Understanding and Facing Migration Through Stories for Influence

Preparing students to face migration depends on how schools are responding to the needs of the children and their families. The authors introduce Stories for Influence to help teachers scaffold children's understanding of migration so they can gain perspective, create, and share their own stories. Research shows how stories make us humans by exposing the humanity in both our own and others' migration stories. The authors use Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, neuroscience, and socio-emotional aspects of storytelling to support the effectiveness of Stories for Influence. They also provide venues, such as the Out of Eden Learn framework, children's literature, and thinking routines and global thinking routines strategies to cognitively and emotionally engage children in constructing meaning and making sense of human events as igniters of their stories. Migration is approached from the Reimagining Migration (RM) educational framework that sees the presence of migrant-origin children as an asset.