About This Lesson
The documentary shorts (webisodes) Waking Dream weave together stories of six undocumented young people as they sit in limbo between deportation and a path to citizenship. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) has provided nearly 800,000 undocumented young people a chance to work legally, go to college, start businesses, and pursue the “American Dream.” After DACA is rescinded, Waking Dream follows the unfolding fate of six of these young people as they fight for legal status in the U.S., struggle with the deportation of family members, and pursue their dreams in a country that is trying harder and harder to push them out.
The classroom-friendly format of Waking Dream affords educators multiple entry points to support an inclusive approach to learning about immigrant experiences in the classroom. Each episode is paired with a lesson that delves deeper into a particular theme that emerges from the stories, engaging students in dialogue and written exercises individually, and as a classroom community, to unpack and digest the complexity of each story.
