her parents, using a translation app.
“She’s welcoming to everybody who comes into our classroom,” Safiya said.
Both Julian and Safiya’s stories are told in Lander’s book. Lander requested their last names be omitted from this article.
Everyone should work to create communities in which every resident feels as though they belong, Lander said, and that is the intention of her book.
“I think we connect most when we are reading the stories of people,” she said. “There’s so many courageous people who share their stories, and my hope is that everyone will find connections to folks in the book.”
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