Building an immigration education program

Each learning session should start with a Remember followed by an Encounter/Reflect pairing.  You may do as many Encounter/Reflect exercises as time allows, a minimum of two is suggested for the Cycle of Migration sessions.  After these, Sharing and Respond.

For each of the Cycle of Migration learning sessions the bulk of the session should be dedicated to encounter/reflect exercises.  These are where learners will encounter new information regarding immigration.  But learning new information has to be balanced with time spent processing and integrating it into the learner’s worldview.  The goal of this education program is not just learning gaining new information but being transformed by it.  In these sessions the respond portion should be an introduction to ways to get involved that are relevant to the learnings in the rest of the session.

The last session, Responding in Service, should follow a slightly different patter where most of the time is spent in discernment of what action to take in response to the learnings of the previous sessions.  The same structure should be maintained of remember, encounter/reflect, sharing and respond but with different emphasis.  The encounter/reflect in this last session is a final learning intended to get learners thinking about creative responses to the needs of the broken immigration system.  Most of the session should be spent in a guided discernment process that takes a careful look at the modes of response introduced in the previous sessions.  Participants should think about what responses they feel compelled to take on both as individuals and as a community.